Early reviews show Threadripper tearing up the competition

AMD's Ryzen 3, 5, and 7 chips have already shown themselves to be no slouches so far, but if the company's first Ryzen processors were a jab at Intel, Threadripper is the cross. With nine different SKUs ranging from 10 to 16 cores, 32 MB L3 cache, and 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, Threadripper is a beast on paper. And as TechRadar's benchmarks from an early review unit (an Alienware Area 51 with a 16-core Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and GTX 1080Ti) show, it's also a dominant performer in the real world.

Though the base and boost clocks of 3.4 GHz and 4 GHz respectively match closely with Intel's Core i7-6950X, it's the sheer number of cores and threads that allow Threadripper to crush heavy calculations. Calling it "the most powerful processor we've ever tested", TechRadar teased a few benchmark results:

• Cinebench CPU: 162/2994 (single/multi)
• 3DMark Fire Strike: 21,661
• 3DMark Sky Diver: 48,500
• Rise of the Tomb Raider: 91/58/27 (1080p Ultra, 1440p Ultra, 4K Ultra)

A single-core Cinebench CPU score of 162 places the 1950X alongside unlocked enthusiast Core-i7 chips from Intel, but the multi-core score of 2994 puts the 1950X a good 400 points above the fastest single-CPU score in the Cinebench database. The leaderboards show Threadripper equaling a 2-CPU, 12/24 (core/thread) Xeon E5-2696 v2. To be clear, the 1950X matches up against not one, but two server-class E5-2696 v2 Xeon CPUs in multi-core performance.

More information about Ryzen Threadripper should be available once the embargo lifts in a few days.