AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX hits 6GHz overclocked across all 32 cores

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX

AMD has unleashed its Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX onto the world, and in the hands of one intrepid overclocker this mighty processor has been pushed to a new record with a boost to a hair’s breadth away from 6GHz across all of its 32 cores.

As expected, this was using liquid nitrogen cooling, and was achieved by an Indonesian overclocker, Ivan Cupa, who clocked the Ryzen CPU up to 5.955GHz; and again it’s worth repeating that this feat was achieved across every core (he used an MSI MEG X399 Creation motherboard, incidentally).

A week ago, we witnessed an overclock to 5.1GHz across all cores, but obviously this fresh effort (spotted by Wccftech.com) rather blows that away.

Even at 5.1GHz, the 2990WX still beat out Intel’s still unreleased 28-core CPU which was demoed at Computex (clocked at 5GHz) in Cinebench R15 (multi-core) by a score of 7,618 to 7,344.

Cinebench champ

Although the Threadripper 2990WX has been pushed much further in Cinebench R15 post-release, with another overclocker by the name of Sampson managing to achieve a score of 8,532, a staggering effort (with the CPU clocked up to 5.367GHz). That’s a new world record for Cinebench, as you might guess.

However, bear in mind that comparisons with Intel’s 28-core chip aren’t strictly fair at this point, considering that was a pre-release sample, and it was water-cooled (albeit with an industrial-grade solution) rather than using liquid nitrogen.

It’s equally worth remembering that Intel’s processor could cost many thousands of pounds/dollars – possibly even 10 grand – whereas the Threadripper 2990WX is priced at $1,799 (£1,639, AU$2,679), so the sort of performance you’re getting is pretty epic at this level.

All that said, most folks won’t need this sort of power or that many cores, but it’s still fascinating to see what can be done at the cutting-edge of processors these days, and how AMD is pushing the proverbial envelope when it comes to the price/performance ratio relative to Intel. All good news for the consumer in the end, we hope.

For the detailed lowdown on AMD’s beefy new Threadripper, head on over to our full review.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).