Epyc 7742 'rome', first performance tests against intel xeon

The EPYC 7742 processor has appeared on the network where we can see some figures of its performance, quite surprising. This chip would have 64 cores and 128 threads, and therefore will probably be the flagship model.

These would be the first performance tests of EPYC 7742 'Rome'

The specifications discussed here are not official. The processor supposedly has up to 256MB of cache and comes with 225W of TDP. If the leaks are true, the 64-core monster will run on a 2.25 GHz base clock and a 3.4 GHz boost clock.

Performance results show EPYC 7742 against AMD's own EPYC 7601 and Intel's Xeon Platinum 8280 and Xeon Gold 6138 chips.

According to the test notes, the aforementioned processors were tested in single-socket and dual-socket configurations on the Ubuntu 19.04 operating system with the latest Linux 5.2 kernel. The user also claimed to have applied all security patches for each processor.

Performance and comparisons

Scalable Video Technology (SVT) is highly optimized for Intel Xeon chips, so Intel is expected to have an advantage. However, it is a big surprise that the EPYC 7742 has managed to outperform the Xeon Platinum 8280 by up to 59.06% with the SVT-AV1 codec. In fact, the Xeon Platinum 8280 barely got a win over the EPYC 7742 at SVT-HEVC. Lastly, the SVT-VP9 brings out the best in Intel, as the Xeon Platinum 8280 outperformed the EPYC 7742 by 85.23%.

At the x264 benchmark, the new EPYC chip outperformed the single Xeon Platinum 8280 and dual Xeon Platinum by 28.45% and 26.72%, respectively. Taking the fight to the x265 battlefield, the EPYC 7742 continued to dominate with performance margins of over 29%.

The EPYC 7742 allegedly built the Linux kernel up to 53.86% faster than a Xeon Platinum 8280 and up to 5.64% faster than a dual Xeon Platinum 8280. When it came to building the LLVM compiler, the EPYC 7742 did it up to 57.75% and 5.17% faster compared to the single and dual Xeon Platinum 8280 chips, respectively.

Visit our guide on the best processors on the market

The EPYC 7742 was also superior in the OpenSSL, Tensorflow and Sysbench benchmarks.

The alleged mastery of the EPYC 7742 continued to be observed in rendering workloads. The 64-core beast reportedly outperformed two Xeon Platinum 8280 by a margin of 19.3% and 6.9% on C-Ray and POV-Ray, respectively. You can see the complete graphics in the source of this article.

It seems that EPYC 'Rome' will be as good as promised, with performance that will put Intel Xeon variants in the server sector in serious trouble.

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