AMD EPYC 7773X "Milan-X" Benchmarks Show Very Strong HPC Performance Upgrade

For today's launch-day testing of Milan-X, the new CPUs and all comparison CPUs were tested using a recent snapshot of Ubuntu 22.04. The Ubuntu 22.04 snapshot was used since we are now just a few weeks out from that next Ubuntu LTS release and is notable for its newer compiler, Linux kernel, and other up-to-date components. So for this review to be more timely and looking ahead for those considering a Milan-X over the coming weeks and months, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS testing makes sense especially with now being in a freeze and effectively the major packages are all locked in for release.

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS though is not required for Milan-X. Existing operating systems like Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, CentOS / RHEL / AlmaLinux 8, and other operating systems already supporting AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" series will continue working fine with the new Milan-X hardware. There isn't any new requirements placed on Milan-X platforms over Milan besides having an updated compatibility BIOS.

All of this Milan-X testing was carried out on the AMD Daytona reference platform and with 16 x 32GB DDR4-3200 memory (or 4 x 32GB in the 1P configuration). Before getting to the CPU comparison results, let's first look at the EPYC 7773X 2P performance when running it with 3D V-Cache enabled and then disabled. Via the motherboard BIOS 3DX / 3D V-Cache can be disabled, allowing a look at the performance (and power/thermal impact) of the same processor without 3D V-Cache.

When running various HPC workloads, it was easy to immediately find workloads enjoying considerable uplift from the AMD 3D V-Cache. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) such as with the open-source OpenFOAM package enjoyed considerable real-world benefit from 3D V-Cache.

Intel's Embree ray-tracing kernels saw significant uplift from AMD 3D V-Cache as did other workloads like PyHPC.