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AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X review: a multi-core monster
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AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X: Two-minute review
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is an HEDT workstation processor built for an extremely specific — and extremely demanding — audience.
Nothing about this chip is ‘mainstream’, including the fact that just about every enthusiast consumer processor available right now will mostly outperform this chip in most workloads that 95% of users will run on their computers, and they will do so at a minuscule fraction of the Threadripper 9980X’s price.
There is part of me that wants to slag this processor as overpowered, overengineered, and overpriced—except I can’t. With 64 full-fat performance cores, 128 threads, a base clock of 3.2GHz, and the ability to push far beyond that under controlled thermal conditions, this chip feels like its sole purpose is to blow through Cinebench R23’s multi-core benchmark and shame every other chip that tries to do the same.
I would say that this is a ridiculous waste of time, energy, and resources, but the thing about Cinebench R23, as well as all the other multi-core benchmarks that this chip leaves defeated in its wake, is that there are professionals out there who need exactly this kind of power from a processor, and no other consideration really matters.
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 consumer market to their knees. This is the kind of chip you slap into a workstation because you need to render the 12-second Gargantua approach sequence from Interstellar in a matter of days rather than weeks, and not because you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest framerate possible. For the former, it’s an outstanding, special-use processor. Not at all for the latter.
Then there’s the matter of platform requirements. You’ll need a TRX50 motherboard, which isn’t just more expensive—it’s physically larger, requires more robust power delivery, and usually comes loaded with workstation-focused features that add to the price.
You’ll also need to spend a lot of money on cooling, because under full multi-core load, the 9980X can pull upwards of 350W from the socket, so a 360mm AIO cooler is the absolute rock-bottom, bare minimum cooling solution you can use to keep this chip from throttling, and there aren’t many that fit this chip out there.
And believe me, having sat next to the open-air test bench running high-intensity multi-threaded workloads on the 9980X, this thing pumps out an enormous amount of heat, so plan your workstation environment accordingly.
All that said, if you’re the kind of user who spends whole workdays in Premiere Pro, Houdini, or TensorFlow, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is a dream, but you do have to really ask yourself if you need this much focused power for your particular situation.
I love multi-threaded programming and working on asynchronous processes when developing my own software tools, but in no universe would I ever be able to fully utilize all 64 cores on this processor unless I was actively trying to, and I don’t work with anything nearly that complex.
If your workflow is even moderately mixed, or gaming is even a quarter of your use case, this chip delivers diminishing returns that will make you regret investing so much into it, especially when the significantly cheaper Threadripper 9970X is ideal for those situations at half the cost.
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 read over the installation instructions before you attempt to install this processor, since slacking on proper installation can create uneven contact with the socket or even damaged pins on the TRX50 motherboard. You’ve spent a lot of money on this chip, so definitely make sure you don’t wreck the whole thing on the installation step.
For testing the chip, I used the ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE motherboard together with an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU, 128GB (4 x 32GB) G.Skill G5 Series DDR5-6400 ECC memory, along with a Crucial T705 PCIe 5.0 SSD as my primary system drive. Cooling was handled by a Silverstone XE360-TR5 AIO cooler, and power was supplied by a Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W Platinum PSU, and a fresh install of Windows 11.
This configuration is more or less what an enthusiast HEDT rig or professional Windows workstation would look like, and it definitely outclasses what you’ll find in all but the most tricked-out gaming PC, so it’s a solid representative system for carrying out 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 Ultra 9 285K. This is especially true when it comes to single-core performance and gaming, where the Threadripper 9980X just isn’t competitive at all with any of the consumer-grade enthusiast processors I tested.
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.
In terms of responsiveness, it’s well ahead of the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 chips, as well as Intel’s flagship desktop processor, coming in second only 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% better performance than the 9970X, and that’s taking the geomean of all the creative benchmark results, something that really undersells how dominating the 9980X’s Blender Benchmark and V-Ray 6 CPU performance is (about 71% and 65% better than the 9970X). If I just averaged all the scores to give some of these tests more weight, the 9980X comes in about 50% better than the 9970X across creative workloads, with every other 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 like the Nvidia RTX 5090 and crank up the settings so that the frame rate bottleneck moves 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 |
Buy the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X if…
Don’t buy it if…
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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
