Armari AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X versus Intel Core i9 7980XE – Shootout!

Rating: 9.0.

AMD really threw the cat among the pigeons with the release of Ryzen 7, followed soon after by Threadripper. This in turn triggered a spate of activity from Intel, with the early release of Coffee Lake and Core i9. We have focused primarily on the enthusiast market for these releases so far, but they also have enormous potential in the professional workstation market. The new processors have also been accompanied by recent professional graphics releases from AMD and NVIDIA. But which is best – an all-AMD workstation, or an Intel/NVIDIA combination? We were given the chance to find out when leading UK workstation vendor Armari offered to send us the best of both worlds – two identical workstations, except one was AMD-AMD, and the other Intel-NVIDIA.

Both workstations are from Armari's Magnetar S range, so benefit from the custom workstation chassis designed by Armari itself specifically for professional content creation activities. However, whilst one came equipped with AMD's top-of-the-range Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics, the other sported the Intel Core i9 7980XE and NVIDIA GeForce Titan Xp graphics. Both processors were overclocked to a level that could be guaranteed as stable through the rigours of high-end production work.

In this article, we put both systems through an identical suite of tests that assess their abilities for 3D modelling, 3D rendering, and video encoding. We have also assessed the overall system power consumption of both systems when under maximum load.

There's quite a difference in cost, too. AMD has been particularly aggressive with its pricing, so it should be no surprise that the AMD-AMD Magnetar is considerably cheaper than the Intel-NVIDIA one. But does that mean the latter is not worth the extra money? Let's find out which is the best value, and which the best overall for professional work.

Armari Magnetar S16T-RW850G2 Specifications:

• AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X @4GHz
• Armari SPX-A57LX Water Cooling
• 64GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 SDRAM @ 2,933MHz
• Asrock X399 Taichi Motherboard
• 16GB HBM AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Graphics
• 512GB Samsung SM961 M.2 NVMe PCI Express SSD
• 4TB Western Digital Gold Datacenter 7,200rpm SATA HDD
• LiteOn Slimline SATA DVD-RW
• 1000W Gold Efficiency PSU
• Armari Magnetar S-Series Chassis
• Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
• 3 Years Warranty (1st Year On-Site, 2nd and 3rd Years RTB Parts and Labour)

Price: £4,554.00 inc VAT (Buy from Armari HERE)

Armari Magnetar S18X-RD850G2 Specifications:

• Intel Core i9 7980XE @3.8GHz
• Armari SPX-A57LX Water Cooling
• 64GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 SDRAM @ 3,600MHz
• ASUS PRIME X299-A Motherboard
• 12GB GDDR5X NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Xp Graphics
• 480GB Kingston KC1000 M.2 NVMe PCI Express SSD
• 4TB Western Digital Gold Datacenter 7,200rpm SATA HDD
• LiteOn Slimline SATA DVD-RW
• 1000W Gold Efficiency PSU
• Armari Magnetar S-Series Chassis
• Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
• 3 Years Warranty (1st Year On-Site, 2nd and 3rd Years RTB Parts and Labour)

Price: £5,754.00 inc VAT (Buy from Armari HERE)

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