300+ Benchmarks With AMD Threadripper 3960X vs. Intel Core i9 10980XE

Complementing our launch-day Intel Core i9 10980XE and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X/3970X Linux benchmarks, here is much more data now that we've had the additional time for carrying out more tests... For your viewing pleasure this US holiday week are more than 330 benchmarks carried out on both the Core i9 10980XE and Threadripper 3960X in the same configuration while running Ubuntu Linux.

For getting a more diverse idea of where the Core i9 10980XE Cascade Lake X and Ryzen Threadripper 3960X trade blows, I fired up a much broader set of benchmarks for comparison on these HEDT systems. Yes, the Ryzen 9 3950X is priced more comparatively to the i9-10980XE, but I was never sent a review sample of that processor so am using the 3960X for now -- if I get my hands on said processor, I'll certainly have a similar comparison on that front.

Both the Threadripper 3960X and Core i9 10980XE were running with the same components besides the CPU/motherboard, which included 4 x 8GB GSKILL DDR4-3200 memory, Radeon RX 5700 XT, 240GB Corsair Force MP510 NVMe SSD, similar Noctua air cooling, and on the software side was Ubuntu 19.10. Unlike the launch-day benchmarks using the Linux 5.4 Git kernel, for this comparison I went with using the stock Linux 5.3 based kernel. These are some different hardware and software components compared to the launch article due to those other components being used in more ongoing Threadripper 3970X and other factors.

As always, the latest CPU microcode / BIOS and various security mitigations were all at their standard defaults for testing. All of these Intel and AMD Linux CPU benchmarks were carried out using the Phoronix Test Suite.