Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks Review

Earlier this week in the launch-day Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids review/benchmarks I unfortunately wasn’t able to provide any CPU power consumption and performance-per-Watt benchmarks due a Linux kernel issue and the minimal time ahead of launch for testing. I’ve now repeated the Xeon 6980P benchmarking on the Linux 6.8 kernel of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with power monitoring working and have those power efficiency numbers to share today for how Granite Rapids compares to prior Emerald Rapids / Sapphire Rapids / Ice Lake and against the current AMD EPYC Bergamo/Genoa(X) competition.

Today’s article is focused on looking at the power efficiency / performance-per-Watt of the Xeon 6980P dual socket server with MRDIMM-8800MT/s compared to prior Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the AMD EPYC competition. The same benchmarks run as found on launch date but repeating the Xeon 6980P benchmarks while using Linux 6.8 with working RAPL/PowerCap sensor monitoring for recording the dual socket (combined) power consumption.

There are no AC wall power “system power consumption” numbers due to Intel AvenueCity being a reference server without tuned fan curves, etc. Both Intel and AMD do not recommend comparing total server power consumption when using reference platforms since they are not representative of retail OEM/ODM servers.

It is also worth reminding readers that now with Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids, Intel is using Optimized Power Mode by default for their processors.

The processors for this Linux server CPU power efficiency comparison included:

– Xeon Platinum 8380 2P “Ice Lake”

– Xeon Platinum 8490H 2P “Sapphire Rapids”

– Xeon Max 9468 2P “Sapphire Rapids”

– Xeon Max 9480 2P “Sapphire Rapids”

– Xeon Platinum 8592+ 2P “Emerald Rapids”

– Xeon 6766E 2P “Sierra Forest”

– Xeon 6780E 2P “Sierra Forest”

– Xeon 6980P 2P “Granite Rapids”

– EPYC 9654 2P “Genoa”

– EPYC 9684X 2P “Genoa-X”

– EPYC 9754 2P “Bergamo”

All processors were tested with their maximum number of memory channels and at maximum rated speed. As mentioned, the Xeon 6980P were tested using MRDIMM 8800 MT/s while DDR5-6400 Granite Rapids benchmarks will come soon on Phoronix for putting it into perspective how much MRDIMMs are helping the Xeon 6900P performance.

The Intel Xeon 6980P as a reminder is a 128 core / 256 thread part with a 2.0GHz base clock, 3.2GHz all-core turbo frequency, 504MB L3 cache, and a 500 Watt TDP. The 500 Watt TDP of the Xeon 6980P is up from the 350 Watt TDP found with the Xeon Platinum 8592+ (Emerald Rapids) or the 330 Watts with the Xeon 6780E Sierra Forest 144 E-core processor.