AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked
by Johan De Gelas on August 7, 2019 7:00 PM ESTRome CPUs: Core Counts and Frequencies
There has been little doubt that on paper Rome and the EPYC 7002 family will be a competitive product compared to Intel's Xeon Scalable when it comes to performance or performance per watt. As always, it comes down to paring which part offers the right competition. With Rome, AMD is once again attacking performance per dollar, as well as peak performance and performance per watt.
EPYC 7000 nomenclature
The naming of the CPUs is kept consistent with the previous generation.
- EPYC = Brand
- 7 = 7000 Series
- 25-74 = Dual Digit Number indicative of stack positioning / performance (non-linear)
- 1/2 = Generation
- P = Single Socket, not present in Dual Socket
AMD is introducing 19 total CPUs to the Rome family, 13 of which are aimed at the dual socket market. All CPUs have 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes available for add-in cards, and all CPUs support up to 4 TiB of DDR4-3200.
AMD EPYC 7001 & 7002 Processors (2P) | ||||||
Cores Threads |
Frequency (GHz) | L3* | TDP | Price | ||
Base | Max | |||||
EPYC 7742 | 64 / 128 | 2.25 | 3.40 | 256 MB | 225 W | $6950 |
EPYC 7702 | 64 / 128 | 2.00 | 3.35 | 256 MB | 200 W | $6450 |
EPYC 7642 | 48 / 96 | 2.30 | 3.20 | 256 MB | 225 W | $4775 |
EPYC 7552 | 48 / 96 | 2.20 | 3.30 | 192 MB | 200 W | $4025 |
EPYC 7542 | 32 / 64 | 2.90 | 3.40 | 128 MB | 225 W | $3400 |
EPYC 7502 | 32 / 64 | 2.50 | 3.35 | 128 MB | 200 W | $2600 |
EPYC 7452 | 32 / 64 | 2.35 | 3.35 | 128 MB | 155 W | $2025 |
EPYC 7402 | 24 / 48 | 2.80 | 3.35 | 128 MB | 155 W | $1783 |
EPYC 7352 | 24 / 48 | 2.30 | 3.20 | 128 MB | 180 W | $1350 |
EPYC 7302 | 16 / 32 | 3.00 | 3.30 | 128 MB | 155 W | $978 |
EPYC 7282 | 16 / 32 | 2.80 | 3.20 | 64 MB | 120 W | $650 |
EPYC 7272 | 12 / 24 | 2.90 | 3.20 | 64 MB | 155 W | $625 |
EPYC 7262 | 8 / 16 | 3.20 | 3.40 | 128 MB | 120 W | $575 |
EPYC 7252 | 8 / 16 | 3.10 | 3.20 | 64 MB | 120 W | $475 |
Select EPYC 7001 Naples CPUs | ||||||
EPYC 7601 | 32 / 64 | 2.20 | 3.20 | 64 MB | 180 W | $4200 |
EPYC 7551 | 32 / 64 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 64 MB | 180 W | >$3400 |
EPYC 7501 | 32 / 64 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 64 MB | 155 W | $3400 |
EPYC 7451 | 24 / 48 | 2.30 | 3.20 | 64 MB | 180 W | $2400 |
EPYC 7371 | 16 / 32 | 3.10 | 3.80 | 64 MB | 200 W | $1550 |
EPYC 7251 | 8 / 16 | 2.10 | 2.90 | 32 MB | 120 W | $475 |
Special CPUs worth noting listed in bold * We are awaiting full L3 cache information |
The top part is the EPYC 7742, which is the CPU we were provided for in this comparison. It is the most expensive non-custom AMD CPU ever. We will discuss whether the price is a bargain or suitable after we have done some benchmarking.
But one thing is for sure: AMD is definitely improving the performance per dollar. The real star is the 7502, as it offers 32 Zen2 cores at 2.50/3.35 GHz for $2600. This means that you get higher clocks, better cores, twice the L3, and just as much cores as the 7601 had - in other words, the 7502 is better in every way, but compared to the 7601 it comes with an impressive 40% discount ($2600 vs $4200).
There is more to it. Unlike Intel's market segmentation strategy, which makes the life of enterprise infrastructure people more complicated than it should be, AMD does not blow fuses on cheaper SKUs to create artificial 'value' for buying more expensive SKUs. The cheapest 8-core 7252 has all 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, it supports up to 4 TB per socket, it has infinity fabric at the same speed, and includes all virtualization and security features as the best product.
Comparison to Intel
In the table below we have done a base example comparison with some of Intel's SKU list. Given that Intel is dominant in the market, prospective buyers must get a significant price bonus or significantly lower TCO before they switch to AMD.
Intel Second Gen Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake) |
AMD Second Gen EPYC ("Rome") |
||||||||||
Cores | Freq | TDP (W) |
Price | AMD | Cores | Freq | TDP | Price | |||
Xeon Platinum 8200 | Rome | ||||||||||
8280 | M | 28 | 2.7/4.0 | 205 | $13012 | 7742 | 64 | 2.25/3.40 | 225 | $6950 | |
8280 | 28 | 2.7/4.0 | 205 | $10009 | |||||||
8276 | M | 28 | 2.2/4.0 | 165 | $11722 | 7742 | 64 | 2.25/3.40 | 225 | $6950 | |
8270 | 26 | 2.7/4.0 | 205 | $7405 | |||||||
8268 | 24 | 2.9/3.9 | 205 | $6302 | |||||||
8260 | M | 24 | 2.4/3.9 | 165 | $7705 | 7702 | 64 | 2.00/3.35 | 225 | $6450 | |
8260 | 24 | 2.4/3.9 | 165 | $4702 | 7552 | 48 | 2.20/3.50 | 200 | $4025 | ||
8253 | 16 | 2.2/3.0 | 165 | $3115 | 7502 | 32 | 2.50/3.35 | 200 | $2600 | ||
Xeon Gold 6200 | Rome | ||||||||||
6252 | 24 | 2.1/3.7 | 150 | $3665 | |||||||
6248 | 20 | 2.5/3.9 | 150 | $3072 | |||||||
6242 | 16 | 2.8/3.9 | 150 | $2529 | 7452 | 32 | 2.35/3.35 | 155 | $2025 | ||
6238 | 22 | 2.1/3.7 | 140 | $2612 | 7402 | 24 | 2.80/3.35 | 155 | $1783 | ||
6226 | 12 | 2.8/3.7 | 125 | $1776 | |||||||
Xeon Silver 4200 | Rome | ||||||||||
4216 | 16 | 2.1/3.2 | 100 | $1002 | 7282 | 16 | 2.80/3.20 | 120 | $625 | ||
4214 | 2x12 | 2.2/3.2 | 2x85 | 2x$694 | 7402P | 24 | 2.80/3.35 | 180 | $1250 |
In our comparison, we've also ignored the fact that AMD supports up to 4 TB per socket and has 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, which it beats Intel on both fronts. While the number of people that will buy 256 GB DIMMs is minimal at best, within the error margin of the market, to us it is simply is ridiculous that Intel expect enterprise users to cough up another few thousand dollars per CPU for a model that supports 2 TB, while you get that for free from AMD.
Going on paper, especially in the high-end, Intel is completely outclassed. A 28-core Xeon 8276M has a list price of ~$12k, while AMD charges "only" $7k for more than twice as many cores. The only advantage Intel keeps is a slightly higher single threaded clock (4 GHz) and AVX-512 support. You could argue that the TDP is lower, but that has to be measured, and frankly there is a good chance that one 64 core (at 2.25-3.2 GHz) is able to keep with two Intel Xeon 8276 (2x28 cores at 2.2-2.8 GHz), while offering much lower power consumption (single socket board vs dual board, 225W vs 2x165W).
AMD is even more generous in the mid-range. The EPYC 7552 offers twice the amout of cores at higher clocks than the Xeon Platinum 8260, which is arguably one of the more popular Xeon Platinum CPUs. The same is true for the EPYC 7452, which still costs less than the Xeon Gold 6242. It is only at the very low end, that the diffences get smaller.
Single Socket
For single socket systems, AMD will offer the following five processors below. These processors mirror the specifications of the 2P counterparts, but have a P in the name and slightly different pricing.
AMD EPYC Processors (1P) | ||||||
Cores Threads |
Frequency (GHz) | L3 | TDP | Price | ||
Base | Max | |||||
EPYC 7702P | 64 / 128 | 2.00 | 3.35 | 256 MB | 200 W | $4425 |
EPYC 7502P | 32 / 64 | 2.50 | 3.35 | 128 MB | 200 W | $2300 |
EPYC 7402P | 24 / 48 | 2.80 | 3.35 | 128 MB | 200 W | $1250 |
EPYC 7302P | 16 / 32 | 3.00 | 3.30 | 128 MB | 155 W* | $825 |
EPYC 7232P | 8 / 16 | 3.10 | 3.20 | 32 MB | 120 W | $450 |
*170W TDP mode also available |
This table makes also clear how much extra frequency AMD extracted out of the 7 nm TSMC process. The sixteen core EPYC 7302P runs at 3.0 GHz with all cores, while the EPYC 7351 was limited to 2.4 GHz at the same 155W TDP.
Again, the EPYC 7502P looks like one of the best deals of the server CPU market. This SKU can offer a lot of advantages compared to the current dual socket servers. If offers very potent single thread performance (3.35 GHz boost) and a very high 2.5 GHz when all cores are used, even when running AVX2 code. Secondly, a single socket server has a lower BOM and has lower power consumption (200W) compared to a dual 16-core system. Lastly, it supports up to 1-2 TB realistically (64-128 GB DIMMs) and has ample I/O bandwidth with 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes.
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close - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
VMware licenses per socket. I'm not sure what kind of niche market one would have to be in (maybe HPC on Windows with the HPC Pack?) to run Win server bare metal on this thing. So I'm pretty sure the average cores/VM for Windows servers is relatively low and no reason for concern.schujj07 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
@deltaFx2 Most people purchase more cores than they currently need so that they can grow. In the long run it is cheaper to purchase a higher SKU right now than purchase a second host a year down the road.@close There are companies that are Windows only so they would install Hyper-V onto this host to use as their hypervisor. However, even under VMware if you want to license Windows as a VM you have to pay the per-core licensing for every CPU core on each VM. I looked into getting volume licensing for Server 2016 for the company I work for we have 2 hosts with dual 24 core Epyc 7401's and we would need to get 16 dual core license packs for each instance of Server 2016. It ended up that we couldn't afford to get Sever 2016 because it would have cost us $5k per instance of Server 2016.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
@schujj07 Just buy a Windows Server Datacenter license for each host and you don't have to worry about licensing each VM.schujj07 - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
AFAIK it doesn't work that way when you are running VMware. With VMware you will still have to license each one.wolrah - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
@schujj07 nope. Windows Server licensing is the same no matter which hypervisor you're using. Datacenter licenses allow unlimited VMs on any licensed host.diehardmacfan - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
This is correct. You do need to buy the licenses to match the core count of the hypervisor, however.Dug - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
You still have to pay for cores on datacenter. Each datacenter license covers 2 cores with a minimum purchase of 8. So over 8 cores and you are buying more licenses. 64 cores is about $25kMDD1963 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
Windows license (Standard or Datacenter) covers 2 *sockets* for, a total of 16 cores....; if you have more than 2 sockets, you need more licenses...; if you have 2 sockets, filled with 8 core CPUs, you are good with one standard license... If you have 20 total cores, you need a standard license, and a pair of '2 core' add ons... If you have 32 cores, you need 2 full standard licenses....MDD1963 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
Datacenter is still licensed for 16 cores, with little 2 pack increments available, or, in the case of a 64 core CPU, effectively 4 Datacenter licenses would be required...($6k per 16 cores, or, roughly $24k)deltaFx2 - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
@schujj07: Of course I get that. The OP @Pancakes implied that Rome was going to hurt the wallets of buyers using windows server. The implication being this would not happen if they bought Intel. I was questioning those assumptions. How can Rome cost more money for windows licenses unless rome needs more cores to get the same job done or enterprises overprovision Rome (in terms of total cores) vs. Intel. That would make sense if the per-thread performance is worse but it's not.