AMD 32-core / 64-thread EPYC 7452 7 nm CPU spotted in benchmarks, 2X faster than similarly-priced Intel chips

The new EPYC “Rome” 7 nm server CPUs from AMD are expected to launch in Q3 2019 and, according to some leaked benchmarks coming from OpenBenchmarking, these chips appear to be considerably faster in most tests compared to Intel’s existing Xeon processors. The benchmarks compare AMD’s 32-core EPYC 7452 models with Intel’s 20-core Xeon Gold 6148, so, at first glance, this might not be a fair comparison, but keep in mind that the new EPYC CPU is expected to have a similar price to the Intel chip (around US$3,000). The Xeon family does not even have a 32-core chip as of yet. The highest core count is held by the Xeon Platinum 8289 with 28 cores, which costs around US$10,000.

Intel claimed that AMD is not using proper optimization for the Xeon CPUs when releasing benchmarks. The OpenBenchmarking site is not endorsed by either of the two competing companies so it should provide a more objective assessment. Consequently, out of the 6 tests included in the test suite, four were dominated by AMD’s chip and only 2 proved the superiority of the Intel model. Also of note here is that all the tests have been performed on dual-CPU systems.

AMD also managed to raise the base clocks to 2.35 GHz from the 2.0 GHz clocks on the previous “Naples” 14 nm generation. To put things into perspective, AMD also announced that it will be launching a 64-core / 128-thread model, which will most likely be priced close to US$10,000, but will offer 4X the performance compared to Intel’s top Xeon processors with the same price point.