New AMD EPYC 9005 Turin server processors - the race continues

On October 10, not only Intel presented its new products – Intel® Core™ Ultra 300S desktop processors. AMD also revealed details about the EPYC™ 9005 Turin server processor line. We will discuss them in this article.

Use navigation if you don't want to read the entire text:

→ What we know about the AMD EPYC™ 9005 Turin
→ Comparison with AMD EPYC™ 9004
→ Comparison with Intel® Xeon® 6
→ Performance boost
→ Conclusion

What we know about the AMD EPYC™ 9005 Turin

The new generation will be the fifth in the AMD EPYC™ server line. It again introduces two types of new architecture: Zen 5 and Zen 5c with power-efficient cores.

The list shows 27 processors in configurations from 8 to 192 cores with a TDP of up to 500 W. The great news is that the old SP5 socket remains, which allows you to use processors with older platforms if they “pass” the TDP indicator. In the previous generation, this figure was a maximum of 400 W, so I assume that new solutions will be needed for flagships. Spoiler: they have already been released by some major vendors, such as HPE, Dell, Lenovo, Supermicro, Giga Computing, MSI, ASRock.

The final line looks like this:

Source

Comparison with AMD EPYC™ 9004

I will list the main differences between the fifth generation and the fourth:

the maximum number of cores has increased from 128 to 192;
processors with 144 and 160 cores appeared;
a model with 128 cores appeared on an architecture with powerful Zen 5 cores, the base frequencies increased and the cache increased;
a high-frequency F line processor with 64 cores and a base frequency of 3.3 appeared;
base frequencies in F-high-frequency processors with 48, 24 and 16 cores have increased slightly;
the minimum number of cores has decreased from 16 to 8;
The frequency of the DDR5 ECC Reg memory used has increased to 6400 MHz.

Let me remind you that the characteristics of the previous generation look like this:

Source

At the same time, only three models were built on energy-efficient Zen 4c cores: the 128-core EPYC™ 9754 and EPYC™ 9754S, as well as the EPYC™ 9734 with 112 cores on board.

In my opinion, a 1.5 times increase in the number of cores and a wider selection of processors for a specific task are significant changes.

Comparison with Intel® Xeon® 6

Energy efficient processors

Formally, Intel only offers processors of the Sierra Forest generation. By the way, these are the ones used

in our own Selectel server

which we introduced last week.

Source

Additionally, I compared the top solutions from both vendors in the table:

In terms of the number of cores and threads, the AMD EPYC™ 9965 wins by far. It also clearly wins in base and maximum frequencies, as well as in cache size.

However, the price to pay for such a victory is the TDP, which for AMD is one and a half times higher than for its competitor. Intel processors are easier to cool and have lower power costs.

Performance processors

Intel® Xeon® 6900P Granit Rapids has not yet been officially presented, however, according to insiders, they may have the following characteristics:

Source

In this case, I again compared Intel and AMD using the same indicators.

With a minimal margin, AMD wins again. With the same number of cores, number of threads and TDP level, Intel has a lower base frequency. However, this is not yet the official release of Granite Rapids. Perhaps Intel will have time to upgrade its product before launch, or the insider data will turn out to be incorrect.

High frequency processors

I would also like to note the complete absence of Intel’s line of high-frequency processors, analogues of the F-series from AMD. For example, in our own data centers we use models of the previous generation: AMD EPYC™ 9274F with 24 cores and a base frequency of 4.05 GHz, as well as AMD EPYC™ 9474F with 48 cores and a base frequency of 3.6 GHz.

Server with this processor

can be ordered within a few minutes, and it is almost impossible to find analogues in the performance of one core with such a total quantity.

The updated F-series line will look like this:

AMD EPYC™ 9575F, 64 cores, 3.3 GHz
AMD EPYC™ 9475F, 48 cores, 3.65 GHz
AMD EPYC™ 9375F, 32 cores, 3.8 GHz
AMD EPYC™ 9275F, 24 cores, 4.1 GHz
AMD EPYC™ 9175F, 16 cores, 4.2 GHz

There is nothing like this in either the sixth or fifth generation Intel® Xeon®.

And the same SP5 socket will also allow us to use current platforms for new processors. In the case of

Performance boost

In its presentation, AMD compares its own next generation with Intel® Xeon® Scalable 5.

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Thus, in the performance test, the new 192-core EPYC™ 9965 processor from AMD defeats both its 128-core predecessor and the 64-core Intel® Xeon® 8592+.

Source

In terms of performance per core, the same 32-core processors are selected, and here the 9005 generation is also ahead.

Source

In various business tasks, the incomparable is again compared – a 192-core new product against a 96-core predecessor, albeit with “full-fledged” rather than stripped-down energy-efficient cores. And the 64-core Intel loses here, as expected.

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The ace in the hole for high-performance computing tasks is the new 64-core processor from the high-frequency F line, which I wrote about above. Its base frequency is an impressive 3.3. GHz.

After analyzing the slides from AMD, I had a feeling of understatement. My main question is why the tests did not include the Intel® Xeon® 6700E processors that were already introduced and shipped to the market? Perhaps they were not taken into account because with them the graphs would not be so convincing?

For obvious reasons, there are no independent tests of the new product from AMD yet. But I found a number of benchmarkswhich compare the Intel® Xeon® 6700E and the previous generation AMD EPYC™ 9004:

Source

The tests did not show such radical differences: processors from Intel also show good results and even win in the optimized database or compilation benchmarks. But this is only an energy-efficient line.

I predict that the most interesting things in benchmarks will begin after the release of Intel® Xeon® 6900P with high-performance cores (Granite Rapids). It looks like Intel has every chance to finally catch up with AMD.

All that remains is to wait for both the availability of the AMD EPYC™ 9005 and the release of the Intel® Xeon® 6900P. Both events should happen before the end of 2024.