Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP Xeon Platinum ES CPUs Fail To Impress Against EPYC Milan (X) & Last-Gen Xeons In Leaked Benchmarks

Intel's Sapphire Rapids-SP Xeon Platinum CPUs that leaked out yesterday have now been tested in a range of benchmarks but fail to impress when compared to AMD's EPYC & even older Intel Xeon chips.

Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP Xeon Platinum ES CPUs Tested In Dual Socket Configuration, Lackluster Performance So Far Against AMD's EPYC CPUs

In yesterday's leak, we reported how the latest Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP Xeon Platinum CPUs in ES state consume 350W of power at PL1 and 420W of power at PL2 limits. The CPU itself, which is a Xeon Platinum 8476 or Xeon Platinum 8480, is a 56 core part with 112 threads based on the Golden Cove core architecture, & and comes with 112 MB of L2 & 105 MB of L3 cache, and features clock speeds of up to 3.7 GHz (3.3 GHz all-core). Now, these aren't the final clocks but the power figures are definitely worrisome for Intel's upcoming part.

Yuuki_Ans has now provided benchmarks for the same Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP ES CPU against Intel's Cascade Lake Xeon 8280L (8S Config), Ice Lake Xeon 8380 (2S Config), EPYC 7763 (2P config), and EPYC 7773X (2P config). The Sapphire Rapids-SP chips were also running a dual-socket config with 64 GB of DDR5-4800 memory. The rest of the platforms were running DDR4 platforms at the max specs that the platforms can support, respectively.

As for the benchmarks, In single-core, the Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP CPU did show a little boost over the Ice Lake-SP chips but was beaten by AMD's EPYC Milan parts in 4 out of 6 benchmarks. Despite the new Golden Cove architecture, the CPU was only able to match the Zen 3 server chips in 1T CPU benches. In multi-threaded benchmarks, the AMD EPYC Milan lineup destroyed the Intel Sapphire Rapids-SP chips outright. Just for comparison's sake, in CPU-z, the AMD EPYC Milan CPU ran at up to 2.3x faster performance than the unreleased Intel chip.

Interestingly, the CPU does deliver much higher performance in the CPU-z AVX-512 tests but we know that AVX-512 makes the CPU consume way more power and that could lead to power figures nearing the 700-750W BIOS limit. This is also why the AVX-512 clock speeds are rated much lower due to their intensity on each individual core. AVX-512 has been used in the past by Intel to inflate their benchmark numbers and while there are certain HPC workloads where the tech is useful, it isn't widely adopted and as such, non-AVX-512 workloads will benefit from standard core compute performance more.

Although this is an ES chip and we expect performance to improve significantly for the Sapphire Rapids-SP chip in the QS state, the final chip may still be only competitive against AMD's EPYC Milan parts while it will be launching at the same time when AMD will come out guns blazing with its next-generation EPYC Genoa 7004 CPUs. With such high power draw and not enough performance at hand, it looks like Intel will be getting a serious beating in the server segment by AMD, something that has been the case over the past few generations.

Intel Xeon CPU Families (Preliminary):

Family Branding	Coral Rapids	Diamond Rapids	Clearwater Forest	Granite Rapids	Sierra Forest	Emerald Rapids	Sapphire Rapids	Ice Lake-SP	Cooper Lake-SP	Cascade Lake-SP/AP	Skylake-SP
Process Node	Intel 14A?	Intel 18A-P	Intel 18A	Intel 3	Intel 3	Intel 7	Intel 7	10nm+	14nm++	14nm++	14nm+
Platform Name	TBD	Intel Oak Stream	Intel Birch Stream	Intel Birch Stream	Intel Mountain Stream Intel Birch Stream	Intel Eagle Stream	Intel Eagle Stream	Intel Whitley	Intel Cedar Island	Intel Purley	Intel Purley
Core Architecture	TBD	Panther Cove-X	Darkmont	Redwood Cove	Sierra Glen	Raptor Cove	Golden Cove	Sunny Cove	Cascade Lake	Cascade Lake	Skylake
MCP (Multi-Chip Package) SKUs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Socket	TBD	LGA XXXX / 9324	LGA 4710 / 7529	LGA 4710 / 7529	LGA 4710 / 7529	LGA 4677	LGA 4677	LGA 4189	LGA 4189	LGA 3647	LGA 3647
Max Core Count	TBD	Up To 192 P-Cores	Up To 288	Up To 128	Up To 288	Up To 64?	Up To 56	Up To 40	Up To 28	Up To 28	Up To 28
Max Thread Count	TBD	Up To 192	Up To 288	Up To 256	Up To 288	Up To 128	Up To 112	Up To 80	Up To 56	Up To 56	Up To 56
Max L3 Cache	TBD	TBD	TBD	480 MB L3	108 MB L3	320 MB L3	105 MB L3	60 MB L3	38.5 MB L3	38.5 MB L3	38.5 MB L3
Memory Support	TBD	Up To 16-Channel DDR5-9000+	Up To 12-Channel DDR5-8000	Up To 12-Channel DDR5-6400 MCR-8800	Up To 12-Channel DDR5-6400	Up To 8-Channel DDR5-5600	Up To 8-Channel DDR5-4800	Up To 8-Channel DDR4-3200	Up To 6-Channel DDR4-3200	DDR4-2933 6-Channel	DDR4-2666 6-Channel
PCIe Gen Support	PCIe 6.0	PCIe 6.0	PCIe 5.0 (96 Lanes)	PCIe 5.0 (136 Lanes)	PCIe 5.0 (88Lanes)	PCIe 5.0 (80 Lanes)	PCIe 5.0 (80 lanes)	PCIe 4.0 (64 Lanes)	PCIe 3.0 (48 Lanes)	PCIe 3.0 (48 Lanes)	PCIe 3.0 (48 Lanes)
TDP Range (PL1)	TBD	TBD	Up To 500W	Up To 500W	Up To 350W	Up To 350W	Up To 350W	105-270W	150W-250W	165W-205W	140W-205W
3D Xpoint Optane DIMM	TBD	TBD	N/A	Donahue Pass	N/A	Crow Pass	Crow Pass	Barlow Pass	Barlow Pass	Apache Pass	N/A
Competition	TBD	AMD EPYC Venice	AMD EPYC Turin	AMD EPYC Turin	AMD EPYC Bergamo	AMD EPYC Genoa ~5nm	AMD EPYC Genoa ~5nm	AMD EPYC Milan 7nm+	AMD EPYC Rome 7nm	AMD EPYC Rome 7nm	AMD EPYC Naples 14nm
Launch	2028-2029	2027	2026	2024	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020	2018	2017

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