If Ryzen put the fear into Intel earlier this year, then Threadripper should be terrifying it. In tests from a number of different publications, Threadripper has blown the lid off of what we expect from high-end, multicore performance, in a package that's expansive, versatile and most importantly, a lot cheaper than Intel's somewhat comparable offerings.
Threadripper is, for all intents and purposes, a pair of Ryzen cores paired up under one roof, but that's nothing to be ashamed of as it delivers unparalleled performance. While it still falls a little way behind Intel chips in gaming and single-threaded applications, in settings where it can bring its higher number of cores and threads to bear, Threadripper tears through Intel's highest of high-end processors.
In Hexus' handbrake tests, it smashes Intel's ungodly expensive i9-7900X by almost 10 frames per second. DigitalTrends' benchmarks show similar results, with GeekBench multicore and multithread tests being easily dominated by high-end Threadripper chips.
Another benchmark which seems to really favor Threadripper is memory testing. It scores more than 30 percent higher than Intel's closest rival in Hexus bandwidth benchmarks. That's an enormous gain and could make Threadripper the CPU of choice for a number of professional scenarios.
Anandtech's scores back up these results even further, showing that once again, if you can leverage multiple cores and threads, AMD's Threadripper will come out way in front.
None of this is to say that Threadripper should be the choice for all consumers. It is a range with $800+ CPUs after all, but that if you want the best of the best, it's easily a more favorable choice than Intel's far more expensive processors at that level.