TR 2950x vs 3960x for VM Gaming

I’m planning my next major build and am wondering what option I should save for.
My primary concern is price to performance between these two chips. I know the 3960x is the better option in term’s of single-quad thread performance and in the case of “Future Proofing” my rig. However, the price is quite steep and on top of the CPU price, the Motherboard price for the platform is quite hefty as well.

Basically I’m wondering since this build will be for Dev Work, Gaming in a Windows VM and also having a few other VM’s for work as well, is it worth splurging on the 3960x or settling for the 2950x? Or just quite possibly waiting to see if the price drops with the 4000 series launch?

I’m using a workstation built around an Asus Motherboard and the 2950x CPU with 64GB of RAM and a Radeon VII

It does what I need it to do including VM’s but I don’t really game on it as I have a separate dedicated gaming rig for that.

I should try installing another Windows 10 VM just to mess around with the gaming aspect.

I wish I could tell you that I’ve played a few games on it but I have not done so yet.

However all the VM work I’ve done on this machine is just fine, both perosnal and actual work VM use.

I wouldn’t choose either for “gaming”. You don’t need a high core count just to do virtualization, since most virtual machines sit idle nearly all the time, sharing cores really won’t hurt.

The higher clock of lower count CPUs will benefit your gaming virtual or not.

I suppose if you have the money to spend on a 3960x, that’s a better choice than the 2950, but a 3900x(t) wouldn’t be bad either.

I agree, I’m not going with this build solely for gaming, it’s a workstation/Gaming VM. I was thinking to get the performance I need in a gaming VM, then I need the PCIe lanes that Threadripper offer. I currently have a 3700x on the Asus Prime X570-p platform and gaming on the VM with a 1080 is bottle necked by the fact that the x570-p only has 2 PCIe x16 with the second PCIe x16 running at 4x. I’m looking going the x570-Prime and split the 16 lanes between the first two x16 slots. That would be cheaper, but I’m looking at expanding this system to include other VM’s as well. This post was more of a brainstorming exercise.

Well Threadripper does give you and the platform a ton more PCIe lanes to work with.

That is why I got it for my Workstation build, going to add some more NVMe storage to it as well.

Of course there is also a x299 with a core i9 to consider for those kind of workloads.
However just like Threadripper X399, it´s pretty much a eol platform at this point in time.
Still the core i9´s will likely give you some better gaming performance then a 2950X.
However since you already mentioned youself, the main purpose of the system isn´t really gaming.
So it’s less of concern i guess, but Threaripper 2000 series,
ain´t the best performers when it comes to gaming in general.
Although this counts for pretty much for every HEDT platform.

If you could afford a 3960X, then that would be my recommendation at this point in time.
Because newer motherboards etc.
Otherwise the above options would also work.
if you don’t mind not being on the latest and greatest,
and don´t mind a slight compromise on gaming performance.
Then you could save yourself some money with a 2950X x399 setup.
Also It´s still not really clear what the future of trx40 will be either at this point in time.

Another option to consider, since you already have a 3700X setup.
Just use that as your main gaming box.
And just build a sepperate workstation for everything else.

I honestly don’t think X299 will offer anything my AM4 and 3700X will offer other then a slight bump in gaming. My 3700x does a great job on that front, but I’m really just content the 3700x in the workstation role. That’s where Threadripper comes in.

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