First reviews of Intel’s fastest CPU show it’s finally caught up to AMD – 128-core Xeon 6980P CPU won’t be cheap

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Intel’s new 128-core Granite Rapids Xeon 6900P processor family is designed to compete directly with AMD’s EPYC offerings and comes in five variations.

There’s the 6960P (72 cores), 6952P (96 cores), 6972P (96 cores), and 6979P (120 cores), and the flagship 6980P with 128 cores and 256 threads, clocked at 2.0 GHz and 504 MB of L3 cache.

Early reviews come from some of the big tech sites and make for interesting reading, with the main consensus being that the 6900P family successfully heralds Intel’s long-awaited resurgence in the server CPU space.

Could increase Intel’s data center footprint

ServaACasa praises Intel’s return to form after tracking AMD EPYC for years, stating, “Welcome back, Intel!” The site received a pre-production 6980P model from Intel, with some aspects such as power metrics awaiting further validation. General, STHThe company’s Patrick Kennedy was impressed, stating that “from a raw performance standpoint, the Intel Xeon 6900P with 128 cores is stellar and takes the performance crown for now. Of course, AMD has said that Turin will arrive in the second half of 2024, so we’re not far from AMD’s modern offering. In any case, Intel will be competing with the same core count and a more comparable process technology, rather than a core count deficit of 50% or more and a much older process technology like it has been in the past. half a decade.”

The next platform emphasized Intel’s strategic advances, noting, as well as STHthat the launch of the Xeon 6900P precedes AMD’s anticipated Turin processor. The site acknowledged the potential of Intel’s new chip to slow the company’s “CPU market share losses in the data center, even if it doesn’t reverse trends.” The article also highlighted Intel’s new focus on power-constrained performance versus absolute IPC gains, presenting a new approach to chip design.

On the performance side, Phoronium provided insights from Linux benchmarks, highlighting strong gains, especially for the flagship 128-core Xeon 6980P, which pairs well with 8800MT/s MRDIMM memory. The site found that the Granite Rapids series exceeded expectations across multiple HPC and AI workloads, often outperforming AMD’s flagship EPYC Genoa and Bergamo models when the software was optimized for Intel’s AMX technology.

Despite some logistical challenges with the test platform, Phoronix noted that with the launch of the Xeon 6900P series, “Intel has shown that it can once again compete with AMD EPYC at the top of HPC performance and other compute-intensive workloads.” ”.

The arm issue

Finally, Tom’s Hardware said that “Intel’s Xeon 6 lineup finally goes toe-to-toe with AMD’s traditional advantage in core count, but the true story will be told in independent benchmarking and cost analysis of the different platforms.” Writer Paul Alcorn also noted that we don’t know how the range will fare against competing Arm server chips. “Arm has steadily carved its way into the data center, largely through custom models deployed by hyperscalers and cloud providers. This makes direct comparisons a little difficult, but we hope to see some virtualization comparisons with Arm’s competition in the future.”

Despite praise for their raw performance, Intel’s new Xeon 6900P CPUs won’t be cheap. High production costs translate into a premium price, making it an expensive upgrade for data center operators looking to improve their infrastructure. Although the price of the flagship 6980P has not yet been announced, The next platform suggests it will cost around $24,980.

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