i9-9960x vs Ryzen Threadripper 2950x vs Ryzen 3900x

[Joshua Hoareau]

These are the current prices I can get these 3 CPU's for in Australia (I've converted them to USD). For the most part price isn't an issue for me for these 3 CPU's.

Intel i9-9960x - $953USD
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950x - 919USD
AMD Ryzen 3900x - $537USD

From what I've found online, the cheapest of these the 3900x seems to outperform the other 2 across the board, but I can't find any practical comparisons (I'm not keen to base it on hypothetical simulated benchmarks).
I'm looking for real performance differences in things like Premier Pro and Davinci Resolve. I use both NLE's. Does anyone here have any input on these CPU's?

UPDATE:
There's also now the Ryzen 3950x in the mix...

Thanks heaps!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Well, the i9-9960x and the Threadripper 2950x are very comparable. Benchmarks are quite similar between the two. The Intel CPU has a slower base clock rate, but better [IMO] cache arrangement. And the cores are more efficient, or you could say powerful. In most real-world scenarios, the 9960x edges out the 2950x for sustained compute loads. The i9 offers 44 lanes of PCIe v3.0 and the AMD 2950x offers 64 lanes of PCIe 3.0.

Now the Ryzen 3900x is the new kid on the block using the new 7nm generation 3 architecture. It's the best price/performance option here. It's great if you don't need as many threads and the higher clock rate is going to make it faster than the above mentioned CPUs for loads that don't scale to as many threads. Lots of benchmarks are going to lead you to this processor because of that. If you spend most of your time in Adobe apps, this is probably the CPU you should look at to start with. For Resolve, you'll probably want more cores. But given the higher base clock and fewer cores, as well as this CPU being targeted at gaming and mid-range desktop use, it has 24 PCIe v4.0 lanes. And most motherboards will only give you 16 to 20 of those lanes to work with. If you want more than a GPU and one other performance PCIe card in your system, this is not the CPU for you. The 3950x is the same, just 16 cores and more cache.

If you want the best of both worlds, then the new gen-3 Threadrippers are where it's at. AMD is not screwing around with these. The 3960x offers 24 cores with a base clock of 3.8GHz and boost up to 4.5GHz. 128MB L3 cache and a whopping 88 lanes of PCIe v4.0.

I have not personally got my hands on the Ryzen 9 or new Threadripper 39xx chips. But I think if I were building me a new workstation at this moment, I would go for the Threadripper 3960x. If budget becomes an issue and if I know I'll only need one GPU with maybe a DeckLink card and external RAID, I might try to go at it with Ryzen 3950x.

 

[Tom S]

I have the AMD 2950x and pretty much get full 6k Dragon playback in PP. I also have 2 x 1080Ti GPUs for Davinci (excellent performance). 64GB DDR4 RAM.

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

Thanks heaps Jeff!
That actually answered everything perfectly from my end!
Keeping my eyes peeled for the release of the new Threadripper series!!!

 

[John Brennick]

My friends over at Blur just sent this to me while we were talking about Terminator Dark Fate. For Nuke, they were saying it was drastically faster than what they were previously using. Supposedly though Nuke has a limit with how many of the cores it can utilize so a work around was to localize the assets and run multiple background instances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll2cipUZWPQ

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

My friends over at Blur just sent this to me while we were talking about Terminator Dark Fate. For Nuke, they were saying it was drastically faster than what they were previously using. Supposedly though Nuke has a limit with how many of the cores it can utilize so a work around was to localize the assets and run multiple background instances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll2cipUZWPQ

That's awesome!

 

[Misha Engel]

Within 3 days from now we will have a better overview of the price/performance of the new processors vs. the current once.
AMD will release it's threadrippers 3000 series and Intel will release Cascade Lake-X HEDT 10 series.
Older AMD cpu's are allready lowered in price.

You have a lot of options at competive pricing upto 18c/36tr.
When you go higher in core count, AMD looks to have the better price performance.

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

Threadripper 3960x and MSI TRX40 Creator ORDERED!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Let us know how it goes!

 

[alexandre Chailan]

I move from the 1950x for a 3900x because I need Thunderbolt3 for a gtechno shuttle xl and a 10gb network for my other nas.
Was the only solution with native port via asrock 570 creator.
I have a Gemini and Ref Epic Dragon, if you wanna some tests let me know

 

[Joshua Hoareau]

Just finished my build and testing it out! And oh boy...DOES...IT...FLY! Hopefully I'll be able to do a full breakdown as soon as I get through some of this backed up editing work!

The weirdest thing so far has been the fact that it's chewing through 6k full res lowest compression footage like butter, but stutters on 5k footage 6:1 in Premier Pro. It doesn't matter if I set it to full, 1/2 or 1/4 it still stutters :S

 

[Richard Kynaston]

Hi Joshua,
Can I ask how you've got on with editing on your new system in the past few months? Mind if I ask what the final full spec of the machine ended up at? We are about to replace one of our PC editors, and finally look like we're going to a RED camera this year (at long last!!) so I'm trying to make sure the new setup can easily handle 6K ( and hopefully be reasonable at 8K for future use ) in Resolve without problems.

Rich