AMD 7nm EPYC 64-Core CPU Benchmark Leaks Serving Intel Xeon Smack Down

AMD has been on the attack in the CPU war over the last several months as its Ryzen consumer CPUs and EPYC server CPUs continue to put pressure on Intel. We recently talked about the surge in EPYC server CPU sales forcing Intel to cut prices on its Xeon parts to better compete. While the current EPYC processors are doing very well, some benchmarks have surfaced that are allegedly from an upcoming EPYC 7nm "Rome" server processor.

The benchmarks alleged to be from the chip were posted over at Chiphell, and the results are claimed to be from an engineering sample Rome server processor. AMD has previously confirmed it would sample Rome in the second half of 2018. You can see the benchmark results below; the performance is impressive, if accurate. While the name of the processor in the benchmark is scratched out, the results show very impressive Cinebench R15 multi-thread performance of 12,587. To compare a standard Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX scores about 5,500 points in the same benchmark.

Likewise, an Intel Xeon X5650 running at 2.66GHz is racking up only 1,279 points on the same test. An EPYC 7601 (32-core) processor scores about 6,000 points in this benchmark (just under half the score fo the new 7nm chip). WCCFTech notes that part of the reason why new EPYC parts is scaling a bit higher on this benchmark than the Ryzen Threadripper parts has to do with EPYC supporting octa-channel memory while Ryzen Threadripper supports quad-channel memory. There are likely other architectural optimizations and clock speed improvements that are adding to this generational uplift in performance. If this 7nm EPYC benchmark is real, it will be one excellent performer for server workloads.

The image of the CPU shows a processor that appears to be the same basic dimensions as existing EPYC processors (which are built on 14nm process technology). Official details on the new 7nm EPYC chip is expected at CES 2019.