AMD Announces The Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX Series For What Should Be Great On Linux

It's been well over two years since AMD introduced the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series and subsequently introduced the Threadripper PRO 3000WX series as workstation-focused parts. Today AMD is introducing the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX Series as the first Zen 3 based Threadripper processors.

AMD today is announcing the Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series with users eager for many months now to see Zen 3 Threadrippers. Unfortunately, it seems to be rather a soft launch today - this article has the high level details while unfortunately AMD said they are not offering any review samples at this time and the pre-briefing was a pre-recorded video presentation. So, sadly, no word to share today on the Linux performance or any compatibility concerns, etc, for the non-Windows crowd.

The Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 Series tops out at 64 cores / 128 threads like the Threadripper 3000 series and similar to the AMD EPYC 7003 series up to 64c/128t. With the Threadripper 5000 series there is up to a 4.5GHz maximum boost frequency compared to topping out at 4.3GHz with the prior generation parts. The 5000 series still has 256MB of L3 cache but now as 8 core clusters with access to 32MB rather than 4-core clusters with 16MB access. On the PRO feature front, AMD Shadow Stack is now supported similar to Intel's Shadow Stack functionality.

The Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX is the flagship processor with 64 cores / 128 threads and a 4.5GHz boost with 2.7GHz base while having a 280 Watt base.

AMD was frequently talking up the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 series against the Intel Xeon W-3300 series as well as the Xeon Platinum 8280 (Cascade Lake, seemingly not the Xeon Platinum 8380 Ice Lake)... At least from their Windows numbers, the new Threadripper PRO processors look great and should be too under Linux assuming no compatibility issues or other early adoption bugs as sometimes we have seen in the past.

All of the provided Threadripper PRO 5000 series data was under Windows, but will be interesting to see the Linux performance if/when having access.

Workstations powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series should be announced soon. Lenovo on 21 March will be shipping the first Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series workstation. That's the quick overview of the Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series until being able to deliver our Linux-focused compatibility and performance testing.