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AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X: Two-minute review
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is an HEDT workstation processor constructed for an especially particular — and intensely demanding — viewers.
Nothing about this chip is ‘mainstream’, together with the truth that nearly each fanatic client processor out there proper now will largely outperform this chip in most workloads that 95% of customers will run on their computer systems, and they’ll accomplish that at a minuscule fraction of the Threadripper 9980X’s worth.
There may be a part of me that desires to slag this processor as overpowered, overengineered, and overpriced—besides I can’t. With 64 full-fat efficiency cores, 128 threads, a base clock of three.2GHz, and the power to push far past that below managed thermal situations, this chip appears like its sole objective is to blow by Cinebench R23’s multi-core benchmark and disgrace each different chip that tries to do the identical.
I might say that this can be a ridiculous waste of time, vitality, and assets, however the factor about Cinebench R23, in addition to all the opposite multi-core benchmarks that this chip leaves defeated in its wake, is that there are professionals on the market who want precisely this sort of energy from a processor, and no different consideration actually issues.
Database administrators, IT managers dealing with web servers, machine learning researchers and developers, 3D designers of every kind, and high-end video productions are among those who will look at the multi-core performance of this chip and see past the bar on a graph stretching well past every other chip in the test group and see the hours of work saved every week with a processor specifically designed to break up their workloads into as many as 128 individual processing threads to be worked through in parallel.
That definitely isn’t everyone, and the incredible parallel processing power available with the Threadripper 9980X comes at a cost. To keep those 64 cores from setting your workstation on fire under load, per-core clock speeds start nearly a full GHz lower than the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X, which means that single-core or lightly-threaded processing power suffers somewhat, though the 9980X can still hold its own at a system and productivity-minded processor, and its TSMC N4P/N6 architecture does translate into some solid responsiveness.
With eight compute dies under the lid and 256MB of L3 cache, there are a lot of interconnects between all that discrete silicon, and communication between all those parts introduces latency as well, though it isn’t debilitating.
What’s more, at $4,999 / £4,499.99 / AU$8,399, this is a very expensive processor. It’s not the most expensive HEDT chip on the market, that’d be the 96-core Threadripper Pro 9995WX at nearly three times the price of the 9980X, but it’s still not a CPU you buy because you ‘want the best.’
You buy it because your workflow would bring even the best processors on the buyer market to their knees. That is the sort of chip you slap right into a workstation as a result of you need to render the 12-second Gargantua approach sequence from Interstellar in a matter of days reasonably than weeks, and never since you wish to play Cyberpunk 2077 on the highest framerate potential. For the previous, it’s an impressive, special-use processor. Under no circumstances for the latter.
Then there’s the matter of platform necessities. You’ll want a TRX50 motherboard, which isn’t simply costlier—it’s bodily bigger, requires extra strong energy supply, and normally comes loaded with workstation-focused options that add to the worth.
You’ll additionally must spend some huge cash on cooling, as a result of below full multi-core load, the 9980X can pull upwards of 350W from the socket, so a 360mm AIO cooler is absolutely the rock-bottom, naked minimal cooling answer you should utilize to maintain this chip from throttling, and there aren’t many who match this chip on the market.
And consider me, having sat subsequent to the open-air check bench operating high-intensity multi-threaded workloads on the 9980X, this factor pumps out an infinite quantity of warmth, so plan your workstation surroundings accordingly.
All that stated, should you’re the sort of person who spends entire workdays in Premiere Professional, Houdini, or TensorFlow, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is a dream, however you do have to essentially ask your self should you want this a lot centered energy in your specific state of affairs.
I really like multi-threaded programming and dealing on asynchronous processes when creating my very own software program instruments, however in no universe would I ever be capable to totally make the most of all 64 cores on this processor until I used to be actively making an attempt to, and I do not work with something practically that complicated.
In case your workflow is even reasonably blended, or gaming is even 1 / 4 of your use case, this chip delivers diminishing returns that may make you remorse investing a lot into it, particularly when the considerably cheaper Threadripper 9970X is good for these conditions at half the price.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X: Price & availability
- How much does it cost? $4,999.99 / £4,499.99 / AU$8,399
- When is it available? It is available now
- Where can you get it? You can get it in the US, UK, and Australia
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is available now in the US, UK, and Australia for $4,999.99 / £4,499.99 / AU$8,399.
While not ‘cheap’ by any means, if you’re seriously looking at buying this processor, you’re not window shopping. You know you need it, and it will either make back the money you spent on it in relatively short order, or it is a processor you have to have for academic or scientific research, and it’s simply the price paid for progress.
It should be noted, though, that while the Threadripper 9980X’s multi-core performance is second only to the high-end Threadripper Pro 9000-series chips, the Threadripper 9970X’s multicore performance is actually not that far behind the 9980X’s, and it costs half the price of this chip.
If you’re wincing at the price tag of the 9980X, but you really do need something like this for your workflow, give the 9970X a long look and see if it’s a better fit for your needs.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X: Specs & Features
- 64-cores/128-threads chew through multi-core workloads
- Slower clock speeds than AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X
- 256MB L3 cache
|
Socket |
sTR5 (TRX50) |
|
|
Architecture |
AMD Zen 5 |
|
|
Cores |
64 |
|
|
Threads |
128 |
|
|
Base Clock |
3.2GHz |
|
|
Boost Clock |
5.4GHz |
|
|
L3 Cache |
256MB |
|
|
PCIe Lanes |
Up to 80 PCIe 5.0 |
|
|
Memory Support |
Up to 1TB Quad-channel DDR5‑6400 ECC |
|
|
TDP |
350W |
|
|
tjMax |
95℃ |
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is built on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, an MCM design featuring TSMC’s N4P process for the compute dies and its N6 process for the I/O die, all tied together using AMD’s Infinity Fabric interconnect. Each of the eight CCDs contributes eight cores and 16 threads to the massive 64-core, 128-thread chip, supported by a staggering 256MB of L3 cache. This is particularly ideal for keeping large datasets close to the cores and minimizing memory latency in heavy workloads.
The base clock speeds sit at 3.2GHz, with boost frequencies climbing up to 5.4GHz under lightly threaded tasks, depending on cooling and power headroom. The processor is fully unlocked for overclocking, although thermal and power constraints will make manual tuning challenging without extreme cooling solutions. Out of the box, this processor is pulling 350W, so you’ll likely need more than a 360mm AIO to cool this properly if you push it even modestly.
Memory support is another standout. The 9980X works with up to 1TB of DDR5-6400 ECC RAM across quad-channel configurations, a 1,200MT/s increase over the last-generation Threadripper line.
I/O capabilities have also gotten a significant boost. Now, you can utilize up to 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes, meaning you can run multiple GPUs, storage arrays, and capture or networking cards without lane-sharing bottlenecks.
As with previous Threadrippers, there’s no integrated GPU, but that’s expected. Power consumption is rated at an extremely high 350W TDP, and the physical chip uses the sTRX5 socket, meaning it requires a TRX50-series motherboard. These boards are large, expensive, and purpose-built for heavy-duty computing.
- Specs & features: 4.5 / 5
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X: Installation & test setup
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X installation is much more involved than you might be used to if you’ve only ever used consumer-grade motherboards that seat a standard desktop CPU.
The Threadripper 9980X uses AMD’s sTR5 socket, which is physically longer and more delicate, and so requires a specific installation procedure.
Included with the 9980X is a torque-limiting wrench that you’ll need to ensure even pressure across the heat spreader, which for this chip is a vital step for both thermal performance and long-term reliability.
I highly recommend watching some installation videos on YouTube after you’ve got learn over the set up directions earlier than you try to put in this processor, since slacking on correct set up can create uneven contact with the socket and even broken pins on the TRX50 motherboard. You have spent a lot of cash on this chip, so positively be sure you do not wreck the entire thing on the set up step.
For testing the chip, I used the ASUS Professional WS TRX50-SAGE motherboard along with an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU, 128GB (4 x 32GB) G.Talent G5 Collection DDR5-6400 ECC reminiscence, together with a Essential T705 PCIe 5.0 SSD as my main system drive. Cooling was dealt with by a Silverstone XE360-TR5 AIO cooler, and energy was provided by a Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W Platinum PSU, and a contemporary set up of Windows 11.
This configuration is kind of what an fanatic HEDT rig or skilled Home windows workstation would appear like, and it positively outclasses what you may discover in all however probably the most tricked-out gaming PC, so it is a stable consultant system for finishing up my testing.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X: Performance
- Best-in-class multi-core performance
- Slower clocks mean it can lose out to the Threadripper 9970X in key workloads
- Gaming performance is unimpressive
The performance of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9800X ends up being a somewhat mixed bag for all of the reasons I’ve already gone over, but now that we’re at the ‘take-a-look-at-the-actual-numbers’ stage, hopefully you’ll see what I mean.
Across most workloads I tested, the Ryzen Threadripper 9980X can’t keep up with the 9970X, falling behind some Ryzen 9 desktop chips, and even losing a couple of times to the Intel Core Extremely 9 285K. That is very true with regards to single-core efficiency and gaming, the place the Threadripper 9980X simply is not aggressive in any respect with any of the consumer-grade fanatic processors I examined.
First, the single-core performance of the 9980X consistently loses out to not just the Threadripper 9970X, but it gets roughed up pretty bad by pretty much all the high-end Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 9000-series processors. Ultimately, it just doesn’t have the base clock speed to sustain enough performance to compete in focused, application-specific tasks.
This difference across all single-core tests is about 3% slower than the 9970X (which isn’t terrible), but about 10% slower than the Ryzen 9 9950X (which is at least bad, if not quite terrible).
However, when we look at the 9980X’s multi-core performance, things flip rather drastically. At first, it looks like more of the same with Geekbench 6, where the 9980X only outperforms the 9970X by about 4% (though it does beat out third-place finisher, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, by about 36%).
Once we hit the Cinebench tests, though, it’s over for everyone else. In Cinebench R23, the 9980X’s score of 115,098 is about 51% better than the 9970X’s 76,136 score, and an increadible 173.4% better than the third-place finisher, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which scored a relatively measly 42,098.
In Cinebench R24, it’s more or less the same, with the 9980X finishing 56% better than the 9970X’s multi-core score and nearly 168% better than the third-best performer, the Core Ultra 9 285K.
Across all multi-core tests, the 9980X comes in about 36% better than the 9970X and about 106% better than the Core Ultra 9 285K, with the rest of the Ryzen 9 and 7 chips falling even further behind.
In whole system performance, as measured in CrossMark, the Threadripper 9980X does pretty well in terms of overall performance, though it comes in about 125 points behind the 9970X (or about 5%). That’s still better than the Ryzen 9s and Ryzen 7s, though. It falls behind quite a bit in productivity workloads, coming in second to last, just ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
When it comes to responsiveness, it is properly forward of the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 chips, in addition to Intel’s flagship desktop processor, coming in second solely to the 9970X.
Creative workloads are one of the areas where the 9980X shines like the powerhouse chip it is, notching substantial wins in Blender Benchmark 4.3, V-ray 6, and PugetBench for Creators Adobe Premiere.
Over all workloads, the 9980X chalked up a roughly 30% higher efficiency than the 9970X, and that is taking the geomean of all of the inventive benchmark outcomes, one thing that basically undersells how dominating the 9980X’s Blender Benchmark and V-Ray 6 CPU efficiency is (about 71% and 65% higher than the 9970X). If I simply averaged all of the scores to provide a few of these exams extra weight, the 9980X is available in about 50% higher than the 9970X throughout inventive workloads, with each different chip far, far behind.
Where the 9980X really fails is in terms of gaming performance, so PC gaming enthusiasts out there who want a Threadripper 9980X as a flex, you’d be doing yourself a massive disservice.
On average, across all the games tested, the 9980X had the worst gaming performance both in terms of average FPS and 1% FPS. The 9970X did marginally better, but the consumer-grade Ryzen chips and even the Core Ultra 9 285K are far better suited for gaming than either of the Threadripper 9000-series chips, but expecially compared to the 9980X.
This poor gaming performance also extends into game AI, largely because game logic is a largely single-core task that can’t easily be disaggregated across multiple threads.
Independent NPC actors might benefit from multithreading in games, of course, but if that was the case, the 9980X should have done better simulating a full in-game year of Stellaris gameplay with 42 AI empires on a huge map, exactly the kind of asynchronous agent logic processing multithreading might have helped.
Unfortunately, the 9980X came in dead last in that test, only being able to finish the year in about 55.72 seconds, which would extrapolate to 393 in-game days in one minute. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D finished the year in about 44.75 seconds, which translates to about 489 days simulated in one minute.
In the end, all of this is to say that the 9980X isn’t going to be awful at gaming, especially if you have one of the best graphics cards just like the Nvidia RTX 5090 and crank up the settings in order that the body charge bottleneck strikes from CPU to GPU.
Moving on to the more physical aspects of performance, the thermal and power consumption of the 9980X are what you would expect from a 350W TDP chip. I can assure you, the 9980X uses up every last watt of headroom its TDP will allow, ranging from 54.515W when idle all the way up to 349.623W peak power draw under 100% load.
Surprisingly, this did not directly translate into the chip overheating, and its temperatures ranged from 41℃ to 75℃ at its peak with a 360mm AIO cooler.
As you can see above, the real strength of this chip is in its multi-core performance. It’s general system performance is decent and it’s a pretty responsive chip, but you don’t buy a 64-core Threadripper to try and max out your single-core clock speed for better FPS in games, you use it to chew through asynchronous workflows as fast as possible. The Threadripper 9980X is all about throughput, and in this regard, it’s in a class all its own.
Normally, I take the geomean all of the different performance scores to arrive at a final score that accounts for some tests having very large numbers as their results compared to other tests (Cinebench R23 and R24’s single and multi-core scores being a prime example).
However, when I do that, in the case of the 9980X, I all but erase the dominating results that make this chip what it is in the one workflow category it is designed to excel at.
As such, I’ve done something different and included both the aggregate geometric mean of all the chips’ scores as well as a straight average. This allows you to appreciate how much the multi-core performance of the 9980X skews the results when the scores are averaged normally.
The 9980X is in an effective geometric tie with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and only a little bit ahead of the rest of the processors I tested in the end. But give the 9980X the proper weight of its multi-core performance with a straight average, and the 9980X runs away with it, beating out the 9970X by about 30% and the Intel Core Ultra 9 and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D by about 87%.
Taking all of those scores and looking at them in terms of performance-for-price, however, and the 9980X does not fair very well, coming in dead last in terms of value for your money. At least at first glance.
Given how this processor is designed for a very specific (and often lucrative) kind of work, I don’t really think that the standard value metric I’d use with other products is applicable.
Yes, this chip is expensive, but if you’re the kind of professional who would benefit from the 9980X’s multi-core prowess, you’re likely to make that money back fairly quickly just from speeding up your workflow and this chip will pay for itself in very short order.
Should you buy the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X?
|
Value |
This chip is very expensive, but for those who are seriously looking to buy it, money probably isn’t the biggest concern here. |
3 / 5 |
|
Specs & features |
The 9980X has some impressive workstation-friendly specs, like a huge capacity for PCIe 5.0 I/O and faster 6400MT/s DDR5 ECC memory. The only shame is that it’s base clock speeds aren’t higher. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
While there are some areas of weakness in terms of the 9980X’s performance, this chip is built around one thing: chewing through multi-core workflows, and in that, it’s a spectacular success. |
5 / 5 |
|
Final Score |
The 9980X is a very particular chip that is not going to be great for everybody, but if you’re the type of person who needs this kind of chip for work, only the high-end Threadripper Pro 9000-series chips can best the 9980X. |
4.17 / 5 |
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How I tested the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X
- I spent about two weeks testing the Threadripper 9980X
- I used it for content creation, gaming, and intensive office productivity
- I put the chip through my standard suite of CPU benchmark tests
I used the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X for about two weeks in my day-to-day work PC, using it for content creation for work, CPU experimentation and stress testing, and general productivity.
I didn’t spend a whole lot of time gaming with this chip, as it definitely isn’t its intended use case, and it was obvious early on that this wasn’t a great gaming chip.
I used my standard CPU testing suite to stress the 9980X under load, including running custom scripts to maintain the highest CPU utilization possible for hours at a time to stress the chip’s multi-core performance. For benchmarks, I focused most of my attention on benchmarks like V-Ray 6, Handbrake 1.9, Cinebench R23 and R24, as well as PugetBench for Creators Adobe Premiere.
I’ve tested dozens of processors for hundreds of hours over my time here at TechRadar, so I know my way around a processor and a testbench to push a chip to its limits to evaluate its quality and value, and I bring that expertise to bear with every review I do.
- First reviewed August 2025
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