Freshly leaked AMD Ryzen Threadripper benchmark curiously slower than before

AMD has already updated its lineup of Ryzen 3000 processors (CPUs), but we're all still waiting for new, 3rd-Gen Threadripper CPUs. Some benchmarks have already appeared, but a recently leaked Geekbench score seems to show the same chip new Threadripper chip we'd already seen but with far lower multi-core performance.

The new Geekbench score shows a chip, codenamed "AMD Sharkstooth," with 32 cores and 64 threads, which lines up well with Threadripper. But, where past benchmarks (2) had shown chips with 3.6GHz base clocks and astronomical multi-core performance scores, the new leak shows a 2.2GHz base clock and similarly reduced multi-core performance.

The previous two leaked benchmarks averaged 5,805 points in single-core performance and 94,058 points in multi-core performance. Both had scored in the same ballpark. But, the new CPU with its lower clock speeds managed just 5,523 in single-core performance and a still-solid – but dismal by comparison – 68,576 multi-core score.

• Check out the best processors
• This is our review of the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
• Learn how to overclock a CPU

Zen 2 and overclocking headroom

AMD's push to a 7nm (nanometer) process with Zen 2 has brought about substantial improvements for its Ryzen 3000-series of processors. But, we've seen that those new CPUs are limited in overclocking. While past CPUs could often be overclocked to increase their performance beyond factory settings, the new chips appear as more of a "what you see is what you get" scenario.

Despite that, there were some early, record-breaking overclocks of Ryzen CPUs, such as a Ryzen 9 3950X at 5GHz on all cores.

Unfortunately, this only helps raise more questions about the benchmarks we're seeing for the next Threadripper CPU. The previous generation Threadripper 2990WX had a 32-core, 64-thread configuration and base clock of 3.0GHz. A new version having that same configuration (albeit on a 7nm process now) but a lower clock speed would seem odd to many, but its worth noting that even the benchmarks of the lower-clocked model still leap well ahead of the 2990WX's 30,330 multi-core score in Geekbench (which may have been limited by compatibility issues with so many cores at the time).

Whether we're seeing a new CPU with lower base clocks than the previous generation and improved performance thanks to upgrades in efficiency, or seeing an odd duck out against the higher-clocked, higher-performance models is a matter of future leaks or an imminent release that will hopefully help sort this out.

• See the chip war: AMD vs Intel

Via Tom's Hardware