If Ryzen was a polite, if firm way of telling the world that AMD is back in the processor game, then Threadripper is a foul-mouthed, middle-finger-waving, kick-in-the-crotch "screw you" aimed squarely at the usurious heart of Intel. It's an olive branch to a part of the PC market stung by years of inflated prices, sluggish performance gains, and the feeling that, if you're not interested in low-power laptops, Intel isn't interested in you.

Where Intel charges $1,000/£1,000 for 10 cores and 20 threads in the form of the Core i9-7900X, AMD offers 16C/32T with Threadripper 1950X. Where Intel limits chipset features and PCIe lanes the further down the product stack you go—the latter being ever more important as storage moves away from the SATA interface—AMD offers quad-channel memory, eight DIMM slots, and 64 PCIe lanes even on the cheapest CPU for the platform.

The good

• Better performance than the equivalent Intel chip for the price
• Fully featured platform across all chips
• While liquid cooling is a must, Theadripper is easier to tame than Skylake-X
• Huge improvements in production tasks over mainstream CPUs
• Competitively priced

The bad

• Overclocking remains limited
• Needs a suitably robust cooling setup and power supply
• Lags behind Intel in overall IPC performance

The ugly

• That you're seriously considering spending $1,000/£1,000 on a CPU

Full review;
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/

 

I would take special look at the DAWBench results:
http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/08/14/first-look-at-the-amd-threadripper-1920x-1950x/
http://techreport.com/review/32390/...and-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-cpus-reviewed/14

 

Number of compressors, thats a big step up.


Kontakt based test;



Conclusion

I think this one is pretty straight forward if you need to be running at below a 256 ASIO buffer, although there are certainly some arguments for mastering guys who don’t need that sort of response.

Much like the Intel i9’s before it, however, the is a strong suggestion that you really do need to consider your cooling carefully here. The normal low noise high-end air coolers that I tend to favour for testing were largely overwhelmed once I placed these on the bench and once the heat started to climb the water cooler I was using had both fans screaming.

Older readers with long memories might have a clear recollection of the CPU wars that gave us P4’s, Prescott’s, Athlon FX’s and 64’s. We saw both of these firms in a CPU arms race that only really ended when the i7’s arrived with the X58 chipset. Over the years this took place we saw ever raising clock speeds, a rapid release schedule of CPU’s and constant gains, although at the cost of heat and ultimately noise levels. In the years since we’ve had refinement and a vast reduction of heat and noise, but little as far as performance advancements, at least over the last 5 or 6 generations.

We finally have some really great choices from both firms and depending on your exact needs and price points you’re working at the could be arguments in each direction. Personally, I wouldn’t consider server class chips to be ultimate solution in the studio from either firm currently, not unless you’re prepared to spend the sort of money that the tag “ultimate” tends to reflect, in which case you really won’t get anything better.

In this instance, if you’re doing a load of multimedia work alongside mastering for audio, this platform could fit your requirements well, but for writing and editing some music I’d be looking towards one of the other better value solutions unless this happens to fit your niche.

 

wow 999 bucks @ amazon for a 16 core, what a steal!
amazing for all who can make use of this power, and surely we do

 

Can it handle 4 instances of Serum???