According to plenty of reviews from the usual suspects treated to special Threadripper samples, the cherry-picked Ryzen CPU dies, multi-die solution, a high number of cores with Simultaneous MultiThreading (SMT) and plenty of PCIe lanes to go around, AMD has finally managed to put the ball in Intel’s court. This is probably the main reason why we will see Intel launching its new 18-core/16-thread Core i9-7980XE in September.

In case you somehow managed to miss it, Ryzen Threadripper, AMD’s HEDT CPUs, are based on the same Zen CPU micro architecture as the earlier launched Ryzen consumer CPUs as well as uses the same 4094-pin TR4 socket as well as the same design as the AMD’s EPYC server CPUs.  In order to accommodate these new CPUs, AMD launched its new X399 platform, which gives the Threadripper CPU access to quad-channel memory support as well as a total of 60 PCIe lanes.

AMD has currently launched two Ryzen Threadripper SKUs, the TR 1950X, a 16-core/32-thread SKU with 3.4GHz base and 4.0GHz Turbo clock, 32MB of L3 cache, 180W TDP and a US $999 price tag and the TR 1920X, a 12-core/24-thread SKU with the same 32MB of L3 cache, same 180W TDP, 3.5GHz base and 4.0GHz Turbo clock and a price of US $799.

AMD also announced the TR 1900X, which is an 8-core/16-thread SKU, that could end up with a lower TDP, 16MB of L3 cache and works at a 3.8GHz base and a 4.0GHz Turbo clock. An earlier leak also suggested that we might also see the TR 1920 at some point in time while the TR 1900X should be coming by the end of this month.

According to the results, Intel still holds the single-threaded crown with some of its CPUs, especially the 10-core Core i9-7900X, which has a similar price to the TR 1950X. While Intel might offer better single-threaded performance and a somewhat lower TDP, Threadripper takes a significant lead in any multi-threaded test, even with a lower clock. This makes it very interesting for content creators, software developers and other professionals that can use all those 16-cores.

The gaming performance is mediocre at best, at least for the price of the Threadripper CPU, mostly since most of the games simply can’t use all those cores. In order to somewhat remedy that problem, AMD is offering two “modes” for Threadripper, Creative Mode, which uses all cores and threads, and the Game Mode, which cuts-down the number of threads in half and focuses on memory and core-to-core latency, which helps in some games but not by much.

Intel will be returning to this market with its new Core i9 SKUs with 12- to 18-cores, 44 PCIe lanes and a hefty price ranging from US $1,199 for the 12-core SKU, up to staggering US $1,999 for the 18-core SKU. With these prices, AMD is cheaper if you look at the number of cores but it remains to be seen if Intel will catch up AMD in terms of multi-threaded performance.

While it might not completely beat Intel in this niche market, AMD has finally brought some competition to the market, which is more than welcome. This shows that AMD is finally getting things right so hopefully we will see more of this in future. You can check out some reviews via links below.