Intel Xeon 6980P 1S Performance With DDR5-6400/MRDIMM-8800

With the Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids benchmarking at Phoronix the past few weeks it's been in a dual socket (2S / 2P) configuration. For those curious about the Intel Xeon 6980P 128-core server performance for a single socket (1S) configuration, here are those complementary results out today and for both DDR5-6400 and MRDIMM-8800 memory configurations. Thus a well-rounded look at the single Xeon 6980P performance compared to other single and dual socket Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC server processors.

The prior Xeon 6980P launch-day review and the testing with the likes of SNC3 vs. HEX clustering modes and DDR5-6400 vs. MRDIMM-8800 memory performance was done using the full dual socket capabilities of the Intel Birch Stream reference server. That was done due to the limited amount of time for testing pre-launch and Intel recommending to not begin swapping out server components in that reference server until other tests are completed, since Birch Stream can be a bit rough around the edges. So with those other initial articles out of the way, over the past week I have been testing the Intel Xeon 6980P in a single socket configuration for those more likely to pursue a 1S Granite Rapids server -- especially given the $17,800 list price for the Xeon 6980P. Or for those that may be looking to move to a single socket Granite Rapids given the higher TDP of these processors if now facing power/cooling capacity constraints.

For this article is thus a large set of Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC CPU benchmarks that I've been preparing in both single and dual socket (2P / 2S) configurations. Now with including the other single socket CPU results, I've also included the EPYC 8004 Siena processors as well for additional insight into the performance and power efficiency. The 2P benchmark results you have seen from the prior Granite Rapids articles on Phoronix.

The processor combinations featured in this article included:

- EPYC 8534P
- EPYC 8534PN
- EPYC 9654
- EPYC 9654 2P
- EPYC 9684X
- EPYC 9684X 2P
- EPYC 9754
- EPYC 9754 2P
- Xeon Platinum 8380
- Xeon Platinum 8380 2P
- Xeon Platinum 8490H
- Xeon Platinum 8490H 2P
- Xeon Max 9468
- Xeon Max 9468 2P
- Xeon Max 9480
- Xeon Max 9480 2P
- Xeon Platinum 8592+
- Xeon Platinum 8592+ 2P
- Xeon 6766E
- Xeon 6766E 2P
- Xeon 6780E
- Xeon 6780E 2P
- Xeon 6980P [MRDIMM-8800]
- Xeon 6980P - DDR5-6400
- Xeon 6980P 2P [MRDIMM-8800]
- Xeon 6980P 2P - DDR5-6400

The combinations should be useful for those thinking of consolidating older dual socket servers down to a single socket or in trying to justify the added costs/performance for 1S vs. 2S, power/cooling capacity concerns if going for dual socket Granite Rapids servers, etc. All testing was done on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and using the CPU frequency scaling performance governor with each processor(s) under test. All CPUs were tested with their maximum rated memory channels and speed.