AMD Rome Second Generation EPYC Review: 2x 64-core Benchmarked

To call that a "significant" performance lead is silly.

No they aren't and no they didn't.

Obviously this review of the ultra high end is not focused on single thread performance because that'd be insane. But in segments where it does matter, like consumer, it was not glossed over at all.

And if you look at the comparison table AMD didn't really trade cores for clocks. Both the Epyc and the Xeons are all in that mid 2ghz base frequency range.

> But Intel still has superior design skills when it comes to power consumption and clock rates.

Except no not really. Clock rate yes, but AMD has an IPC advantage now so it's not entirely clear cut. And you only get that clock rate advantage on the consumer chips anyway.

Power consumption is not at all in Intel's favor, either.

Going back a bit further, AMD spinning off GlobalFoundries and then shopping around for fabs on the open market is definitely looking like a very good decision with hindsight. GF has also, since then, run into problems rolling out a next-gen node, and eventually cancelled their 7nm. Hard to say how much you can credit AMD for foresight there vs getting lucky, but being manufactured by TSMC vs. in-house has worked out well.

I don't think this was obvious at the time. Some people thought it was a good move (obviously including the decision makers), but a good number of pundits interpreted AMD giving up on a proprietary in-house fab and relying on commercially available facilities as basically AMD throwing in the towel on being able to compete head to head with Intel as an integrated chip designer/manufacturer, relegating them to more the budget space. To be fair, at the time (2009), TSMC processes were behind Intel's, so you would've had to predict TSMC catching up and surpassing Intel.

I principally meant glossed over in discussion in threads like this. The review has a whole section on single-threaded performance, and Xeon comes out ahead:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14694/amd-rome-epyc-2nd-gen/9

It doesn't just matter in consumer land. It matters in some high-end workloads as well. I was replying to someone who lamented the poor performance of EC2 EPYC instances. Depending on your workload, they are poor performers.

I was very careful in my statement when I said that Intel has superior skill in designing for lower power or high clock rate. I did not say that that particular skill results in Xeons having a generally better performance, cost/performance, or power/performance profile. What I'm saying is that they can use that skill to anchor themselves at the very low power and very high clock rate niches to slow their decline.

AMD will continue to close the gap even in those respects. If I had put an EPYC 3251 up against my Xeon E3-1230 it would have smoked it at roughly the same power draw because doubling the core count absolutely matters. I'm not disputing that. And Zen 2- or Zen 3-based 3201 probably would out perform the 1230 as well without double the core count, though notably no such CPU exists at the moment. But people are underestimating what Intel still has going for them. Intel's strategy at this point will be to slow their market loss to buy them time to retool and counter, just like when AMD had the lead 15 years ago. Intel has some leverage to slow that loss.

And as some others have pointed out, Intel also has a huge product lineup. Do you know how many systems you can find with an EPYC 3000 series embedded chip? Only two: Supermicro in a miniITX form factor and Congatec on a COM Express Type 7 module. So, basically one as far as most people are concerned. OTOH, Intel has more SKUs in that market space than I can even be bothered to investigate, some of which are equal to or better than the EPYC in power, performance, and cost.[1] It'll take many more years for AMD to begin to displace Intel in those spaces. Again, that gives Intel time, breath spacing, and cash flow.

[1] I chose the EPYC because of Intel's poor security track record, and to support AMD. If the only thing that mattered to me was power, performance, or cost (individually or together) then a Xeon D would have been a smarter choice. EPYC Rome would likely change that, but there is no Zen 2/EPYC Rome embedded yet, nor any hint of one. I'm beginning to think it won't happen until Zen 3/EPYC Milan.