In a nutshell: At the end of last week, an AMD report describing the features and specifications of the upcoming 5000-series Threadripper Pro CPUs was leaked. It said that all v models would have dual-socket functionality. Shortly afterwards, two Threadrippers appeared in the PassMark database having completed the benchmark in dual-socket mode - but they're not from the 5000-serial.

Instead, they were two of the seventeen-calendar month-erstwhile flagship of the 3000-series: the 3995WX. In theory, considering the CPU shares its hardware with the dual-socket-capable Epyc 77x2-series, the 3995WX has simply ever been prevented from engaging in a dual-socket mode past software limitations.

Working in tandem, the two CPUs achieved a score of 123,631 points; 35% more than the median outcome of a unmarried 3995WX, and the highest score of any ii-CPU pairing in the database.

If the result is genuine, which it seems to be, then in that location's only one likely culprit: AMD themselves. It's only too unlikely that another party could modify the 2 CPUs, which cost some $8,800 each, and the requisite motherboard, successfully.

As for why AMD would be experimenting with their onetime CPUs, our all-time guess is that the creation of the first dual-socket sWRX8 motherboards for the 5000-series has raised some questions almost their backward compatibility. A microcode update could conceivably enable dual-socket functionality in 3000-series CPUs, though AMD doesn't accept much of an incentive to create 1.

Credit: Onur Binay

At a minimum, though, AMD does accept an incentive to enable dual-socket functionality on the 5000-series. In the past, doing then would've cannibalized the Epyc serial; it's one of the main features that differentiate the 2 product lines. Merely, as of 2022, the Epyc series will be an unabridged "generation" ahead of Threadripper and use a newer architecture at a minimum, if not a newer node as well.

Most of the available information well-nigh the 5000-series comes from the aforementioned report, which was acquired by Igor's Lab. Its contents haven't been verified beyond a few lucifer-ups with other leaks, but Igor's Lab is a trustworthy source. That said, sometimes specifications are changed in the lead-upwards to the processors' declaration.

Possible Threadripper Pro 5000-series Specifications

5995WX 5975WX 5965WX 5955WX 5945WX
Cores / Threads 64 / 128 32 / 64 24 / 48 16 / 32 12 / 24
Single-Core Heave Clock 4.55 GHz
All-Core Boost Clock 2.70 GHz three.threescore GHz iii.80 GHz 4.00 GHz iv.ten GHz
Base Clock 2.25 GHz 2.lxx GHz 2.80 GHz ii.ninety GHz two.94 GHz
L3 Enshroud 256 MB 128 MB 64 MB
L2 Cache 32 KB 16 KB 12 KB 8 KB half dozen KB
TDP at Boost Clock 280 Westward
TDP at Base Clock 229 W 190 W 171 W 152 Due west 138 West

There'southward at present only Pro (with a "West") versions of the processors, according to Igor'due south Lab. This year, in that location are five, up from 4; the addition was of the 24-core model.

On the whole, the specifications of these processors aren't too different from their predecessors. Their all-core clock speeds are a couple of hundred megahertz higher or lower in some cases, simply broadly similar. Only their single-cadre clock speed is a consistent upgrade of 250-350 MHz.

Like the Ryzen 5000-series, the biggest upgrade is under the hood: the Zen iii architecture. In our testing, it could provide an IPC operation uplift of 10-20% in diverse applications. It might provide an fifty-fifty larger uplift on higher-core count models that benefit from its impressive inter-core and cache latency, vastly improved over the Zen 2 architecture of the 3000-series.

Only it's more likely to be the dual-socket functionality driving the sales, should information technology eventuate. It would be interesting to see what 128 unlocked cores can practice.