Monstrous AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X tops the desktop CPU leaderboard

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X CPU is slated to arrive later this month and will be one of if not the fastest desktop processor on the market, according to the latest tests on PassMark. The 64-core, 128-thread CPU performed so well that it almost achieved the same multithread score as the recently released AMD Epyc 9575F server CPU.

Compared to the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X is three times faster, and it's twice as fast as the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. In fact, the new AMD desktop CPU beat 1,450 other chips to gain its new title. You’d think this would put the Threadripper 9980X on the fast track to our best gaming CPU list, but that’s where you might be mistaken. With high-tier performance comes a premium price tag and likely limited benefit to gamers.