Xeon Gold 6250 vs. EPYC 7F32 - 8-Core Server CPU Performance On Ubuntu 20.04

[CochainComplex]

AMD isn't producing/selling mainboards. So how is this their mistake?

AFAIK big players like Dell, Lenovo, HP ... are producing their own Mainboards.
Only "small" business like Tuxedo, (System76) are picking OEM parts of e.g. Clevo, Asrock, Asus...etc

[CochainComplex]

Let me get this straight, having 128 lanes of PCIe is not enough I/O for you? How is this possible, considering you get nowhere near this amount of I/O with intel? And with this mother lode of PCIe lanes at your disposal, you are not able to populate any of them with sound cards, usb cards, etc? Why not? Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but something here does not add up. Either way, I've been in IT for 25 years, and I have honestly never seen anyone point to "onboard sound and usb ports" as the hallmark of a proper workstation board.

If usb ports are the hallmark - Apple would be out of business yet.

[Grinness]

Only the crappy Inspiron line... I want to be optimistic, but I am not really. I really hope Dell will offer other lines with AMD products as well.

The newly released XPS is Intel-only, and that's a shame.

That's true if look at laptops.
Also their alienware is pricey for a desktop

TBH, for personal desktop I would go custom build (self); for laptop I would go Lenovo
Lenovo will also offers a fedora pre-built:

https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-laptops/

[Mark Rose]

Am I the only person thinking Xeon W should be added considering 7Fx2s are clearly targeting high end workstations?

It's targeting per-core licensed software, so not just workstations, but also servers.

[franglais125]

TBH, for personal desktop I would go custom build (self); for laptop I would go Lenovo
Lenovo will also offers a fedora pre-built:

https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-laptops/

We'll just continue agreeing: same here for custom desktop, and Thinkpad for laptop. Eagerly awaiting for the Fedora availability to be more ubiquitous in Lenovo products (at least Thinkpad).

[mppix]

Since when is MKL defacto std? It even works with AMD btw. Besides most software using it BLAS like liberaries can swap them rather easily. GraphBLAS, OpenBLAS, CBLAS, NVBLAS, ACML........

Well, yes but try telling that to Matlab or (some) Ansys tools. And no, you cannot simply swap such tool without completely disrupting workflows.
These are just some examples why a lot of (Dell) higher end hardware still relies on Intel..

[mppix]

Let me get this straight, having 128 lanes of PCIe is not enough I/O for you? How is this possible, considering you get nowhere near this amount of I/O with intel? And with this mother lode of PCIe lanes at your disposal, you are not able to populate any of them with sound cards, usb cards, etc? Why not? Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but something here does not add up. Either way, I've been in IT for 25 years, and I have honestly never seen anyone point to "onboard sound and usb ports" as the hallmark of a proper workstation board.

Selective reading? Do 25y experience suggest that server MB's are good for workstation use?
Also, you rarely get the 128 lanes, or pcie 4, or even DDR4 3200MT/s on of-the-shelf EPYC MB and complete systems with these features tend to come with premiums.

[mppix]

AMD isn't producing/selling mainboards. So how is this their mistake?

They create the platform, do reference designs, and work with MB manufacturers such that MBs are available at launch day.
Processors are good. The platform(s) have still a few rough edges. In particular, AMD is not really competing in the workstation segment (yet) as far as I can tell (they compete with Core i9 but NOT Xeon W).

Most MB manufacturers showed up with Naples MB updates at Rome launch (pcie 3.0 and often limited to <3200MT/s). However, they needed something like this to get the workstation crowd interested (still not available afaik):
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/p...Specifications

Since this did not happen (yet), we Threadripper seemed to be poised for workstation... but it lacks RDIMM and fast, decent capacity UDIMM ECC modules are rare if they are available at all. Who runs UDIMM ECC memory anyway?
Threadripper would need something like an Asus WS MB. The closest that you can get is

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Prime-TRX40-Pro

Try have a look at the memory QVL.

We are now trying to drop internal ECC requirements for some workstations. I let you imaging how that discussion is going..

[msroadkill612]

The two parts are clearly direct competitors, trading blows on the various benchmarks, with plenty that were essentially tied.

... but ....

"The scenery was marvellous, but the actors got in the way."