AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked
by Johan De Gelas on August 7, 2019 7:00 PM ESTMulti-core SPEC CPU2006
For the record, we do not believe that the SPEC CPU "Rate" metric has much value for estimating server CPU performance. Most applications do not run lots of completely separate processes in parallel; there is at least some interaction between the threads. But since the benchmark below caused so much discussion, we wanted to satisfy the curiosity of our readers.
| 2P SPEC CPU2006 Estimates | ||||||
| Subtest | Xeon 8176 |
EPYC 7601 |
EPYC 7742 |
EPYC 7742 |
Zen2 vs Zen1 |
EPYC 7742 Vs Xeon |
| Cores | 56C | 64C | 128C | |||
| Frequency | 2.8 G | 2.7G | 2.5-3.2G | 2.5-3.2G | ||
| GCC | 7.4 | 7.4 | 7.4 | 8.3 | 7.4 | 7.4 |
| 400.perlbench | 1980 | 2020 | 4680 | 4820 | +132% | +136% |
| 401.bzip2 | 1120 | 1280 | 3220 | 3250 | +152% | +188% |
| 403.gcc | 1300 | 1400 | 3540 | 3540 | +153% | +172% |
| 429.mcf | 927 | 837 | 1540 | 1540 | +84% | +66% |
| 445.gobmk | 1500 | 1780 | 4160 | 4170 | +134% | +177% |
| 456.hmmer | 1580 | 1700 | 3320 | 6480 | +95% | +110% |
| 458.sjeng | 1570 | 1820 | 3860 | 3900 | +112% | +146% |
| 462.libquantum | 870 | 1060 | 1180 | 1180 | +11% | +36% |
| 464.h264ref | 2670 | 2680 | 6400 | 6400 | +139% | +140% |
| 471.omnetpp | 756 | 705 (*) | 1520 | 1510 | +116% | +101% |
| 473.astar | 976 | 1080 | 1550 | 1550 | +44% | +59% |
| 483.xalancbmk | 1310 | 1240 | 2870 | 2870 | +131% | +119% |
We repeat: the SPECint rate test is likely unrealistic. If you start up 112 to 256 instances, you create a massive bandwidth bottleneck, no synchronization is going on and there is a consistent CPU load of 100%, all of which is very unrealistic in most integer applications.
The SPECint rate estimate results emphasizes all the strengths of the new EPYC CPU: more cores, much higher bandwidth. And at the time it ignores one of smaller disadvantages: higher intercore latency. So this is really the ideal case for the EPYC processors.
Nevertheless, even if we take into account that AMD has an 45% memory bandwidth advantage and that Intel latest chip (8280) offers about 7 to 8% better performance, this is amazing. The SPECint rate numbers of the EPYC 7742 are - on average - simply twice as high as those of the best available socketed Intel Xeons.
Interestingly, we saw that most rate benchmarks ran at P1 clock or the highest p-state minus one. For example, this is what we saw when running libquantum:
While some benchmarks like h264ref were running at lower clocks.
The current server does not allow us to do accurate power measuring but if the AMD EPYC 7742 can stay within the 225W TDP while running integer workloads at all cores at 3.2 GHz, that would be pretty amazing. Long story short: the new EPYC 7742 seems to be able to sustain higher clocks than comparable Intel models while running integer workloads on all cores.
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Cooe - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
Hexus got around ≈31,000 iirc.Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
Funny enough, from what I've heard from other people who have tested it, it actually doesn't run all that well with dual EPYCs. Too many cores that are too fast, to the point that initialization times are starting to hold back performance.Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
I got a message from the Cinebench team at one point. They don't spawn/kill/respawn for each little segment: it's kept alive and just fed more data. CB20 is also designed to scale, given that CB15 freaked out above 32 cores or soprisonerX - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
Where is our resident Intel shill? Selling his INTC stock in a panic perhaps?abufrejoval - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
comiserating with the ARM server guysLord of the Bored - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
Not gonna lie, I scrolled straight to the comments to see the Intel fanboy spinning this. Instead I got a wall of... Call of Duty references, I think?PeachNCream - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
The fact that AMD released a product that breaks even HStewart's ability to defend shill for Intel should say something pretty epic about Epyc.Lord of the Bored - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link
You ain't lyin' there. Seems the name was chosen well.Korguz - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link
i bet, he would STILL but the intel cpu too. even though it costs more, slower and probably uses more power.Samus - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
I was just thinking if Trump doesn't crash the market with his shenanigans then AMD could be an incredibly good buy in the next few months. The first time they've been a good buy in awhile.Although a lot of my daytrader friends have always claimed AMD was a good short-term buy, which is partially true, but if they can keep momentum and Intel doesn't try strongarming them out of OEMs (you know, like they used too...)