Intel undermines AMD's new EPYC Server Lineup performance in its Official Xeon SP Slide Deck

[FinnHallqvist]

On Intel's launch of their newest Xeon Sp Server Lineup, Intel presented their new features and improvements which they implemented in their new processors. However they did not only talk about their own features and what makes them great, but what makes them better than their competitors EPYC/Ryzen processors.

 

Here are the most important comparisons made by Intel and TechPowerUp's take on them:

Spoiler

 

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On SMT implementation between AMD's SMT and Intel's HT, Intel is basically comparing a $2,200 8-core Xeon to AMD's usually $499 Ryzen 7 1800X. They are correct in terms of core parity there, at least, but I think it goes more against Intel's customer fleecing in core/price ratios than anything else. And it's certainly a coincidence that for Intel to achieve these SMT implementation scaling numbers, which paints them in good light, they had to down-clock the Ryzen 1800X to 2.2 GHz. So, yes. Even though independent review sites have put AMD's EPYC 7601 SMT-powered improvement in various workloads at a 24% average improvement, and Intel's Xeon 8176 falls short of that at 19.58% (even rounding AMD's score down and Intel's up, that's still how big the gap is.)

 

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Here, Intel is comparing their server-grade processors with AMD's Ryzen, desktop processors gaming woes, which really, is one of the best examples of comparing apples to oranges that I've seen in a long time. So AMD's server platform will require optimizations as well because Ryzen did, for incomparably different workloads? History does inform the future, but not to the extent that Intel is putting it here to, certainly. Putting things in the same perspective, is Intel saying that their Xeon ecosystem sees gaming-specific optimizations?

 

And now for grand finale:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

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Ah, the "Glued-together" dies. Let's forget how AMD's Zen cores actually look like they were architected from the get-go for modularity and scaling, which has allowed the company to keep die-sizes to a minimum and yields to a maximum. This means that from a same-sized wafer, AMD can make more Ryzen/EPYC processors (because yes, that's the beauty of it, they're almost interchangeable), and in all likelihood, have more of those full-fledged dies without any defects that affect yields.

This is one of the reasons why AMD is able to offer an unlocked, true 8-core, 16-thread CPU in the Ryzen 7 1700 at less than Intel's 4-core, 8-thread i7 7700K (which consumes more power) - but also because AMD is democratizing access to cores while Intel maximized profits at the consumer's cost for almost a decade. And Infinity Fabric, which AMD also has implemented in their Vega architecture and will probably be used for the company's Zen-based APUs and next-gen Navi graphics architecture, is only glue. Intel would certainly like to be so lucky, since AMD's Infinity Fabric actually delivers more bandwidth than their UPI (Ultra Path Interconnect.)

 

 

My opinion on those claims: I think Intel are concerned about maintaining their (almost complete) marketshare on the server market and tried to answer EPYC with this kind of information. I think it is very misleading to do such a presentation, as it is an unfair (and wrong ^{glued together} ) portrayal of the performance jump which AMD made from Bulldozer/Piledriver to Ryzen. It is laughable that such a term even made it into an official presentation of Intel, as it can be taken as an insult to AMD's work on their Infinity Fabric and Ryzen.

 

Sources: https://www.techpowerup.com/235092/intel-says-amd-epyc-processors-glued-together-in-official-slide-deck

 

[Bcat00]

Yawnnnn you must be really bored to care about a slide.

[tom_w141]

Ah man their Xeon beats a mainstream desktop cpu? Who'da guessed?

 

This is some seriously desperate marketing from Intel  pretty devious

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

So Intel finally lowered their level to AMDs.

How pathetic, you're just as pathetic as AMD now Intel.

[tom_w141]

3 minutes ago, FinnHallqvist said:

think it is very misleading to do such a presentation, as it is an unfair (and wrong ^{glued together} ) portrayal of the performance jump which AMD made from Bulldozer/Piledriver to Ryzen

They know they are in the shit so they are just slinging mud now. Hoping to do some damage to AMD's rep.

[Valentyn]

1 minute ago, tom_w141 said:

They know they are in the shit so they are just slinging mud now. Hoping to do some damage to AMD's rep.

Having seen Anandtech's Epyc vs Xeon review; it's safe to say Intel are finally worried. 

Now the mud slinging starts.

I like how they say Epyc is just using desktop dies; when it's the other way around. Zen is primarily for enterprise and servers and was designed as such; and scalability. Ryzen is the stepped down version of that essentially.

Raevenlord at TPU digging into those slides and Intel though; and it feels deserved considering Intel are just mud slinging now.

 

Did they higher Radeon Technology Group's PR people for those slides?

[Lord Nicoll]

29 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

Having seen Anandtech's Epyc vs Xeon review; it's safe to say Intel are finally worried. 

Now the mud slinging starts.

I like how they say Epyc is just using desktop dies; when it's the other way around. Zen is primarily for enterprise and servers and was designed as such; and scalability. Ryzen is the stepped down version of that essentially.

Raevenlord at TPU digging into those slides and Intel though; and it feels deserved considering Intel are just mud slinging now.

 

Did they higher Radeon Technology Group's PR people for those slides?

as if I7's and i9's aren't also, the newer i7's and i9's on LGA 2066 get fucked over by a 5GHz i7 7700K in single threaded and gaming tasks since Kabylake isn't built from server architecture. Intel is scared because AMD just landed 2 hits with their 230mm guns and intel is starting to take on water, and that third cannon is just about to put another hole in her hull. 

[tom_w141]

1 minute ago, Lord Nicoll said:

third cannon is just about to put another hole in her hull

Threadripperrrrrrrr

[Lord Nicoll]

Just now, tom_w141 said:

Threadripperrrrrrrr

I meant EPYC, so it might as well be third and fourth. Intel makes most of it's money from the two socket server market, if AMD comes in and steals that Intel won't be viable as a company for much longer. Intel is REALLY bad at managing its money, it makes a lot of it and does stupid shit with it.

[tom_w141]

Just now, Lord Nicoll said:

Intel is REALLY bad at managing its money, it makes a lot of it and does stupid shit with it.

*looks at Intel Atom*

[Lord Nicoll]

Just now, tom_w141 said:

*looks at Intel Atom*

As bad as Atoms are, I meant the terrible purchases they make, like the recent israeli autonomous vehicle they bought for for like 15 billion, Mobileye I think it was called, I bet you that will be a waste of money and will probably be the last dumb thing Intel ever buys. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

This is "the red ed bar taller than green bar according to unlabeled chart" style of marketing 

 

I love the last two, which basically read: "Xeon? Great! EPYC? It's probably^TM going to suck"  

[Valentyn]

4 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

This is "the red ed bar taller than green bar according to unlabeled chart" style of marketing 

 

I love the last two, which basically read: "Xeon? Great! EPYC? It's probably^TM going to suck"  

I really like this slide. Yeah Zen needs optimizations; and even without it Epyc is kicking arse in performance to price, and performance to watt compared to Xeons.

 

 

 

TPU response lol

 

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So essentially, AMD has 8 more cores, 16 more threads, and delivers 16% more performance than Intel's e5-2699 system, and 32% more performance than Intel's "non glued-together" Xeon 8176. And it does that while consuming 23% less power than the Xeon e5-2699, and 28% less than the Xeon 8176. Not too shabby. I'll take my CPUs with this kind of glue any day.

 

[PCIsMasterRace]

Its interesting to think that Intel's enthusiast chips are basically "cut-apart" Xeon's.

 

I can smell Intel's fear over the internet.

[tsk]

I'm kind of enjoying seeing Intel in panic mode, they've been in the recliner for far too long.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

I really like this slide. Yeah Zen needs optimizations; and even without it Epyc is kicking arse in performance to price, and performance to watt compared to Xeons.

 

 

Yeah, I meant that one and the one with the tick boxes (the very last one hadn't loaded ).

 

I love the "it's a re-purposed gaming CPU!" message 

[Brainless906]

This is some quality shitposting on intels part.

10/10 marketing

brb buying 300 xeons

[Valentyn]

2 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Yeah, I meant that one and the one with the tick boxes (the very last one hadn't loaded ).

 

I love the "it's a re-purposed gaming CPU!" message 

Yup, especially since it's a repackaged server CPU for desktop and gaming lol.
 

Oh, look Intel doing the same with their X79, x99, x299 as well.

[Lord Nicoll]

My friend works in a data centre, I can't tell anything about it, legality and such, it's not a big company but it does contractor work for the big ones, he can't wait for EPYC, and looks forward to having to pay less than with Intel, and possibly lower power usage and a better eco-system as it grows fresh, rather than evolve over the course of 10 years. If he has hope for AMD, so do I, since he works with this crap daily. 

[porina]

I'm sure those looking to drop serious cash will likely review the available options for their workload and choose accordingly. Generic statements only go so far, but fall short if it doesn't apply to what you want to do.

 

So making such a generic statement, Ryzen in general is pretty effective for many uses, and it can only improve as software further optimises for it. There are some areas where it is weak, in particular AVX2, and I believe it is missing AVX512 totally.

 

Side comment: the power comparisons, has anyone run performance per watt measurements? I'm concerned because if you look only at TDP it will be misleading, as Intel's may tend to be higher due to much higher AVX2 performance, although this may not be so much a case as there is more clock adjusting going on than with earlier desktop CPUs. You'd have to measure power for a given task to have a representative picture. Even AMD's Ryzen pre-release press demos showed them being roughly performance per watt comparable to Broadwell-E.

[Taf the Ghost]

Saw this cropped up in a few places, was tempted to post. Headline really should be, "Intel's desperate plea to hire AMD's Memelord PR guy".  You've got to go either full Memelord with some stuff or fully professional. Half-way just looks petty.  

 

Intel's one major advantage is the Ecosystem, but even that isn't presented too well. Intel has all of those other aspects to their platforms that they sell that integrate together. This really just looks pathetic.

 

Lastly, as everyone knows, the "desktop" CPU Skylake-X *is* their Xeons. When advertising to the Tech-literate, it's best not to say stupid things like that.

[tom_w141]

Undercover at Intel:

 

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, porina said:

I'm sure those looking to drop serious cash will likely review the available options for their workload and choose accordingly. Generic statements only go so far, but fall short if it doesn't apply to what you want to do.

 

So making such a generic statement, Ryzen in general is pretty effective for many uses, and it can only improve as software further optimises for it. There are some areas where it is weak, in particular AVX2, and I believe it is missing AVX512 totally.

 

Side comment: the power comparisons, has anyone run performance per watt measurements? I'm concerned because if you look only at TDP it will be misleading, as Intel's may tend to be higher due to much higher AVX2 performance, although this may not be so much a case as there is more clock adjusting going on than with earlier desktop CPUs. You'd have to measure power for a given task to have a representative picture. Even AMD's Ryzen pre-release press demos showed them being roughly performance per watt comparable to Broadwell-E.

On Perf/Watt, it's going to be by Use Case, but generally Epyc will come out ahead unless it's an AVX512 load. At least from the first run of basic testing we've gotten.

[goodtofufriday]

10 minutes ago, Lord Nicoll said:

My friend works in a data centre, I can't tell anything about it, legality and such, it's not a big company but it does contractor work for the big ones, he can't wait for EPYC, and looks forward to having to pay less than with Intel, and possibly lower power usage and a better eco-system as it grows fresh, rather than evolve over the course of 10 years. If he has hope for AMD, so do I, since he works with this crap daily. 

I wish my company could have held out a bit longer. But we moved officies sooner than expected and needed to upgrade in September. Hopefully I can setup a satellite office to try out epyc. 

[Lord Nicoll]

6 minutes ago, tom_w141 said:

Undercover at Intel:

 

X299 isn't that hot