Initial Benchmarks Of The AMD EPYC 7601 On Ubuntu Linux

When it comes to OpenSSL, the dual Xeon Gold system was still winning. This is perhaps due to Intel's stronger AVX performance as we have seen in many of our Kabylake/Skylake vs. Ryzen comparisons. Intel's AES-NI is also well supported by OpenSSL as another possible explanation for it performing so much better, also the higher thread count of this comparison system.

Lastly are a few Darktable results for this multi-threaded RAW photography software. The EPYC 7601 overall was doing well and ended up beating out the Intel competition.

AMD is certainly back in the game for high-end server performance! It's terrific to see the AMD EPYC 7601 have such a strong showing under Linux and with many of the multi-threaded workloads, the EPYC 7601 ended up performing in front of the dual Xeon Gold 6138 configuration that offers more cores/threads but costs $1000 USD more for the two processors compared to the $4200 USD EPYC 7601.

It looks like EPYC is on the right track in being able to deliver very capable AMD Linux server performance for threaded workloads. Besides two Xeon Gold 6138 processors costing more than the EPYC 7601, each CPU has a 125 Watt TDP (thus 250 Watt total) while the single EPYC 7601 has just a 180 Watt TDP. For memory-bound workloads, the EPYC 7601 also has the advantage of supporting eight memory channels.

This is quite exciting, but for now, back to running more benchmarks. Stay tuned for the performance-per-Watt metrics, comparison to older Opteron hardware, BSD/Linux distribution comparisons, and other benchmarks based upon reader requests. If you would like to compare your own Linux server/workstation performance to the results found in this article, simply install the Phoronix Test Suite and run phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1709124-TY-EPYCXEON177 for your own fully-automated, side-by-side comparison.

Thanks to AMD and Tyan for making these continuing EPYC Linux tests possible. Tyan's Epyc line-up should be available everywhere by mid-Q4 while information on resellers can be found via the where to buy page.