See CG benchmarks for AMD’s Threadripper 9980X and 9970X
The first AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs are about to begin shipping. Jason Lewis, CG Channel’s hardware expert, sets out his early benchmark test results for the Threadripper 9980X and 9970X in CG apps including 3ds Max, Blender, Houdini, Maya and Unreal Engine.
AMD’s new Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs are due to begin shipping tomorrow.
Based on AMD’s current Zen 5 CPU architecture, the new high-end desktop (HEDT) processors are aimed at rendering, 3D content creation, video editing and AI processing.
To mark the launch, I want to share the results of some early benchmark testing I have done with the two top-of-the-range processors, the Ryzen Threadripper 9980X and 9970X, to assess how they perform in real-world production tasks in a range of popular CG applications.
Based on limited early tests: look out for a full review later in the year
First up, a disclaimer: this is just an early look at the new CPUs, based on the limited time I have had with them, and using a small sample of my normal suite of benchmarking tools. I hope to release an in-depth review later this year, once I have spent more time digging into them.
Having said that, my early tests yielded some very positive results, which I will get to shortly.
Key specifications
If you’re a regular CG Channel reader, you will know that I have tested several Threadripper CPUs over the years, including the flagship processors from the first three generations: the Threadripper 1950X, Threadripper 2990WX and Threadripper 3990X.
Although I skipped over the next two generations – the Threadripper Pro 5000 WX-Series, and the Threadripper 7000 Series and Threadripper Pro 7000 WX-Series – I’m a big fan of this product line, so I was excited to see how the new Zen 5-based processors performed.
Let’s start with the CliffsNotes version of the specifications for the new processors. I will go into more detail in my in-depth review.
The Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs are basically a straight update from the 7000 Series, and before them, the 3000 Series (the generation in between was restricted to AMD’s Threadripper Pro processors), maintaining the same CPU core counts – 24, 32 and 64 – but updating to the newer Zen 5 architecture.
All of the Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs feature four-channel DDR5-6400 RDIMM memory, and slightly increased clock speeds compared to their Threadripper 7000 Series counterparts, with significant increases over the much older Threadripper 3000 Series CPUs.
The number of usable PCIe lanes has also increased to 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes for the current Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs, compared to 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes for the 7000 Series.
As I didn’t have a chance to test the Threadripper 7000 Series, in this first look, I will be comparing the two new CPUs to my older Threadripper 3990X system.
Below, you can see the key specifications of the Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs themselves, and of the two test systems used for benchmarking.
Testing process
You can read more about my standard testing procedure in my most recent group test. This time, I tested the CPUs using the following software:
Viewport performance
3ds Max 2026, Blender 4.4, Maya 2026
Rendering performance
Arnold for Maya 5.5.2, Blender 4.4 (Cycles renderer), Corona 12 for 3ds Max, Redshift 2025.6 for 3ds Max, V-Ray 7.1 for 3ds Max
Game engine performance
Unreal Engine 5.5 and 5.6
Other benchmarks
Houdini 20.5, Premiere Pro 2025 (25.3)
Synthetic benchmarks
3D Mark (Port Royal 1.3, Time Spy Extreme 1.2), Cinebench 2024, V-Ray 6 Benchmark
Benchmark scores and performance in CG software
As you can see, the new Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper 9980X and 9970X CPUs offer a significant performance upgrade over the older 3990X in every category. Even tests that are primarily driven by the GPU show massive performance boosts.
Comparing the two new CPUs to one another, in heavily threaded applications, the 9980X, with its 64 cores, wins out over the 9970X, with its 32 cores, but in lightly or single-threaded tasks, the 9970X’s higher base clock speed wins out.
File-saving performance
Another test I performed illustrates not only the performance of the Ryzen Threadripper 9980X and 9970X CPUs, but of the PCIe 5.0 interface.
Project files saved from DCC applications can be extremely large and cumbersome to work with, particularly on weaker hardware. The graphic above shows the time taken to save the Corona rendering benchmark scene – a massive 65GB 3ds Max file – to disk.
The newer Threadripper 9980X and 9970X CPUs, running in a PCIe 5.0-compatible TRX50 motherboard, offer significantly shorter save times than the Threadripper 3990X and the PCIe 4.0 TRX40 motherboard.
Power consumption
Performance is all very well, but what about running costs? The chart above shows the total power draw of the test systems from the wall outlet, measured using a Kill-A-Watt P3 meter.
Despite their higher clock speeds, and higher TDPs, the Ryzen Threadripper 9980X and 9970X test system consumes measurably less power than the older Threadripper 3990X system.
Since both use a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, and have similar RAM and storage loadouts, we can infer that the reduced power consumption is primarily due to the newer TRX50 motherboard, and the processors themselves.
Price
Above, you can see AMD’s recommended prices for the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs.
I will explore pricing in more detail in my full review. All I will say for now is that these CPUs sit at the top of the consumer CPU food chain, and that if you want the best, you have to pay for it.
Conclusions
So what can we take away from these early test results? Well, I can say with confidence that these are the fastest, most powerful CPUs I have ever used, and some of the fastest consumer CPUs available, outside of AMD’s new Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series, which are also being released this month.
Paired with the TRX50 motherboard and its 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and support for 1TB of RAM, the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series CPUs combine ultimate performance with maximum versatility, and I look forward to testing them further in a more in-depth review.
Find specifications for the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 CPUs on AMD’s website
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