It's not just about performance or performance/watt, it's also about platform features and robustness. If you buy Intel you're a bit more certain that things will "just work". For example, I bought a 3rd gen Threadripper and have encountered incompatibilities with Linux KVM-based virtual machines, whether it's the FLR reset bug on the USB controllers when passing them through (fixed late June in Linux kernel, 7 months after TR was released), the fact that a Windows guest doesn't yet support nested AMD virtualization (coming in 2H20), or strange performance behaviors that don't happen on Intel (no resolution in sight). These quirks are bound to exist on Epyc too, but I'll admit that virtualization is probably the most tricky thing you can put the platform through. If you're building a server that just takes a bunch of containers without any virtualization gimmicks, it should be fine. For workstations, the Intel platform supports RDIMMs and therefore much more RAM, unless you buy from the very few OEMs that sell the Threadripper Pro.
I agree with him. I run AMD all day long, but at work we tried that with Rome, apparently. Something about our application stack didn’t work well with EPYC. I can only assume it was memory latency, however I am not in that department so I don’t know. What I DO known is that AMD has an amazing product, but the platform isn’t there yet. They either need to clamp down on OEMs or release a first party platform to push the OEMs to release better quality stuff.
I can't say this enough times.... I see a lot of comments about AMD being now all of a sudden THE CHOICE. Hold on for a bit, since there is much more to it than performance or efficiency. Performance wise, sure, AMD has an advantage, but it is not out of the ordinary. Efficiency wise, the same. Quality wise, there is no comparison between Intel and AMD platforms. AMD has a lot of work to do on the software and even hardware/firmware front. Many people are not aware of this maybe, but Intel during all these years has invested a lot of effort and money in creating streamlined platforms, with quality software, quality firmware, that it is almost plug and play. AMD on the other hand, being the underdog and so far away of Intel for so long, nobody focused on their products and they lack badly in optimization and compatibility. Sure, things will change with time, but it will take at least 5 more years of actual work and $$$ from AMD to make it happen. Same is valid for notebook space. Everyone is crying about how AMD laptops are crippled and how OEMs love Intel. Well, Intel has invested a lot of money and effort in creating design templates and making it as easy as possible for OEMs to create a new laptop. AMD....well, they just have a good cpu and that is it. There is a lack of field engineers, a lack of streamlined process, a lack of clear BOM and especially a perception from the market that still sees AMD as the cheaper option. Non hardware guys, which is basically 90% of the market cannot deduct from a sticker that 4th gen Ryzen is much better than Buldozer or whatever. AMD needs to invest $$$ into publicity, into OEM partnerships, into creating something similar to project Athena, something to give them the premium feel so that the market perception will change. Otherwise, it will take years before they actually reach majority of market share and by that time Intel could come back. Anyway, back to the topic of this review, 10k $ is in any case a ridiculous amount of money for an old CPU. 3k $ is even stretching it, so you say it right. If someone wants a top Intel CPU, they should buy this Gold version.
I can't say this enough. You talk bias. You don't need field engineers. Bom are delivered by oem like Dell hpe Cisco that increase there portfolio for amd on every release. Intel is not investing a lot of money in business for stability all they do is making sure business dies not get fed up with all the CVE bugs they need to patch and deliver in fact the long lasting issues with supplies had them against the wall big time. All intel does is paying money to oem in r&d to keep designing base lines so that they can keep selling the masses. This is done in both WS as Server area. But let's be honest AMD would never be capable to deliver far more. But it's thx to AMD that things like Skylake R exist don't forget that.
This. When the Ryzen 2700 dropped to $150 I jumped on it, figuring I could retire my i7 4790. I put it together and its encoding speed was a very impressive improvement. I couldn't swap out my main immediately as the mobo didn't have enough SATA ports for all my drives so I was using them side-by-side for a while, and I noticed the AMD just lagged and had weird quirks where the 4790 was perfection 24/7/365. I couldn't live with it and gave up on the idea of using it as a replacement, and I eventually sold it off.
I'm still on the i7 4790 as my main even though I now have a 3950X too. AMD is ok for a secondary crunching machine but it's just not suitable for human use.
You're kind of comparing apples and oranges here. The threadripper is an enthusiast/workstation product. AWS isn't having any issues with virtualization using Epyc.
Neither do we with our 1000+ amd servers when we switched from intel to epyc2 series. We have never seen some much price / perf / power ratio in favor of amd. Gone are all the security bugs and security measurements we had to take in our DC to not be confronted with the CVE. Our total server farm was halved and the total hw price was 2/3. With hypervisor it was also easy switch. Just select the maintenance window and switch.
Don't compare some workstation thread ripper virtualization who's with epyc2. There are a lot of DC moving into amd these days. Sure intel will still sell the bulk but the move by many was made on epyc2 and will increase with epyc3 launch. 2-3y ago when you ask oem consultant what hw to offer it was only intel. These days they ask what the server is used for and they offer depending on requirements.... Those who run intel only are dump old school that don't look at there budgets and performance and have no clue. Critical environment? Run on Z and you will find out what crytical really means.
That's great, but they've most certainly got the resources to tweak their software, with AMD engineers ready to assist. And they're probably not doing any PCI-E passthrough of USB controllers. Nor do the customers try to run virtualization software (Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox) within a Windows guest there. Maybe it's just those "edge cases", but when you encounter problems with those, you start to wonder what else could go wrong in other cases.
You are just working with a consumer playground. In server world we have dedicated clusters that run pci-e passthrough for nics and GPU. No issues on the vSphere at all. And Windows? What about it? +4000vm on windows would that be enough? With vm up to 60vcpu and 150tb hd space.
I specifically mentioned USB controllers because that FLR bug is on AMD's Starship and Matisse controllers regardless of platform. If those are the USB controllers on EPYC, then it will have the same problem (it locks up the PC, hard reboot required). Other things seem fine (GPU, NIC, NVMe SSD). The only "consumer playground" thing there is that perhaps you're more likely to be doing that on a consumer platform than on an enterprise server. I didn't say Windows didn't run, I said nested virtualization didn't work. Please try to make an effort in reading comprehension.
This is a thread about Server CPU. Not workstation. So why you bring this info than in the first place.... USB devices on server? You are joking right.
Fine, focus on the USB thing and ignore the Windows nested virtualization. I guess some things don't (or didn't) just work on AMD workstation platforms, but everything has been absolutely peachy on server platforms. Say company X needs new servers to run their complex IT infrastructure. But here's the thing: if something doesn't work, if there's an incompatibility, people you care about get executed. Oh, and you're going up against someone else doing the same thing, and if he gets it done faster, same punishment for you. What would you go for? Intel or AMD?
That is why it takes several years for the server market to even consider making a shift or to start implementing a different design. Two years later, corporations have started to make the decision to test the waters with some Epyc servers and see how it goes. Considering the number of MAJOR security issues with Intel, the "tested" platform, any minor issues with Epyc won't be something to be concerned with.
THIS...The largest companies in the world are using "FAILED" AMD chips (sounds like you're saying they're failures yeeeeman!)...LOL. I haven't heard of amazon, facebook, google, microsoft etc, firing admins for buying EPYC. Intel pissed away 4.1B+ per year for 4.5yrs and now has fab issues because it should have been spent on 10/7nm (it was freaking 20B! That is a state of the art fab+ some). We are here now, because INTEL is exactly what you are claiming AMD is...trash right now. :) It happens to everyone at some point. Look at windows 10...ROFL. 10+ versions, and ALL SH!TE. They release a patch and it WTF's 4 versions of the OS...LOL.
How many bugs does an Intel chip have? SECURITY I mean?...Nuff said? We are talking their ENTIRE CHIP LIST for DECADES. Nah, Intel is 100% bug free right?...ROFLMAO. Caminogate. Timna, larrabee, TITANIC (LOL), etc etc. I could go on with the Intel failures but...whatever. They're the only other perfect thing every created on earth besides JESUS. I swear ;) They are the bees knees pal...LOL. That said, if AMD loses this time, it's because they refuse to CHARGE accordingly for their WINNING chips. If 4950x is really 500 (not $750 like the chip it replaces, rather pricing a 16c at 8c old pricing), again they will waste a top money maker. That is $250 off each chip sold. That is HUGE BANK to the NET INCOME line. AMD appears to be wasting a 4th gen on stupidity and pricing like a 2nd rate LOSER. Do you think Intel would have priced this at $4000 if you hadn't STUPIDLY priced your 64c at $7K? They're only 28c and they still are smart enough to charge MORE than 1/2 your 64c. Even in defense they make a right move if possible (get every dollar you can!). AMD would have priced a 28c vs. an intel 64c at $2000. That 28c was supposed to be around 17-25K and the 56c was supposed to be 50K. Then 64c AMD happened and NO NET INCOME for AMD, and still a RECORD for INTEL. You are NOT DOING IT RIGHT. Your stock after this Q report should have crashed $40 (and I mean $40 OFF the price, and even that is ridiculous, stock should be $20 with no improvement in INCOME). Quit giving away your silicon while Intel maximizes INCOME. The only point I really agree with the OP is you can't win like this. MAKE INCOME or SELL your company to someone who GETS HOW TO GROW. Lisa Sue is likely a great engineer, but management, well they need to show us the MONEY. Sue should be demoted to running divisions or something, not managing money for the company (or at least not firing whoever IS pricing products - surely she has some say here).
You are 20% of the market of x86 and make 600mil/yr. Intel owns the other 80% of x86 and still pulls down 23B NET INCOME (NOT REVENUE! that is like 70B+). Do the math, you should be 4B-5B NET INCOME at these levels or YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG (and that will still be a bit of a discount to win some share, but INCOME is more important). Your stock is ~1/2 of Intel at 100B (Intel is 208B Mkcap). YOU AMD, make 600mil/yr on that, they make 23B/YR TTM. Intel PE of 9, yours...165? LOL. You can live with a small share if you make NET INCOME. You can't live with a bunch of share but NO INCOME on it. Which, at 100-160mil/Q, you are making NOTHING NET. Sorry, 10% of what you should be making is NOTHING. Again, you idiots (you haven't learned in 4 gens if rumored prices are true for 4th ryzen), YOU ARE PRICING WRONG.
Your problem now? Intel will be buying YOUR WAFER STARTS, for MORE MONEY, so you can't now. Make hay while the sun shines...OOPS, someone forgot to learn this at AMD? Party is almost over, INtel contracts done or getting done for BILLIONS of TSMC wafers (180K, AMD only making 200K wafers from TSMC), and they still have fabs at 100% of their own. You are stupid. PERIOD. Four years WASTED on trying to get a few points of share rather than RAKING everyone you could for every dollar possible WHILE YOU CAN. Instead of the smart slower way, you took the quick price cut way and well, don't start wars you can't win yet. If you had priced everything within say 10% of Intel chips, they wouldn't even have cut ANY chip prices, as they have shareholders that require seeking NET INCOME and they keep doing it. AMD seems to refuse for some reason to attack correctly. Haven't read ART of WAR or Art of the Deal? It shows.
4am, no time to check if this is attack proof...LOL. To lazy to paste into word and this small box sucks. The data (math) is simple here. STock prices are not rocket science. SELL AMD ASAP, buy Intel, next xmas (2021) you will laugh at the ~26-27B NET INCOME they are making by then after adding 180K wafers to sell from TSMC. That is going to add to the bottom line. Intel is setting records and took a $27 hit to shares from $69. It won't take long for people to wake up and get that it is still making the same money as when it was $69 and heading higher NET INCOME wise. You'll be too late then ;) AMD is massively overpriced, so says NET, revenue, margin, mkap etc etc etc. When everyone loves your stock be afraid (yes I sold early :)), when everyone hates it, if metrics, fundamentals etc are all good (especially after FAKE NEWS crash over fabs that easily fixed by USING TSMC etc), BUY. Free money in 18mo. My family owns NO AMD (for now). I thought they'd be making BILLIONS at 20% share, but they forgot to price correctly for 4yrs. Oh well, dead money, or at least DANGEROUS for stockholders.
I use both Ryzen and Epyc at my job. We have people who have the hardware assisted virtualization turned on in Win 10 for use with Virtual Box. They don't have any issues at all on the AMD hardware and those VMs run 24/7. For the Epyc server platforms, AMD Virtualization is turned on by default in the BIOS. Those VMware hosts run 24/7 with 100% uptime and not a single VM crash for months on end. Only time there is a reboot is to upgrade ESXi. They aren't just running little DNS Servers either, they are running HANA DBs, SQL DBs, Oracle DBs, etc... The VAR I use has never had anyone with the issues you are describing either.
You misunderstood. I didn't say you couldn't run virtual machines, I said you couldn't run [hardware-accelerated] virtual machines within a virtual machine running a Windows OS, aka nested virtualization. So for instance, if you have a Windows guest, you can't use the Windows Sandbox feature on it. I'm not making that up, it's a feature planned for 20H2 : https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/virtualizat...
Also, I think you still haven't understood what I was talking about. It's not what the host hypervisor is that matters, it's what the guest OS is that matters. Even if the host is ESXi, you won't be able to use Windows Sandbox (or any other virtualization-based software) under a Windows guest until later this year. But maybe I just stumbled upon the only software incompatibility in the whole market.
Let's hope the Intel stuff does "just work" after having been milked for so long...;) It should certainly be "mature" by now, eh? And sure, I guess Linus Torvalds is a noob when it comes to CPUs, sure. What does he know?--he probably picked up AMD and rejected Intel because he enjoys all the "weird stuff that has no resolution in sight"--you betcha. BTW, Intel doesn't make anything competitive with TR--TR is a "prosumer" product. Spread that around to the very few OEMs who sell $10k Intel processors these days...;) You might want to consider getting over your childish pique concerning AMD, guy, seriously. It's rather silly. AMD is here and is Intel's worst nightmare, and that will not be changing anytime soon. All that remains to be seen is how long it will take Intel to catch up to AMD *this time*...that is, if AMD allows that to happen in the first place, imo. AMD now is firmly ensconced as a moving target architecturally--going to be an order of magnitude more difficult for Intel from now on. Pushing Intel onto a completely new architecture is just what Intel needs--maybe with a new design from the ground up like AMD's Zen architectures--because it should enable Intel to design out all the security flaws its *current* architectures have developed a sizable reputation for having! That's not something any CPU maker wants! Talk about "no resolution in sight"--the only resolution for Intel's myriad security flaws is a brand-new, ground-up architecture. Nothing else will do--right, Intel? Atta' boy--go get' um...;)
"maybe with a new design from the ground up like AMD's Zen architectures" That is already on Intel's schedule and in fact it was announced right when Intel hired Jim Keller. I am referring to Ocean Cove, the apparent successor of Golden Cove (the "big" core of Alder Lake). Ostensibly the CPUs with Ocean Cove cores are going to be called Meteor Lake. It is also supposed to be Intel's first 7nm CPU (it will be fabbed either at Intel's 7nm node or -if Intel craps the bed completely- at TSMC's 4/5nm node).
I have no idea if Jim Keller's sudden departure will affect or delay the release of Ocean Cove / Meteor Lake but my guess is that it will. Therefore, on top of the 6-month delay of 7nm and the 12-month delay of high enough yields at 7nm the earliest Meteor Lake could be released is early 2024 - assuming no further delays. So it will compete against either Zen 5 or 6.
"You might want to consider getting over your childish pique concerning AMD, guy, seriously. It's rather silly. AMD is here and is Intel's worst nightmare" That's the language of someone who's blindly cheering for his underdog team at a sports contest. There's no conversation to be had around that, it just discredits everything you might want to say.
Virtualization is tricky for Ryzen, but it is not tricky for Threadripper and it is *certainly* not tricky for Epyc. AMD need to fix their shit in order to successfully compete in this market because it's an utter shame if workstation and server customers prefer Intel due to its "robustness" alone.
p.s. Though, come to think about it, there is nothing "robust" about Intel's multiple security flaws. These matter to server buyers because if things go sideways due to these flaws they are liable to lawsuits by their customers and they can also suffer damage to the reputation and trustworthiness of their company.
p.s. By the way, the "strange performance behaviors that don't happen on Intel (no resolution in sight)" bit was way too vague and arbitrary. As stated it means nothing, so could you please clarify?
I did some benchmarks under Linux, and some of them (a small minority) showed some drastic performance drops when run in virtual machines under KVM (kernel 5.7), as much as 80% in one case. That did not happen when I tested with a Xeon W-2295 before. I spent hours trying to find what was wrong, tinkering with many variations of settings for the VMs. Turns out switching from KVM to ESXi 7.0 kind of fixed the problem. So most probably not a problem with the silicon, but it still showed me that software support can be shaky in some areas.
Honestly, I tend to look past a lot of the defenses for Intel, but claiming perf/watt doesn't matter? At least I know you aren't in IT. I deal with a very large amount of companies where the difference of a single watt can determine whether dozens of people have jobs or not. Why? because a single server may not matter much, but thousands? they matter a lot .
I'm not trying to defend Intel, what is it with all you binary-thinking people. I just bought AMD for myself and after some struggle am finally happy with it. I'm only telling what I suspect could be a reason to still pick Intel today, after what I've experienced with an AMD platform. Where did I say that performance/watt didn't matter? Please, point it out. I said it's not just about that, meaning that it's not the only thing that might need to be considered. It's getting annoying to have to explain to compensate for poor reading skills.
Yes, and how do we know it hasn't changed already?...;) I think it has. Hallelujah, it's about time! This article reminds me of the Intel monopoly Halcyon days when Intel had no high-end x86 competition--the years after the Operon/A64 peak but prior to the AMD Zen debut with Zen 2 a year ago. Let's hope that Intel would iron out most problems in its architectures after essentially rehashing them for many years...;) Milking the cow until the cow ran dry...! Time for something new, Intel..chop, chop...!
Indeed. One wonders what the point of setting the price that much higher really is if, in fact, none of their customers ever actually pay that price. Perhaps it's merely to make giving "discounts" that much easier, and/or to provide an opportunity to milk the wealthiest customers.
You are probably right. It is very likely a sales tactic. Those CPUs are not sold in retail (at least not in quantities), but as part of enterprise/complex sales, where contracts (including prices) are negotiated. It is good negotation tactic for a seller to start with a high(er) price. Everyone who ever visited a bazar and haggled with a merchant knows how it goes.And despite having no evidence or experience of Intels approach to sales and negotation, i doubt that anyone who buys more than a handful of those puppies would pay anything close to the listed price...
I agree, in general. It is the same practice that most specialized SW vendors use: list prices are insane, and then you get a massive discount. Trouble is: when things get rough these discounts tend to shrink rapidly, because they can.
Exactly that. It's also a way of applying paradoxically high price penalties to smaller and/or less tech-literate buyers. I used to work for an IT reseller and it was amazing how many customers we picked up who had previously been paying list price for all of their purchases - hardware *and* software.
Definitely. Street price for any given entity is what matters or should matter. I doubt there is a reliable way to smoke out the actual price paid for the 8280 without violating enterprise NDAs, but I have to assume that the 6285 price is a reflection of the competitive pressure being applied by AMD and Epyc and the 8280 pricing has been similarly on a per account basis, just in case there are still some suckers out there.
There is one reason for the 6258R - Intel needs something at least remotely competitive to the EPYC Rome CPUs. For 1 or 2 socket servers the 8280 is far more expensive than AMD's EPYC 7742 while having less performance (due to 28 cores vs 64 and 38.5MB L3 cache vs 256MB)
So, instead of lowering the price they make a crippled sku at 40% of the price. I said in a previous comment: they do it because they can. Hopefully though, not for so much longer.
AMD doesn't have anything in the 8 socket configuration. That leaves Intel pretty much a monopoly. In a typical monopolistic behavior, they raise prices. Nothing new here. The only thing is that a dual socket EPYC might outperform a 4 socket Xeon. So Intel need 8 sockets to take the performance crown.
Articles like this are important, to help validate that the chips do, in fact, perform similarly. Appreciate that you went through the work to run the tests.
One small noteworthy difference is that the 6358R has one less UPI link, to go along with the 2P support. I'm curious about the power cos of each UPI link at idle (here in 1P configuration), but eyeballing the y-cruncher chart at the start it appears trivial.
Nice article. I note from the CPU-Z screenshot on the first page one of the few differences is the older chip has a core speed of 997mhz with a 10x multiplier, and the the new chip is at 1097mhz with a 11x multiplier.
That seems worth commenting on, but it wasn’t discussed in the article?
That's just a byproduct of an idling desktop. They'll float at low multipliers until a load is presented, and the reported frequency in each shot is, in this case, irrelevant.
My biggest take-home from this: Intel's CPU naming scheme is worse than ever and needs to die in a fire.
Seriously - here we have two near-identical CPUs, the sole difference being the extent of their multi-socket capability, and the only part of their name they have in common is "Xeon".
This is more a comment on a number of other comments here: When it comes to mission-critical servers, reliability and availability is often if not always the # 1 criterion. Not sheer processing power, or even efficiency or price. That is where AMD must invest and show commitment, and to the whole package: CPU, chip set, software support. Once the perception on Intel with Xeon always being the safer choice is gone, AMD will shift a lot more EPYCs and related products.
You’d also think people would read the whole article before making such remarks. From the article:
“ If you’re wondering where the 6258R stacks up against AMD, we’re in the process of re-testing the parts we have on hand as we go through our regression testing. The EPYC 7542 is probably the best comparison point (32C, 2.9-3.4 GHz, 225W, $3400), however we’ll have to look into getting one of those.”
This isn't new from Intel: in the past, they've always charged double for the largest officially-supported socket-count bump.
But since they started offering more than 4 sockets, the jump between the two has gotten ludicrous. But yes, always a good idea to check your required socket count before you jump in.
And the fact that there is that other company now offering competitive products. Hmm... what was it called again? I looked at the second page of the article for benchmarks but didn’t find any.
Raise a new question: single server with 8 socketed 8280 vs 4 server clustered 2 socketed 6258R. Performance / price wise total cost and performance/wattage consumption.
How many 2S motherboards actually wire up all three UPI links between two sockets? I've seen at least one Intel slide indicating it's a supported configuration, but most diagrams seem to show just two UPI links in use for 2S boards.
Great article. Great posts. Max sockets is a secondary issue given all other things remain the same. However most posts have turned this into an INTEL / AMD thing. And rightly so. Given that cloud services charge by the Mhz/Ghz, I am leaning to AMD.
I don't think they are shooting themselves in the foot. Intel knows this is necessary. Even without EPYC benchmarks we know the $10k part isn't going to be anywhere competitive.
One other difference I noticed in ARK is that the 8280 has T-Case of 84 degrees C, while the 6258R is limited to 74 degrees C. I'm not sure how to interpret this, if they had a batch of 8280 which didn't work at 84, or if the heat dissipation from the silicon to case is not as good, or something totally different. Or nothing at all, and Intel picked some innocuous thing to make a gratuitous difference in specs, without changing the chip at all.
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benedict - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
The question is not whether Intel is shooting itself in the foot.It is whether anyone buying Intel is shooting himself in the foot.
In the past no one got fired for buying Intel. Maybe it's time to change that.
ZoZo - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
It's not just about performance or performance/watt, it's also about platform features and robustness. If you buy Intel you're a bit more certain that things will "just work".For example, I bought a 3rd gen Threadripper and have encountered incompatibilities with Linux KVM-based virtual machines, whether it's the FLR reset bug on the USB controllers when passing them through (fixed late June in Linux kernel, 7 months after TR was released), the fact that a Windows guest doesn't yet support nested AMD virtualization (coming in 2H20), or strange performance behaviors that don't happen on Intel (no resolution in sight). These quirks are bound to exist on Epyc too, but I'll admit that virtualization is probably the most tricky thing you can put the platform through. If you're building a server that just takes a bunch of containers without any virtualization gimmicks, it should be fine.
For workstations, the Intel platform supports RDIMMs and therefore much more RAM, unless you buy from the very few OEMs that sell the Threadripper Pro.
Revv233 - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
You put that very well about the expectations of not having wierd issues.I always kind of figured it was due to chipset more than CPU but I've experienced that from my old Barton & A64's in spades...
To be fair I once had a P4 Northwood on a VIA chipset and I felt that same pain.
When you are talking mission critical stuff. One bad taste from 20 years ago is going to make you hesitate before you give something another try.
eek2121 - Sunday, August 9, 2020 - link
I agree with him. I run AMD all day long, but at work we tried that with Rome, apparently. Something about our application stack didn’t work well with EPYC. I can only assume it was memory latency, however I am not in that department so I don’t know. What I DO known is that AMD has an amazing product, but the platform isn’t there yet. They either need to clamp down on OEMs or release a first party platform to push the OEMs to release better quality stuff.yeeeeman - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
I can't say this enough times....I see a lot of comments about AMD being now all of a sudden THE CHOICE.
Hold on for a bit, since there is much more to it than performance or efficiency.
Performance wise, sure, AMD has an advantage, but it is not out of the ordinary. Efficiency wise, the same.
Quality wise, there is no comparison between Intel and AMD platforms. AMD has a lot of work to do on the software and even hardware/firmware front. Many people are not aware of this maybe, but Intel during all these years has invested a lot of effort and money in creating streamlined platforms, with quality software, quality firmware, that it is almost plug and play.
AMD on the other hand, being the underdog and so far away of Intel for so long, nobody focused on their products and they lack badly in optimization and compatibility. Sure, things will change with time, but it will take at least 5 more years of actual work and $$$ from AMD to make it happen.
Same is valid for notebook space. Everyone is crying about how AMD laptops are crippled and how OEMs love Intel. Well, Intel has invested a lot of money and effort in creating design templates and making it as easy as possible for OEMs to create a new laptop.
AMD....well, they just have a good cpu and that is it. There is a lack of field engineers, a lack of streamlined process, a lack of clear BOM and especially a perception from the market that still sees AMD as the cheaper option. Non hardware guys, which is basically 90% of the market cannot deduct from a sticker that 4th gen Ryzen is much better than Buldozer or whatever. AMD needs to invest $$$ into publicity, into OEM partnerships, into creating something similar to project Athena, something to give them the premium feel so that the market perception will change. Otherwise, it will take years before they actually reach majority of market share and by that time Intel could come back.
Anyway, back to the topic of this review, 10k $ is in any case a ridiculous amount of money for an old CPU. 3k $ is even stretching it, so you say it right. If someone wants a top Intel CPU, they should buy this Gold version.
duploxxx - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
I can't say this enough. You talk bias. You don't need field engineers. Bom are delivered by oem like Dell hpe Cisco that increase there portfolio for amd on every release. Intel is not investing a lot of money in business for stability all they do is making sure business dies not get fed up with all the CVE bugs they need to patch and deliver in fact the long lasting issues with supplies had them against the wall big time. All intel does is paying money to oem in r&d to keep designing base lines so that they can keep selling the masses. This is done in both WS as Server area. But let's be honest AMD would never be capable to deliver far more. But it's thx to AMD that things like Skylake R exist don't forget that.Smell This - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
Now with new glue and Omni-Path v4.0.89.42.000
(Two Dies Are Twice As Nice As One!)
The Cascade Lake Xeon Scalable platform failed last year, and the refresh will fail, again, today.
ProDigit - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
Who cares about optimization, when their processors are 25% more efficient, and host between 25-150% more cores?DominionSeraph - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
This.When the Ryzen 2700 dropped to $150 I jumped on it, figuring I could retire my i7 4790. I put it together and its encoding speed was a very impressive improvement. I couldn't swap out my main immediately as the mobo didn't have enough SATA ports for all my drives so I was using them side-by-side for a while, and I noticed the AMD just lagged and had weird quirks where the 4790 was perfection 24/7/365. I couldn't live with it and gave up on the idea of using it as a replacement, and I eventually sold it off.
I'm still on the i7 4790 as my main even though I now have a 3950X too. AMD is ok for a secondary crunching machine but it's just not suitable for human use.
WizardMerlin - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
Having been using my 3900X for many months now for 16 hours a day for a varied workload, I'd disagree.koguma - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
You're kind of comparing apples and oranges here. The threadripper is an enthusiast/workstation product. AWS isn't having any issues with virtualization using Epyc.duploxxx - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Neither do we with our 1000+ amd servers when we switched from intel to epyc2 series. We have never seen some much price / perf / power ratio in favor of amd. Gone are all the security bugs and security measurements we had to take in our DC to not be confronted with the CVE. Our total server farm was halved and the total hw price was 2/3. With hypervisor it was also easy switch. Just select the maintenance window and switch.Don't compare some workstation thread ripper virtualization who's with epyc2. There are a lot of DC moving into amd these days. Sure intel will still sell the bulk but the move by many was made on epyc2 and will increase with epyc3 launch. 2-3y ago when you ask oem consultant what hw to offer it was only intel. These days they ask what the server is used for and they offer depending on requirements.... Those who run intel only are dump old school that don't look at there budgets and performance and have no clue. Critical environment? Run on Z and you will find out what crytical really means.
ZoZo - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
That's great, but they've most certainly got the resources to tweak their software, with AMD engineers ready to assist. And they're probably not doing any PCI-E passthrough of USB controllers. Nor do the customers try to run virtualization software (Hyper-V, Windows Sandbox) within a Windows guest there.Maybe it's just those "edge cases", but when you encounter problems with those, you start to wonder what else could go wrong in other cases.
duploxxx - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
You are just working with a consumer playground. In server world we have dedicated clusters that run pci-e passthrough for nics and GPU. No issues on the vSphere at all. And Windows? What about it? +4000vm on windows would that be enough? With vm up to 60vcpu and 150tb hd space.ZoZo - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
I specifically mentioned USB controllers because that FLR bug is on AMD's Starship and Matisse controllers regardless of platform. If those are the USB controllers on EPYC, then it will have the same problem (it locks up the PC, hard reboot required). Other things seem fine (GPU, NIC, NVMe SSD). The only "consumer playground" thing there is that perhaps you're more likely to be doing that on a consumer platform than on an enterprise server.I didn't say Windows didn't run, I said nested virtualization didn't work. Please try to make an effort in reading comprehension.
duploxxx - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
This is a thread about Server CPU. Not workstation. So why you bring this info than in the first place.... USB devices on server? You are joking right.ZoZo - Sunday, August 9, 2020 - link
Fine, focus on the USB thing and ignore the Windows nested virtualization. I guess some things don't (or didn't) just work on AMD workstation platforms, but everything has been absolutely peachy on server platforms.Say company X needs new servers to run their complex IT infrastructure. But here's the thing: if something doesn't work, if there's an incompatibility, people you care about get executed. Oh, and you're going up against someone else doing the same thing, and if he gets it done faster, same punishment for you.
What would you go for? Intel or AMD?
Targon - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
That is why it takes several years for the server market to even consider making a shift or to start implementing a different design. Two years later, corporations have started to make the decision to test the waters with some Epyc servers and see how it goes. Considering the number of MAJOR security issues with Intel, the "tested" platform, any minor issues with Epyc won't be something to be concerned with.TheJian - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
THIS...The largest companies in the world are using "FAILED" AMD chips (sounds like you're saying they're failures yeeeeman!)...LOL. I haven't heard of amazon, facebook, google, microsoft etc, firing admins for buying EPYC. Intel pissed away 4.1B+ per year for 4.5yrs and now has fab issues because it should have been spent on 10/7nm (it was freaking 20B! That is a state of the art fab+ some). We are here now, because INTEL is exactly what you are claiming AMD is...trash right now. :) It happens to everyone at some point. Look at windows 10...ROFL. 10+ versions, and ALL SH!TE. They release a patch and it WTF's 4 versions of the OS...LOL.How many bugs does an Intel chip have? SECURITY I mean?...Nuff said? We are talking their ENTIRE CHIP LIST for DECADES. Nah, Intel is 100% bug free right?...ROFLMAO. Caminogate. Timna, larrabee, TITANIC (LOL), etc etc. I could go on with the Intel failures but...whatever. They're the only other perfect thing every created on earth besides JESUS. I swear ;) They are the bees knees pal...LOL. That said, if AMD loses this time, it's because they refuse to CHARGE accordingly for their WINNING chips. If 4950x is really 500 (not $750 like the chip it replaces, rather pricing a 16c at 8c old pricing), again they will waste a top money maker. That is $250 off each chip sold. That is HUGE BANK to the NET INCOME line. AMD appears to be wasting a 4th gen on stupidity and pricing like a 2nd rate LOSER. Do you think Intel would have priced this at $4000 if you hadn't STUPIDLY priced your 64c at $7K? They're only 28c and they still are smart enough to charge MORE than 1/2 your 64c. Even in defense they make a right move if possible (get every dollar you can!). AMD would have priced a 28c vs. an intel 64c at $2000. That 28c was supposed to be around 17-25K and the 56c was supposed to be 50K. Then 64c AMD happened and NO NET INCOME for AMD, and still a RECORD for INTEL. You are NOT DOING IT RIGHT. Your stock after this Q report should have crashed $40 (and I mean $40 OFF the price, and even that is ridiculous, stock should be $20 with no improvement in INCOME). Quit giving away your silicon while Intel maximizes INCOME. The only point I really agree with the OP is you can't win like this. MAKE INCOME or SELL your company to someone who GETS HOW TO GROW. Lisa Sue is likely a great engineer, but management, well they need to show us the MONEY. Sue should be demoted to running divisions or something, not managing money for the company (or at least not firing whoever IS pricing products - surely she has some say here).
You are 20% of the market of x86 and make 600mil/yr. Intel owns the other 80% of x86 and still pulls down 23B NET INCOME (NOT REVENUE! that is like 70B+). Do the math, you should be 4B-5B NET INCOME at these levels or YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG (and that will still be a bit of a discount to win some share, but INCOME is more important). Your stock is ~1/2 of Intel at 100B (Intel is 208B Mkcap). YOU AMD, make 600mil/yr on that, they make 23B/YR TTM. Intel PE of 9, yours...165? LOL. You can live with a small share if you make NET INCOME. You can't live with a bunch of share but NO INCOME on it. Which, at 100-160mil/Q, you are making NOTHING NET. Sorry, 10% of what you should be making is NOTHING. Again, you idiots (you haven't learned in 4 gens if rumored prices are true for 4th ryzen), YOU ARE PRICING WRONG.
Your problem now? Intel will be buying YOUR WAFER STARTS, for MORE MONEY, so you can't now. Make hay while the sun shines...OOPS, someone forgot to learn this at AMD? Party is almost over, INtel contracts done or getting done for BILLIONS of TSMC wafers (180K, AMD only making 200K wafers from TSMC), and they still have fabs at 100% of their own. You are stupid. PERIOD. Four years WASTED on trying to get a few points of share rather than RAKING everyone you could for every dollar possible WHILE YOU CAN. Instead of the smart slower way, you took the quick price cut way and well, don't start wars you can't win yet. If you had priced everything within say 10% of Intel chips, they wouldn't even have cut ANY chip prices, as they have shareholders that require seeking NET INCOME and they keep doing it. AMD seems to refuse for some reason to attack correctly. Haven't read ART of WAR or Art of the Deal? It shows.
4am, no time to check if this is attack proof...LOL. To lazy to paste into word and this small box sucks. The data (math) is simple here. STock prices are not rocket science. SELL AMD ASAP, buy Intel, next xmas (2021) you will laugh at the ~26-27B NET INCOME they are making by then after adding 180K wafers to sell from TSMC. That is going to add to the bottom line. Intel is setting records and took a $27 hit to shares from $69. It won't take long for people to wake up and get that it is still making the same money as when it was $69 and heading higher NET INCOME wise. You'll be too late then ;) AMD is massively overpriced, so says NET, revenue, margin, mkap etc etc etc. When everyone loves your stock be afraid (yes I sold early :)), when everyone hates it, if metrics, fundamentals etc are all good (especially after FAKE NEWS crash over fabs that easily fixed by USING TSMC etc), BUY. Free money in 18mo. My family owns NO AMD (for now). I thought they'd be making BILLIONS at 20% share, but they forgot to price correctly for 4yrs. Oh well, dead money, or at least DANGEROUS for stockholders.
WraithR32 - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
TL;DRPixyMisa - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
You're a loony.schujj07 - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
I use both Ryzen and Epyc at my job. We have people who have the hardware assisted virtualization turned on in Win 10 for use with Virtual Box. They don't have any issues at all on the AMD hardware and those VMs run 24/7. For the Epyc server platforms, AMD Virtualization is turned on by default in the BIOS. Those VMware hosts run 24/7 with 100% uptime and not a single VM crash for months on end. Only time there is a reboot is to upgrade ESXi. They aren't just running little DNS Servers either, they are running HANA DBs, SQL DBs, Oracle DBs, etc... The VAR I use has never had anyone with the issues you are describing either.ZoZo - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
You misunderstood. I didn't say you couldn't run virtual machines, I said you couldn't run [hardware-accelerated] virtual machines within a virtual machine running a Windows OS, aka nested virtualization.So for instance, if you have a Windows guest, you can't use the Windows Sandbox feature on it.
I'm not making that up, it's a feature planned for 20H2 :
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/virtualizat...
schujj07 - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
I have a couple nested ESXi hosts on hardware assisted virtualization on AMD Epycs that work just fine. Maybe don't use Hyper-V and you will be fine.ZoZo - Sunday, August 9, 2020 - link
Yes, maybe don't use this, and this, and that. That's my point. Thanks.ZoZo - Sunday, August 9, 2020 - link
Also, I think you still haven't understood what I was talking about. It's not what the host hypervisor is that matters, it's what the guest OS is that matters. Even if the host is ESXi, you won't be able to use Windows Sandbox (or any other virtualization-based software) under a Windows guest until later this year. But maybe I just stumbled upon the only software incompatibility in the whole market.WaltC - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Let's hope the Intel stuff does "just work" after having been milked for so long...;) It should certainly be "mature" by now, eh? And sure, I guess Linus Torvalds is a noob when it comes to CPUs, sure. What does he know?--he probably picked up AMD and rejected Intel because he enjoys all the "weird stuff that has no resolution in sight"--you betcha. BTW, Intel doesn't make anything competitive with TR--TR is a "prosumer" product. Spread that around to the very few OEMs who sell $10k Intel processors these days...;) You might want to consider getting over your childish pique concerning AMD, guy, seriously. It's rather silly. AMD is here and is Intel's worst nightmare, and that will not be changing anytime soon. All that remains to be seen is how long it will take Intel to catch up to AMD *this time*...that is, if AMD allows that to happen in the first place, imo. AMD now is firmly ensconced as a moving target architecturally--going to be an order of magnitude more difficult for Intel from now on. Pushing Intel onto a completely new architecture is just what Intel needs--maybe with a new design from the ground up like AMD's Zen architectures--because it should enable Intel to design out all the security flaws its *current* architectures have developed a sizable reputation for having! That's not something any CPU maker wants! Talk about "no resolution in sight"--the only resolution for Intel's myriad security flaws is a brand-new, ground-up architecture. Nothing else will do--right, Intel? Atta' boy--go get' um...;)Santoval - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
"maybe with a new design from the ground up like AMD's Zen architectures"That is already on Intel's schedule and in fact it was announced right when Intel hired Jim Keller. I am referring to Ocean Cove, the apparent successor of Golden Cove (the "big" core of Alder Lake). Ostensibly the CPUs with Ocean Cove cores are going to be called Meteor Lake. It is also supposed to be Intel's first 7nm CPU (it will be fabbed either at Intel's 7nm node or -if Intel craps the bed completely- at TSMC's 4/5nm node).
I have no idea if Jim Keller's sudden departure will affect or delay the release of Ocean Cove / Meteor Lake but my guess is that it will. Therefore, on top of the 6-month delay of 7nm and the 12-month delay of high enough yields at 7nm the earliest Meteor Lake could be released is early 2024 - assuming no further delays. So it will compete against either Zen 5 or 6.
ZoZo - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
"You might want to consider getting over your childish pique concerning AMD, guy, seriously. It's rather silly. AMD is here and is Intel's worst nightmare"That's the language of someone who's blindly cheering for his underdog team at a sports contest. There's no conversation to be had around that, it just discredits everything you might want to say.
Joe Braga - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
The main fault in this case is MicrosoftSantoval - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Virtualization is tricky for Ryzen, but it is not tricky for Threadripper and it is *certainly* not tricky for Epyc. AMD need to fix their shit in order to successfully compete in this market because it's an utter shame if workstation and server customers prefer Intel due to its "robustness" alone.Santoval - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
p.s. Though, come to think about it, there is nothing "robust" about Intel's multiple security flaws. These matter to server buyers because if things go sideways due to these flaws they are liable to lawsuits by their customers and they can also suffer damage to the reputation and trustworthiness of their company.Santoval - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
p.s. By the way, the "strange performance behaviors that don't happen on Intel (no resolution in sight)" bit was way too vague and arbitrary. As stated it means nothing, so could you please clarify?ZoZo - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
I did some benchmarks under Linux, and some of them (a small minority) showed some drastic performance drops when run in virtual machines under KVM (kernel 5.7), as much as 80% in one case. That did not happen when I tested with a Xeon W-2295 before. I spent hours trying to find what was wrong, tinkering with many variations of settings for the VMs. Turns out switching from KVM to ESXi 7.0 kind of fixed the problem. So most probably not a problem with the silicon, but it still showed me that software support can be shaky in some areas.eek2121 - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Honestly, I tend to look past a lot of the defenses for Intel, but claiming perf/watt doesn't matter? At least I know you aren't in IT. I deal with a very large amount of companies where the difference of a single watt can determine whether dozens of people have jobs or not. Why? because a single server may not matter much, but thousands? they matter a lot .ZoZo - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
I'm not trying to defend Intel, what is it with all you binary-thinking people. I just bought AMD for myself and after some struggle am finally happy with it. I'm only telling what I suspect could be a reason to still pick Intel today, after what I've experienced with an AMD platform.Where did I say that performance/watt didn't matter? Please, point it out.
I said it's not just about that, meaning that it's not the only thing that might need to be considered.
It's getting annoying to have to explain to compensate for poor reading skills.
WaltC - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Yes, and how do we know it hasn't changed already?...;) I think it has. Hallelujah, it's about time! This article reminds me of the Intel monopoly Halcyon days when Intel had no high-end x86 competition--the years after the Operon/A64 peak but prior to the AMD Zen debut with Zen 2 a year ago. Let's hope that Intel would iron out most problems in its architectures after essentially rehashing them for many years...;) Milking the cow until the cow ran dry...! Time for something new, Intel..chop, chop...!yankeeDDL - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
6000 premium for more socket support, seems precisely one of those tricks played by a market monopolist that I am glad to see ending.Spunjji - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Indeed. One wonders what the point of setting the price that much higher really is if, in fact, none of their customers ever actually pay that price. Perhaps it's merely to make giving "discounts" that much easier, and/or to provide an opportunity to milk the wealthiest customers.MrVibrato - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
You are probably right. It is very likely a sales tactic. Those CPUs are not sold in retail (at least not in quantities), but as part of enterprise/complex sales, where contracts (including prices) are negotiated. It is good negotation tactic for a seller to start with a high(er) price. Everyone who ever visited a bazar and haggled with a merchant knows how it goes.And despite having no evidence or experience of Intels approach to sales and negotation, i doubt that anyone who buys more than a handful of those puppies would pay anything close to the listed price...yankeeDDL - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
I agree, in general. It is the same practice that most specialized SW vendors use: list prices are insane, and then you get a massive discount. Trouble is: when things get rough these discounts tend to shrink rapidly, because they can.Spunjji - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Exactly that. It's also a way of applying paradoxically high price penalties to smaller and/or less tech-literate buyers. I used to work for an IT reseller and it was amazing how many customers we picked up who had previously been paying list price for all of their purchases - hardware *and* software.Revv233 - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
*this*When you are selling that new server to the end user you can show a discount under Intel's published price even after you've got your markup in there.
mrvco - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Definitely. Street price for any given entity is what matters or should matter. I doubt there is a reliable way to smoke out the actual price paid for the 8280 without violating enterprise NDAs, but I have to assume that the 6285 price is a reflection of the competitive pressure being applied by AMD and Epyc and the 8280 pricing has been similarly on a per account basis, just in case there are still some suckers out there.mrvco - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
similarly --> adjusted <-- on aDuncan Macdonald - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
There is one reason for the 6258R - Intel needs something at least remotely competitive to the EPYC Rome CPUs. For 1 or 2 socket servers the 8280 is far more expensive than AMD's EPYC 7742 while having less performance (due to 28 cores vs 64 and 38.5MB L3 cache vs 256MB)yankeeDDL - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
So, instead of lowering the price they make a crippled sku at 40% of the price.I said in a previous comment: they do it because they can. Hopefully though, not for so much longer.
danbob999 - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
AMD doesn't have anything in the 8 socket configuration. That leaves Intel pretty much a monopoly. In a typical monopolistic behavior, they raise prices. Nothing new here.The only thing is that a dual socket EPYC might outperform a 4 socket Xeon. So Intel need 8 sockets to take the performance crown.
SSNSeawolf - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Articles like this are important, to help validate that the chips do, in fact, perform similarly. Appreciate that you went through the work to run the tests.One small noteworthy difference is that the 6358R has one less UPI link, to go along with the 2P support. I'm curious about the power cos of each UPI link at idle (here in 1P configuration), but eyeballing the y-cruncher chart at the start it appears trivial.
Duncan Macdonald - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
It is probably the same silicon - just with a fuse blown to disable the UPI link and restrict it to 2 sockets.Krysto - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Buy the 32-core AMD Epyc?Tomatotech - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Nice article. I note from the CPU-Z screenshot on the first page one of the few differences is the older chip has a core speed of 997mhz with a 10x multiplier, and the the new chip is at 1097mhz with a 11x multiplier.That seems worth commenting on, but it wasn’t discussed in the article?
coschizza - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Si the same from 10 to 40Slash3 - Thursday, August 13, 2020 - link
That's just a byproduct of an idling desktop. They'll float at low multipliers until a load is presented, and the reported frequency in each shot is, in this case, irrelevant.Spunjji - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
My biggest take-home from this:Intel's CPU naming scheme is worse than ever and needs to die in a fire.
Seriously - here we have two near-identical CPUs, the sole difference being the extent of their multi-socket capability, and the only part of their name they have in common is "Xeon".
shabby - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Maybe its me but this just seems like a pointless article.romrunning - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Would have been nice to see AMD's EPYC 7742 processor results with those two Xeons.eastcoast_pete - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
This is more a comment on a number of other comments here: When it comes to mission-critical servers, reliability and availability is often if not always the # 1 criterion. Not sheer processing power, or even efficiency or price. That is where AMD must invest and show commitment, and to the whole package: CPU, chip set, software support. Once the perception on Intel with Xeon always being the safer choice is gone, AMD will shift a lot more EPYCs and related products.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
I’m glad this article made it clear that AMD doesn’t exist.I would have thought that EPYC would have been presented in the benchmarks to show the alternative to Intel competing with itself but what do so know?
Tomatotech - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
Guess who didn’t read the article? Especially the last paragraph?Mitch89 - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
You’d also think people would read the whole article before making such remarks. From the article:“
If you’re wondering where the 6258R stacks up against AMD, we’re in the process of re-testing the parts we have on hand as we go through our regression testing. The EPYC 7542 is probably the best comparison point (32C, 2.9-3.4 GHz, 225W, $3400), however we’ll have to look into getting one of those.”
defaultluser - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
This isn't new from Intel: in the past, they've always charged double for the largest officially-supported socket-count bump.But since they started offering more than 4 sockets, the jump between the two has gotten ludicrous. But yes, always a good idea to check your required socket count before you jump in.
Oxford Guy - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
And the fact that there is that other company now offering competitive products. Hmm... what was it called again? I looked at the second page of the article for benchmarks but didn’t find any.Tomatotech - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
Now I see your issue. There’s three pages, not two. The answer you seek is on the third page.Holliday75 - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Oxford might want to file an injunction against his name. If successful he will just be known as, Guy.realbabilu - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Raise a new question: single server with 8 socketed 8280 vs 4 server clustered 2 socketed 6258R.Performance / price wise total cost and performance/wattage consumption.
Joe Braga - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Why Don't migrate to AMD Epyc Platform that has Octa channel in the full stack of products from 8core Cpu to 64Core cpuToadster - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
I think you're missing that the 6258R is 2UPI vs 3UPI on the Platinum SKU https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compar...Billy Tallis - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
How many 2S motherboards actually wire up all three UPI links between two sockets? I've seen at least one Intel slide indicating it's a supported configuration, but most diagrams seem to show just two UPI links in use for 2S boards.rpg1966 - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
"were designed to *bolder up* Intel’s server offerings"Did you mean "bolster"?
Meteor2 - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
Probably. Ian's articles always need a little decoding.Slash3 - Thursday, August 13, 2020 - link
I hate to admit that Ive gotten accustomed to a bit of typical Anandtech word salad.croc - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Just can't let it go, really. Bolder up? What does that even mean?[email protected] - Friday, August 7, 2020 - link
Great article. Great posts. Max sockets is a secondary issue given all other things remain the same. However most posts have turned this into an INTEL / AMD thing. And rightly so. Given that cloud services charge by the Mhz/Ghz, I am leaning to AMD.GreenReaper - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
A small correction: the subheading states "save $$$", but it should actually be "save $$$$".Oxford Guy - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
"However most posts have turned this into an INTEL / AMD thing. And rightly so."There is no credible reason to not include AMD in the benchmarks. The headline also has this alternate reality where AMD isn't competing.
ProDigit - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
Or.. just get a $400 Ryzen 3900x, which also accepts registered ddr. Same multi core performance, or better, at 150W.tyger11 - Sunday, August 9, 2020 - link
An even better way to save: buy AMD.It'll be “interesting” when Intel's 20GB data dump results in even more security issues.
Samus - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
I don't think they are shooting themselves in the foot. Intel knows this is necessary. Even without EPYC benchmarks we know the $10k part isn't going to be anywhere competitive.Squuiid - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
This is just an adjustment to market pressures (AMD...cough) while saving face and keeping the price for the Platinum relatively unchanged.jhh - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
One other difference I noticed in ARK is that the 8280 has T-Case of 84 degrees C, while the 6258R is limited to 74 degrees C. I'm not sure how to interpret this, if they had a batch of 8280 which didn't work at 84, or if the heat dissipation from the silicon to case is not as good, or something totally different. Or nothing at all, and Intel picked some innocuous thing to make a gratuitous difference in specs, without changing the chip at all.