AMD's latest Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series arrives with a familiar formula: massive core counts, eye-watering specs, and price tags to match. Built on the Zen 5 microarchitecture, these chips pack up to 64 cores and 128 threads, along with 80 lanes of PCIe 5.0 connectivity.
As with previous generations, the lineup is split in two: a high-end desktop (HEDT) range, simply called Threadripper 9000, and a workstation-class series known as Threadripper Pro 9000WX.
Our focus here is on the HEDT chips – relatively more accessible in price, though still far from affordable in the mainstream sense. The 24-core 9960X starts at $1,500, followed by the 32-core 9970X at $2,500, and the flagship 64-core 9980X at $5,000. For this review, we're putting the 9970X and 9980X through their paces. The 9960X will have to sit this one out.
In contrast to the standard Threadripper 9000 series, the Pro 9000WX models extend core counts up to 96 and offer broader platform capabilities – but at nearly $12,000 for the chip alone, they cater to a different class of buyer. These models also unlock access to 128 PCIe lanes and expanded memory configurations, assuming you pair them with the right motherboard.
Rather than explore all six Pro models, which we are not testing today, we will briefly outline where those chips fit in before turning our attention to AMD's HEDT flagships.
Threadripper Overview
Launched in late 2023, the Threadripper 7000 series introduced AMD's 4844-pin sTR5 socket, rendering previous TRX40 and sWRX8 motherboards incompatible. Alongside those chips came two chipsets: WRX90, built exclusively for Pro models, and TRX50, which supports both standard and Pro CPUs – though with functional compromises for the latter.
The key distinction between desktop and workstation Threadripper CPUs remains in PCIe bandwidth and memory channel support. A Pro CPU on a WRX90 board unlocks 128 PCIe 5.0 lanes and eight memory channels. Use the same chip on a TRX50 board, and you're limited to 80 lanes and quad-channel memory.
Threadripper 9000 CPUs can handle up to 2 TB of RAM using eight channels and 256 GB RDIMMs on WRX90 boards, or up to 1 TB on TRX50 boards via four channels. Both platforms support DDR5-6400 in single- or dual-rank configurations – an upgrade from the DDR5-5200 ceiling of the 7000 series.
It is also important to note that Threadripper does not support standard desktop DDR5. These platforms require registered memory (RDIMM, LRDIMM, or 3DS RDIMM), which is incompatible with the unbuffered DIMMs used by mainstream AM5 platforms.
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