AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX, 24C/48T, 3.00-4.20GHz, tray

Threadripper 2970WX is the company's second-biggest Ryzen Threadripper, offering a staggering 24 cores and 48 threads. In terms of clock speeds, the CPU matches 2990WX specs: 3.0 GHz base and up to 4.2 GHz boost, which is rare. Normally, lower SKUs come with some kind of clock frequency reduction as an additional performance dial for the vendor to justify pricing of the more expensive model. It's also great that AMD has managed to make these new WX CPUs run on the existing X399 platform, which of course comes with some gotchas.

These processors aren’t cheap by any means, but the Threadripper 2920X and 2970WX are good values in the current landscape, relative to other HEDT processors and we look forward to seeing how AMD continues to optimize the platform moving forward.

The rabbit that AMD pulled out of its head with Threadripper never ceases to amaze me, even despite a very narrow target audience and demographic, sales wise. The newer Pinnacle ridge based CPU dies at 12nm bring in a bit of a speed bump and I've stated it already if this is prolonged with 7nm production enabling AMD to get closer to that 5 GHz marker, then Intel has some serious challenges ahead. For the regular gamer and consumer, I cannot deny however that Threadripper 2970WX is a tough sell, for the joe average or the regular PC Gamer, this setup makes little sense. But the WX series wasn't intended for gaming or your regular DIY PC, that's what Ryzen 2600x/2700x is covering. Threadripper is for the professionals, the developers and video crunchers that need 32 or 24 core to fire off at serious workloads. Anything with 8 up to 16 cores is plenty sufficient of course. However, 48 threads available and a boost on four threads to 4.2 GHz nothing less than impressive.

he Threadripper 2920X is a much better all-rounder than the 2970WX. It doesn't require any tweaking to reduce the core count for gaming, but has enough extra cores than similarly priced rivals that it chomps through high workload tasks effortlessly. That pricing has to be mentioned as AMD have gone super-aggressive with the price of the Threadripper 2920X, a mere $649 MSRP at time of review. This places it below the i7-7820X which it comfortably out-performs, and not that much more than the i9-9900K which when you take streaming into account it absolutely obliterates. Because it isn't stretching the limits of the amount of threads currently designed applications and games are expecting, and because the lower core count means that you can push the clock speed a little higher than its bigger brother, means that it's a seriously great chip no matter what your expected usage. Because it's just as happy crunching numbers as it is feeding your GPU with data for gaming and that very attractive price point means it wins our coveted OC3D Enthusiast Award.

...the 2970WX slots in neatly below the 2990WX and, at £1,200, offers multi-core goodness that is outside the capabilities of the £2,000 Core i9-7980XE.