AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 9980X and 9970X puts workstation power in a class of its own

AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper chips have always been about going big or going home, and the new 9000 series doesn’t try to hide it. Built on Zen 5 – the same engine behind the mainstream Ryzen 9000 CPUs – these processors pack up to 64 cores and can process 128 concurrent threads, which is really quite absurd on its own. What really jumps out, though, is the 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes they throw at you, which is perfect if you’re the type who thinks a proper workstation needs half a dozen GPUs humming away for AI inferencing or heavy simulation tasks.

As before, AMD has split the Threadripper family into two. There’s the regular HEDT (high-end desktop) range – the 9960X, 9970X, and the flagship 9980X – and then there’s the Pro series, which pushes things even further with up to 96 cores. That top-end 9995WX chip will set you back around US$11,699, and yes, it comes with 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes and bigger memory configurations, but only if you’ve got the right motherboard and budget to match. It’s really not the kind of build you’ll make for gaming or doing spreadsheets.

That doesn’t mean the standard Threadrippers are cheap (in the consumer sense, anyway) either. The 9980X alone is priced at US$4,999, which is about what some people spend on their whole gaming rig. AMD sent me the 9970X and 9980X to put through their paces, and at these prices, you’d expect nothing short of workstation bliss – so the real test is whether they actually deliver. Let’s find out.

New components, new parts

If you’re eyeing a Threadripper 9000 series build, it’s not going to be a straightforward, simple upgrade. You’ll be signing up for a new motherboard, new RAM, and a cooling setup beefy enough to keep the whole thing cool. The 9970X and 9980X simply won’t slot into an AMD AM5 socket. At the minimum, you’ll need a board with AMD’s 4844-pin sTR5 socket – either the WRX90, which is made purely for the Pro series, or the TRX50, which works with both standard and Pro processors. The trade-off between these two is straightforward: WRX90 motherboards unlock all 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes and eight memory channels, while TRX50 ones trim that down to 80 lanes and four channels. For most people running the standard Threadrippers (or reviewers like me trying them out), the TRX50 is the more sensible – and far less punishing on the wallet – choice.

Like the ASUS Pro WS TRX50-Sage WiFi below.

AMD also sent over G.Skill’s T5 Neo 128GB (32GB x 4) RAM because Threadripper does not support the standard DDR5 used on our mainstream PCs. These T5 Neo modules feature the AMD Expo memory overclock profile and support ECC.

For cooling, I’m using the Silverstone XE360-TR5 AIO cooler – where its flat profile looks absolutely stunning even without the by-now common LCD screen or RGB that we’ve become so accustomed to.

It’s worth pointing out up front that I didn’t have access to AMD’s previous-generation Threadripper 7000 series or Intel’s equivalent workstation-class CPUs, so direct comparisons against those are missing here. What I do have are results against AMD’s current consumer flagship, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, and Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K – both of which give a good sense of how far ahead Threadripper really stretches.

Benchmarks and performance

On the non-gaming side, the results are exactly what you’d expect from these oversized CPUs. Cinebench R24 makes it obvious: the 9980X scores 6,156 in multi-threaded workloads, while the 9970X hits 4,011. That’s in another league compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D (2,180) and Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K (2,296). But once you switch over to single-threaded performance, the picture changes completely. Both Threadrippers hover around 122, while the mainstream processors from AMD and Intel creep slightly higher at around 132. It’s a reminder that having all the cores in the world won’t make everyday single-threaded tasks fly any faster.

Blender reinforces the same point. The 9980X churns through renders with ease, hitting 864 in the Monster test, 621 in Junkshop, and 429 in Classroom. The 9970X holds its own with 499, 358, and 245 respectively. By comparison, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K are left trailing closer to the 250 mark on Monster, and well below 200 on Junkshop. This is the kind of scaling that matters for people who actually need Threadrippers.

Photoshop, though, tells a more nuanced story. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D actually takes the lead here with a PugetBench score of 10,880, ahead of both Threadrippers (9,782 on the 9970X and 9,102 on the 9980X). Intel’s 285K lags further behind at 7,629. Creative workloads don’t always benefit from brute-force parallelism; in fact, cache and clock speeds play a bigger role here, which is why AMD’s consumer chip edges ahead.

For gaming, I threw Cyberpunk 2077 at all four CPUs. At 1080p, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D flexes its 3D V-Cache muscle with a massive 162fps average. The Threadripper 9970X and 9980X sit lower at 124 and 118fps respectively, while the Core Ultra 9 285K manages 132fps. Once you step up to 1440p and 4K, though, the results flatten out across the board because at higher resolutions, it’s the GPU doing all the heavy graphics lifting – not the processor.

So yes, the Threadrippers can game but it’s hardly the point. The 9950X3D remains the obvious choice if your goal is gaming performance, while these workstation-centric processors are for workloads where gaming is an afterthought to all the compute power they bring.

Conclusion – Intel has no answer to AMD’s desktop CPU dominance

At the end of it all, the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series is going to be wildly excessive for most people, yet absolutely essential for the few who can really make use of it. The raw multi-threaded performance is staggering, and in workflows like Blender or complex simulations, the difference is immediate and tangible. You don’t need to stare too hard at our benchmark results to realise just how far ahead the 9980X and 9970X are compared to even the fastest consumer CPUs. For anyone working in rendering, data modelling, or anything that scales neatly with threads, these chips aren’t just faster – they save you time, and by extension, money.

But it’s not just about the cores. Where Threadripper makes its case even stronger is with platform bandwidth. With up to 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes on the standard models (and double that on the Pro), you’re suddenly looking at a system that can comfortably host multiple GPUs, ultra-fast storage arrays, or specialist PCIe cards without compromise. This is why Threadripper has such a natural fit with AI developers, researchers, or even small studios who want to build GPU-loaded machines without jumping to full-blown server platforms. For that niche, the ability to throw four or more graphics cards into a rig and still have modern PCIe 5.0 lanes to spare is worth as much as the CPU cores themselves.

It’s also worth noting again that I wasn’t able to test these new Threadrippers against their most obvious rivals – Intel’s workstation-class Xeon processors or even AMD’s own last-generation Threadripper 7000 series – simply because I didn’t have access to them. It’s a pity, because those head-to-heads would give a clearer sense of just how much progress AMD has made gen-over-gen, and how they stack against Intel’s alternatives. What I can say is that, against AMD’s current consumer flagship and Intel’s latest Core Ultra, the Threadripper 9000s sit in a league of their own.

That said, it’s important to be realistic. A lot of workloads – including popular creative apps like Photoshop – won’t scale with this kind of silicon, and in those cases you’re better off sticking with a Ryzen 9 or even Intel’s latest Core Ultra. The single-thread performance between all four CPUs I tested is essentially a wash, and in gaming, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D’s 3D V-Cache advantage makes it the better choice by a mile. If you’re chasing frames or light creative workloads, spending upwards of US$5,000 on a CPU simply doesn’t make sense.

Where Threadripper justifies itself is in the kind of workstations where compromise isn’t an option. The 9970X feels like the more balanced pick, offering nearly all of the multi-threaded grunt at a lower entry price than the flagship 9980X, but both deliver a platform that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else. It’s not a CPU you buy for bragging rights (and I know some of you are going to do just that), and it’s not one you buy to shave a second off your game loading times. It’s a tool – a very expensive, very specialised tool – for those who can actually harness what it offers.

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series are now available for purchase. Techyard is retailing the 9980X for S$8,999, 9970X for S$4,999 and the 9960X for S$3,199.