Power Determinism Mode Still Proves Beneficial For AMD EPYC 9005 Performance
Those wishing to see even more AMD performance vs. power determinism mode benchmark data, all of my individual performance benchmark and power consumption / performance-per-Watt data is available via this result page for the 148 tests in full.
For the 96-core EPYC 9655 Zen 5 processor the power determinism mode increased the performance by about 5%. For the EPYC 9755 128-core 500 Watt processor the power determinism mode saw around a 2% increase overall.
For the CPU power consumption over the entire span of testing, with the EPYC 9655 switching to the power determinism mode led the average CPU power consumption to go from 253 to 281 Watts. So around an 11% increase to CPU power for around a 5% increase in performance, but that's not unexpected given prior power determinism testing with previous generation AMD EPYC processors. The EPYC 9755 CPU power consumption average only went up by 6 Watts but it saw a smaller improvement overall from the power determinism mode.
Long story short, the AMD power/performance determinism mode remains a great option for EPYC servers and continues to be offered with new EPYC 9005 series processors. For HPC and other demanding environments where willing to accept slightly higher power use and additional cooling considerations can enjoy the power determinism mode for ensuring they are leaving no performance untapped. The performance determinism mode is nice for a default mode and delivering consistent performance with optimal power efficiency. These results are similar to what was seen with prior AMD EPYC processors and still proves to be a worthwhile consideration for new EPYC server deployments.
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