Intel Xeon Ice Lake vs. AMD EPYC Milan Server Performance, Efficiency & Value In 2023

For those evaluating new or replacement servers for build farms or other CI/CD purposes, going with the generation-old Intel/AMD server processors can make a lot of sense. For most build servers you don't have much use for AVX-512 or AMX, features like DDR5 and CXL aren't necessarily worthwhile for most build servers, and even with 3rd gen server processors you can still achieve high core counts and eight channel memory that are great for delivering speedy build times.

Of the tested processors for this round of remote benchmarking at Serve The World's data center, the AMD EPYC processors came out slightly ahead of the competing Intel processors. Shaving off even a fraction of a minute for a single build can obviously add up if (near) constantly building out new code for CI/CD deployments.

The AMD EPYC Milan server configurations were delivering extremely great value for those engaging in a lot of code compilation.

Not only was AMD EPYC in front when it came to the shorter build times and better value but each configuration consuming less power than the comparable Intel Xeon Scalable processor.

Similar findings were found across various other large open-source code-bases used for benchmarking the build times with AlmaLinux's GCC 11.3 compiler.