AMD’s Threadripper processors are all about raw computational horsepower for multi-threaded tasks. We're not sure how many math operations a horse can perform per second, but horsepower is here in abundance: With 32, 64, or even 96 cores, the new Threadripper and Threadripper Pro 7000 processors perform several times faster than conventional chips in certain scenarios. Though all of these chips excel in demanding multi-threaded workloads, arguably the best option for most people might actually not be the one with the most possible cores.
At $2,499, the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X is tough for mainstream consumer CPUs to challenge—even with its higher-end power management and memory requirements—with several advantages that make it a robust choice unless you exclusively work in heavily threaded programs that can leverage more than 32 cores. For bringing workstation-grade performance at a relatively affordable price, we grant the Ryzen Threadripper 7970X our Editors' Choice award. (Note: AMD also offers a $1,499, 24-core 7960X, which we haven't tested, featuring the same boost clock as the 7970X and a slightly higher base clock.)
Design: A Few Less Threads, a Lot Less Money
Naturally, AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 7970X does not diverge significantly on internal design from AMD’s other Threadripper processors or AMD’s consumer Ryzen 7000-series processor line. All of these chips are designed around the use of chiplets, which enables AMD to scale what are much the same parts to target a range of markets, from low-end personal computers to business components that cost thousands of dollars. The Threadripper chips themselves are just much larger than the usual Ryzen and Core consumer fare.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)The primary building block of all of these processors is what AMD calls a CCX, or “Core Complex.” For Ryzen and Threadripper 7000-series processors, the CCX is built on a 5nm TSMC FinFET manufacturing process and contains eight CPU cores with 64K of L1 cache and 1MB of L2 cache for each core. AMD’s lowest-end processors have a single CCX, and additional CCXs are added for anything with more than eight cores to add more cores. The Ryzen Threadripper 7970X, in this case, has four CCXs.
AMD's CCX isn’t the only component inside of the Ryzen Threadripper 7970X, as the processor also has an I/O die that’s built on a 6nm TSMC FinFET process. You'll find a lot rolled into the I/O die, including 128MB of L3 cache, a quad-channel memory controller, and a PCIe 5.0 controller with 92 lanes in total. Four of these lanes are reserved for communication with the motherboard’s chipset, leaving 88 available for ultra-fast SSDs, graphics cards, and other devices.
This wealth of PCIe lanes is part of what makes the Threadripper platform special; ordinary consumer CPUs can't touch that lane count. Conversely, the Threadripper Pro 7000 line, launching alongside the Threadripper 7000 family, offers even more lanes. (Threadripper Pro will appear mostly in pre-built workstations; we did some informal remote testing of the flagship Pro processor, the 96-core 7995WX, at the above link.)
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)Unlike the CCXs, the I/O die is a bit more specific for each processor, with features changed between the consumer Ryzen processors and the Threadripper processors. The Ryzen Threadripper 7970X is technically supposed to be a consumer-oriented processor, too, but its memory controller requires the use of registered DDR5 RAM, which sets it apart as more of a business solution and boosts the overall platform-adoption cost, as registered RAM is more expensive than ordinary civilian DDR5. This does have advantages in terms of stability, but it likewise undermines the appeal, to an extent, of having a consumer Threadripper line in the first place.
Compared with the higher-end AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X, the Threadripper 7970X has half as many cores, but AMD makes up for this in other ways. Both processors have the same 350-watt (350W) TDP for the processor as a whole. AMD set the Threadripper 7980X and its 64 cores with a max turbo clock speed of 5.1GHz and a base frequency of 3.2GHz while staying within this TDP limit. With fewer cores, the 7970X has more power to go around, ending up clocked a considerable amount higher, with a turbo of 5.3GHz and a base clock of 4.0GHz. (The base clock on the 7960X is a higher 4.2GHz, with the same peak turbo as the 7970X.)
Also missing from the Ryzen Threadripper 7970X is the integrated Radeon Graphics portion that is now commonplace on Ryzen 7000-series consumer processors. This makes sense: If you’re willing to drop $2,499 on a processor, you probably won’t mind dropping $100 on something to use as a display adapter. As the integrated graphics would otherwise eat into the power available to the processor and generates heat when in use, continuing to leave it off was a sensible move. (No Threadripper chip has ever had integrated graphics.)
Last, given Threadripper's quad-channel memory controller, its expansive PCIe capabilities, and its high power demands, using AMD's consumer AM5 socket wasn't possible. Like earlier Threadrippers, the 7000 series uses an oversize CPU socket with a special carriage-load and screw-down mechanism, paired with a special torque screwdriver for installation. Here, the processor uses a new sTR5 socket and is joined by a new TRX50 motherboard chipset to match, meaning the new Threadrippers won't work with earlier Threadripper boards. This platform supports all these features and more to make a complete package that leans more toward being a workstation/business solution than a consumer one. (Read our Ryzen Threadripper 7980X review for more details on the platform proper.)
Testing the Ryzen Threadripper 7970X: Our Test Configuration
A Threadripper 7000 (Pro or vanilla) requires an all-new platform. To test the new Ryzen Threadrippers, I assembled a new testbed around an Asus Pro WS TRX50-Sage Wi-Fi motherboard with four 32GB sticks of G.Skill registered DDR5 RAM. The RAM, CPU, and motherboard were all supplied by AMD for this review. AMD also sent along an NZXT Kraken 360 360mm water cooler for testing, and a specialized mounting bracket that works with this cooler was included in the box with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)To this I added a SilverStone DA850 850W power supply, a Lexar NM790 4TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. All of the parts were mounted onto an open Praxis Wetbench chassis, and all tests were performed on a clean installation of Windows 11 Pro with the latest updates installed.
The competition that AMD faces in the field is, at the moment, limited. You'll find some business and workstation processors that mingle in the same general price range as the Ryzen Threadripper 7970X, but not a ton and none that we’ve tested. Most workstation parts cost a fair bit more, and most consumer processors cost a considerable amount less. Nonetheless, those consumer chips still put up a fight against the Threadrippers in some situations, especially where price for performance is concerned.
I don’t intend to dwell on that last point too much, as you can clearly get better performance for what you pay with the consumer chips if you only leverage a subset of cores. I doubt AMD would argue this point, either, as that’s not what Threadripper and workstation parts are about. Driving the best multi-threaded performance, period, in a given package is typically the goal, as you can have only so many computers.
Not to mention, unless you are building a server, you typically can only have one or two physical processors per system. When that’s the case, and when getting things done faster can impact your work financially, the argument shifts away from “What’s the best performance for my dollar?” and into “What’s the best performance I can get in this system, no matter the cost?” The time savings can turn into financial gains that, in turn, can more than make up for the additional costs of the computer hardware. The added lane counts afforded by the Threadripper (and Pro) platforms also contribute to maxing out the gear you can put in one workstation. It's a different kind of calculus that goes beyond just the cost of the CPU.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X: CPU Tests
The first test I ran, the classic Cinebench R23, ended up as one of the 7970X's best showings. It beat out many of the consumer chips by close to two-fold, and some of the lesser consumer chips by considerably more. It's also impressive that the 7970X performed roughly 61% as well as the 7980X. No question here: If pure, heavily multi-threaded performance is your only consideration, the 7980X is a better option. But as the 7970X costs half as much, it still presents as an attractive alternative.
The Ryzen Threadripper 7970X came even closer to matching the 7980X in Blender, with the 7970X performing about 80% as well as the 7980X. Things got more interesting in our other tests, though, which showed the 7970X to be the faster of the two chips under some circumstances. At first, this may seem like a mistake, and indeed some issues with our test in HandBrake, due to using an older version of the software for testing, may have been a factor. You'll certainly find no mistake in the other tests, though.
AMD's 7970X ended up faster than the 7980X in the single-threaded Cinebench R23 test, our Adobe Photoshop trial, HandBrake, and both the single-threaded and multi-threaded POV-Ray tests. These gains are all likely thanks to the higher clock speeds supported by the 7970X. Its lower core count but matching TDP would also have enabled the 7970X to maintain its turbo speeds longer, and for it to ramp up to turbo speeds more frequently during these tests. In short, anything that’s not able to take full advantage of the higher core and thread count of the 7980X has a reasonable chance to run better on the 7970X. And this is significant, as most software simply isn’t built for 64 cores or 128 threads of concurrent activity.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X: Gaming Tests
AMD does not build its Ryzen Threadripper processors for gaming, and you should not buy one with that as a primary or secondary goal. That showed quite clearly in our gaming tests. Mind you, it doesn't perform badly, and you could game on the side; it just gains you no benefit for the cost over the top consumer chips. Though many games ran fine on the 7970X and 7980X, others like Total War: Three Kingdoms and Bioshock Infinite ran behind the high-end consumer-CPU crew.
The other games tested didn’t show much advantage or disadvantage from using the 7970X over the other consumer parts, but that makes enough of a statement by itself. We simply see no reason to spend $2,499 on a processor to run games when a flurry of $300-to-$600 chips (most of the other tested Ryzen and Core chips fit this price range) will perform just as well or a bit better under some key scenarios.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X: Power and Thermals
I use a Kill-A-Watt power meter to check the power draw of the system as a whole during select tests to gauge the processor’s power consumption. The numbers I recorded show the 7970X to be among the most power-hungry I’ve tested, but its performance was high enough to also make it relatively efficient for what it is.
The 7970X does not excel at energy efficiency quite like the 7980X does, but it’s leagues better than the Intel Core i9-14900K or Core i7-14700K, given the relative core count, and it should be a decent match for the Ryzen 9 7950X3D in this regard.
Thermally, the processor hits its thermal limit and exceeds it by 1 degree C. This is a bit concerning, as that limit is put in place to avoid the processor getting damaged by excessive heat. It’s a sobering state of affairs that this is becoming close to the norm nowadays, though; out of all the processors tested in our charts here, only the Core i5-14600K and Core i5-13600K stayed below their thermal limit.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)The 7970X actually fares a bit worse in this respect, as it (and the 7980X) were cooled by a 360mm water cooler while the other processors were cooled by a smaller 240mm water cooler. Those other chips might have stayed under their thermal limit had they been paired with a 360mm water cooler, but you don't have much room to go up from that kind of cooler to try and keep the 7970X from overheating. Water coolers with radiators that measure 420mm do exist, as do custom water-cooling solutions, but it's sobering to think of those sort of devices as near-necessities, whereas in previous years they would have been considered bleeding-edge enthusiast solutions. You'll need to install your Threadripper in a proper PC tower to accommodate one of those giant coolers; no compact case for this big, hot engine.
Verdict: The Goldilocks 'Just Right' Threadripper Chip
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X may not quite have the multi-threaded horsepower of some of AMD’s other Threadripper processors, but its higher clock speeds and lower price go a long way toward making up for this. If you do run a lot of heavily threaded programs that can take advantage of the likes of the 7980X, and if it stands to help you make more money by getting your work done faster, the 7980X could arguably be the better processor for you.
But, like many things in life, balance matters. If you don’t think the financial gains will materialize from going with the all-out 64-core muscle of the 7980X, the 7970X may fit you and your budget better. It has faster performance in applications that aren’t as heavily threaded, and this could save you small amounts of time while doing other tasks to help make up for its somewhat lower multi-threaded performance. That it costs half as much as the 7980X is also a big plus, though you'll still incur the costs of the platform: pricey motherboard, registered RAM, a big sTR5-compatible cooler, and (possibly) a new chassis.
In general, this makes the Threadripper 7970X a far more attractive solution to users on the edge of adopting the platform than the 7980X. Its much more consumer-friendly price makes it potentially better for that person, say, who runs their own photography business or develops their own software. With that wider set of potential applications in mind for a lower price, we give the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X our Editors' Choice award for workstation CPUs.
