AMD 3rd Gen EPYC Milan Review: A Peak vs Per Core Performance Balance
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Andrei Frumusanu on March 15, 2021 11:00 AM ESTDisclaimer June 25th: The benchmark figures in this review have been superseded by our second follow-up Milan review article, where we observe improved performance figures on a production platform compared to AMD’s reference system in this piece.
SPEC - Single-Threaded Performance
Single-thread performance of server CPUs usually isn’t the most important metric for most scale-out workloads, but there are use-cases such as EDA tools which are pretty much single-thread performance bound.
Power envelopes here usually don’t matter, and what is actually the performance factor that comes at play here is simply the boost clocks of the CPUs as well as the IPC improvement, and memory latency of the cores. We’re also testing the results here in NPS1 mode as if you have single-threaded bound workloads, you should prefer to use the systems in a single NUMA node mode.
Generationally, the new Zen3-based 7763 improves performance quite significantly over the 7742, even though I noted that both parts boosted almost equally to around 3400MHz in single-threaded scenarios. The uplifts here average over a geomean of +25%, with individual increases from +15 to +50%, with a median of +22%.
The Milan part also now more clearly competes against the best of the competition, even though it’s not a single-threaded optimised part as the 75F3 – we’ll see those scores a bit later.
In SPECfp, the Zen3 based Milan chip also does extremely well, measuring an average geomean boost of +14.2% and a median of +18%.
The new 7763 takes a notable lead in single-threaded performance amongst the large core count SKUs in the market right now. More notably, the 75F3 further increases this lead through the higher 4GHz boost clock this frequency optimised part enables.
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gustavowoltmann - Saturday, March 27, 2021 - link
https://www.anandtech.com/Calin - Tuesday, March 16, 2021 - link
That's "team Anandtech" but from the times when the site was done by a single person.I used to read Tom's Hardware, then it and Anandtech (sometime before 2000 I think, the site was started in 1997), then Anandtech only.
Lots of quality hardware information, even though at first the site sometime covered antiviruses and some other software.
Considering the entire history, reviewers other than Anand are a recent phenomenon :)
MenhirMike - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
I wonder if AMD is going to add 120 W CPUs again - EPYC Rome had 4 CPUs with only 4 memory channels of bandwidth, but with a lower TDP, including the EPYC 7282.zanon - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
They do have an EPYC Embedded (3000 series) line that's still Zen 1. Maybe they'll move that to Zen 3 and that's where the low TDP stuff will go?Foeketijn - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
Yes, it's a shame those type of parts didn't really get attention yet. It's really great you can get 128 Cores and 256 threads in a 2U server, But if you just need 20 VM's running on a super stable platform, 16 threads and 50 Watts are more than enough.Spunjji - Friday, March 19, 2021 - link
I believe they're leaving that segment to Romepowerarmour - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
ARM is going to be the tech to watch in this space IMHO, especially with NVIDIA's upcoming weight behind it.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
2014 called and wants its prediction back.powerarmour - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
Ampere Altra responded to the call, but is currently engaged.MenhirMike - Monday, March 15, 2021 - link
It's not as egregious as "Linux on the Desktop": ARM on the server is actually gaining foothold, especially for Cloud-hosted companies.Though x86-64 will be around for a LONG time - ARM might (and likely will) get a nice Marketshare, but it will not seriously threaten x86-64 for decades, if ever.
One thing that ARM is sorely lacking are some workstations to test stuff on. The Ampere eMag was based on ancient hardware, Raspberry Pi isn't specced nearly the same, and I'm not putting an Ampere Altra on my desk.