It’s been a few months since AMD first announced their new third generation EPYC Milan server CPU line-up. We had initially reviewed the first SKUS back in March, covering the core density optimised 64-core EPYC 7763, EPYC 7713 and the core-performance optimised 32-core EPYC 75F3. Since then, we’ve ben able to get our hands on several new mid and lower end SKUs in the form of the new 24-core EPYC 7443, the 16-core 7343, as well as the very curious 8-core EPYC 72F3 which we’ll be reviewing today.

What’s also changed since our initial review back in March, is the release of Intel’s newer 3rd generation Xeon Scalable processors (Ice Lake SP) with our review of the 40-core Xeon 8330 and 28-core Xeon 6330.

Today’s review will be focused around the new performance numbers of AMD’s EPYC CPUs, for a more comprehensive platform and architecture overview I highly recommend reading our respective initial reviews which go into more detail of the current server CPU landscape:

What's New: EPYC 7443, 7343, 72F3 Low Core Count SKUs

In terms of new SKUs that we’re testing today, as mentioned, we’ll be looking at AMD new EPYC 7443, 7343 as well as the 72F3, mid- to low core-count SKUs that come at much more affordable price tags compared to the flagship units we had initially reviewed back in March. As part of the new platform switch, we’ll cover in a bit, we’re also re-reviewing the 64-core EPYC 7763 and the 32-core EPYC 75F3 – resulting in a few surprises and resolving some of the issues we’ve identified with 3rd generation Milan in our first review.

AMD EPYC 7003 Processors
Core Performance Optimized
  Cores
Threads
Base
Freq
Turbo
Freq
L3
(MB)
TDP Price
F-Series
EPYC 75F3 32 / 64 2950 4000 256
MB
280 W $4860
EPYC 74F3 24 / 48 3200 4000 240 W $2900
EPYC 73F3 16 / 32 3500 4000 240 W $3521
EPYC 72F3 8 / 16 3700 4100 180 W $2468

Starting off with probably the weirdest CPU in AMD’s EPYC 7003 line-up, the new 72F3 is quite the speciality part in the form of it being an 8-core server CPU, yet still featuring the maximum available platform capabilities as well as the full 256MB of L3 cache. AMD achieves this by essentially populating the part with 8 chiplet dies with each a full 32MB of L3 cache, but only one core enabled per die. This enables the part (for a server part) relatively high base frequency of 3.7GHz, boosting up to 4.1GHz and landing with a TDP of 180W, with the part costing $2468.

The unit is a quite extreme case of SKU segmentation and focuses on deployments where per-core performance is paramount, or also use-cases where per-core software licenses vastly outweigh the cost of the actual hardware. We’re also re-reviewing the 32-core 75F3 in this core-performance optimised family, featuring up to 32 cores, but going for much higher 280W TDPs.

AMD EPYC 7003 Processors
Core Density Optimized
  Cores
Threads
Base
Freq
Turbo
Freq
L3
(MB)
TDP Price
EPYC 7763 64 / 128 2450 3400 256
MB
280 W $7890
EPYC 7713 64 / 128 2000 3675 225 W $7060
EPYC 7663 56 / 112 2000 3500 240 W $6366
EPYC 7643 48 / 96 2300 3600 225 W $4995
P-Series (Single Socket Only)
EPYC 7713P 64 / 128 2000 3675 256 225 W $5010

In the core-density optimised series, we’re continuing on using the 64-core EPYC 7763 flagship SKU which lands in at 280W TDP and a high cost of $7890 MSRP. Unfortunately, we no longer have access to the EPYC 7713 so we couldn’t re-review this part, and benchmark numbers from this SKU in this review will carry forward our older scores, also being aptly labelled as such in our graphs.

AMD EPYC 7003 Processors
  Cores
Threads
Base
Freq
Turbo
Freq
L3
(MB)
TDP Price
EPYC 7543 32 / 64 2800 3700 256 MB 225 W $3761
EPYC 7513 32 / 64 2600 3650 128 MB 200 W $2840
EPYC 7453 28 / 56 2750 3450 64 MB 225 W $1570
EPYC 7443 24 / 48 2850 4000 128
MB
200 W $2010
EPYC 7413 24 / 48 2650 3600 180 W $1825
EPYC 7343 16 / 32 3200 3900 190 W $1565
EPYC 7313 16 / 32 3000 3700 155 W $1083
P-Series (Single Socket Only)
EPYC 7543P 32 / 64 2800 3700 256 MB 225 W $2730
EPYC 7443P 24 / 48 2850 4000 128 MB 200 W $1337
EPYC 7313P 16 / 32 3000 3700 155 W $913

Finally, the most interesting parts of today’s evaluation are AMD’s mid- to low-core count EPYC 7443 and EPYC 7343 CPUs. At 24- and 16-core, the chips feature a fraction of the maximum theoretical core counts of the platform, but also come at much more affordable price points. These parts should especially be interesting for deployments that plan on using the platform’s full memory or I/O capabilities, but don’t require the raw processing power of the higher-end parts.

These two parts are also defined by having only 128MB of L3 cache, meaning the chips are running only 4 active chiplets, with respectively only 6 and 4 cores per chiplet active. The TDPs are also more reasonable at 200W and 190W, with also respectively lower pricing of $2010 and $1565.

Following Intel’s 3rd generation Xeon Ice Lake SP and our testing of the Xeon 28-core 6330 which lands in at an MSRP of $1894, it’s here where we’ll be seeing the most interesting performance and value comparison for today’s review.

Test Platform Change - Production Milan Board from GIGABYTE: MZ72-HB0 (rev. 3.0)

In our initial Milan review, we unfortunately had to work with AMD to remotely test newest Milan parts within the company’s local datacentre, as our own Daytona reference server platform encountered an unrecoverable hardware failure.

In general, if possible, we also prefer to test things on production systems as they represent a more mature and representative firmware stack.

A few weeks ago, at Computex, GIGABYTE had revealed their newest revision of the company’s dual-socket EPYC board, the E-ATX MZ72-HB0 rev.3.0, which now comes with out-of-box support for the newest 3rd generation Milan parts (The prior rev.1.0 boards don’t support the new CPUs).

The E-ATX form-factor allows for more test-bench setups and noiseless operation (Thanks to Noctua’s massive NH-U14S TR4-SP3 coolers) in more conventional workstation setups.

The platform change away from AMD’s Daytona reference server to the GIGABYTE system also have some significant impacts in regards to the 3rd generation Milan SKUs’ performance, behaving notably different in terms of power characteristics than what we saw on AMD’s system, allowing the chips to achieve even higher performance than what we had tested and published in our initial review.

Test Bed and Setup - Compiler Options
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  • Threska - Sunday, June 27, 2021 - link

    Seems the only thing blunted is the economics of throwing more hardware at the problem. Actual technical development has taken off because all the chip-makers have multiple customers across many domains. That's why Anandtech and others are able to have articles like they have.
  • tygrus - Sunday, June 27, 2021 - link

    Reminds me of the inn keeper from Les Miserables. Nice to your face with lots of good promises but then tries to squeeze more money out of the customer at every turn.
  • tygrus - Sunday, June 27, 2021 - link

    I was ofcourse referring to the SW not the CPU.
  • 130rne - Tuesday, September 14, 2021 - link

    What the hell did I just read? Just came across this, I had no idea the enterprise side was this fucked. They are scalping the ungodly dog shit out of their own customers. So you obviously can't duplicate their software in house meaning you're forced to use their software to be competitive, that seems to be the gist. So I buy a stronger cpu, usually a newer model, yeah? And it's more power efficient, and I restrict the software to a certain number of threads on those cpus, they'll just switch the pricing model because I have a better processor. This would incentivize me to buy cheaper processors with less threads, yeah? Buy only what I need.
  • 130rne - Tuesday, September 14, 2021 - link

    Continued- basically gimping my own business, do I have that right? Yes? Ok cool, just making sure.
  • eachus - Thursday, July 15, 2021 - link

    There is a compelling use case that builders of military systems will be aware of. If you have an in-memory database and need real-time performance, this is your chip. Real-time doesn't mean really fast, it means that the performance of any command will finish within a specified time. So copy the database on initialization into the L3 cache, and assuming the process is handing the data to another computer for further processing, the data will stay in the cache. (Writes, of course, will go to main memory as well, but that's fine. You shouldn't be doing many writes, and again the time will be predictable--just longer.)

    I've been retired for over a decade now, so I don't have any knowledge of systems currently being developed.

    Who would use a system like this? A good example would be a radar recognition and countermeasures database. The fighter (or other aircraft) needs that data within milliseconds, microseconds is better.
  • hobbified - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link

    At the time I was involved in that (~2010) it was per-core, with multiple cores on a package counting as "half a CPU" — that is, 1 core = 1CPU license, two 1-core packages = 2CPU license, one 2-core package = 1CPU license, 4 cores total = 2CPU license, etc.

    I'm told they do things in a completely different (but no less money-hungry) way these days.
  • lemurbutton - Friday, June 25, 2021 - link

    Can we get some metrics on $/performance as well as power/performance? I think the Altra part would be better value there.
  • schujj07 - Friday, June 25, 2021 - link

    "Database workloads are admittedly still AMD’s weakness here, but in every other scenario, it’s clear which is the better value proposition." I find this conclusion a bit odd. In MultiJVM max-jOPS the 2S 24c 7443 has ~70% the performance of the 2S 40c 8380 (SNC1 best result) despite having 60% the cores of the 8380. In the critical-jOPS the 7443's performance is between the 8380's SNC1 & SNC2 results despite the core disadvantage. To me that means that the DB performance of the Epyc isn't a weakness.

    I have personally run the SAP HANA PRD performance test on Epyc 7302's & 7401's. Both CPUs passed the SAP HANA PRD performance test requirements on ESXi 6.7 U3. However, I do not have scores from Intel based hosts for comparison of scores.
  • schujj07 - Friday, June 25, 2021 - link

    The DB conclusion also contradicts what I have read on other sites. https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7763-review-... Look at the MariaDB numbers for explanation of what is being analyzed. Their 32c Epyc &543p vs Xeon 6314U is also a nice core count vs core count comparison. https://www.servethehome.com/intel-xeon-gold-6314u... In that the Epyc is ~20%+ faster in Maria than the Xeon.

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