AMD EPYC 8635P "Sorano" Benchmarks: Significant Upgrade Opportunity For EPYC 8004 Servers
AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" is much better suited for HPC workloads due to the higher core/thread counts and twelve DDR5-6400 memory channels, but even with high performance computing workloads on EPYC Sorano are some pretty great results.
Very nice generational gains going from the top-end EPYC 8004 CPU to the new EPYC 8005 series. Whether you are upgrading an existing AMD EPYC SP6 server or buying a new server, the AMD EPYC 8635P offered a significant performance upgrade over the prior EPYC 8534P flagship processor.
With the EPYC 8635P at the top-end of Sorano is thus the 20 additional cores -- Zen 5 rather than Zen 4 -- along with 256MB of additional cache, +1.4GHz maximum boost clock, and +0.35GHz on the all-core boost speed all while having just a 25 Watt increase to the default TDP. In practice across more than 150 benchmarks the EPYC 8635P average CPU power consumption was 162 Watts up from 118 Watts with the EPYC 8534P with the mix of single and multi-threaded workloads and the software tested spanning many different problem domains. The peak CPU power consumption recorded on the EPYC 8635P was 220 Watts, right below the advertised 225 Watt default TDP.
On a geo mean for all the completed benchmark results, the top-end Siena to Sorano upgrade meant 51% better performance across the wide variety of benchmarks conducted. With the geo mean showing 51% better performance while the average CPU power consumption being up by 37% still puts the flagship Sorano processor coming out ahead in performance-per-Watt.
It's too bad that the Intel Xeon 6700 Granite Rapids review hardware remains elusive, but going off this data from the EPYC 8635P and a more than 50% generational gain on the geo mean from top-end Siena to Sorano, the AMD EPYC 8005 series line-up should be positioned very well to compete. The Intel Xeon 6700P series goes up to 86 cores with the Xeon 6788P but there the maximum turbo frequency of 3.6GHz is well below the maximum 4.5GHz boost clock of the EPYC 8635P, 336MB cache versus 384MB with the Sorano CPU, and that Xeon CPU having a 350 Watt TDP well above that of the respected 225 Watts with the EPYC 8635P.
Pricing is difficult to compare in today's environment but going off list prices, the EPYC 8635P comes in at $5,799 USD where as the Xeon 6788P is $21,280. Or where listed at online retailers in-stock, the Xeon 6788P $31,600 USD right now at NewEgg. Or the EPYC 8635P can be found at ProVantage and other known Internet retailers for around $13k.
Whether you are looking to upgrade an existing AMD EPYC 8004 (Siena) server or acquiring a brand new AMD Socket SP6 server, the EPYC 8635P boasts quite a lot more compute potential over the still venerable EPYC 8534P. Those wishing to go through all of my benchmark data in full for EPYC 8534P vs. EPYC 8635P can find them via this result page.
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