AMD EPYC 8324P / 8324PN Siena 32-Core Siena Linux Server Performance

Overall it was quite interesting to see the EPYC 8324P/8324PN with thirty-two Zen 4C cores still competing -- and at times outperforming in raw performance -- the Xeon Gold 6421N Sapphire Rapids processor that costs more and was also less power efficient. Genoa(X) and Bergamo have already proved plenty capable of outperforming Sapphire Rapids but with EPYC Siena before for cost and energy efficiency minded products, it was impressive to see Siena delivering a trifecta of competitiveness against Intel's latest wares.

The EPYC 8324P/8324PN proved robust in their offerings and for those wishing to maximize the value even more can make use of the EPYC power determinism mode.

Even in power determinism mode the EPYC 8324P consumed significantly less power than the Xeon Gold 6421N competition... Across all of the benchmarks carried out the EPYC 8324P on average had a 89 Watt average with a 136 Watt peak, or in power determinism mode a 94 Watt average with a 168 Watt peak. Meanwhile the Xeon Gold 6421N had a 139 Watt average and 192 Watt peak. On average the Xeon Gold 6421N power consumption was 1.56x that of the stock EPYC 8324P or 1.93x of the EPYC 8324PN.

At least from looking at the EPYC 8324P and 8324PN processors so far up against the equivalent Xeon Gold 6421N 32-core Sapphire Rapids processor, EPYC Siena is on track to deliver a compelling trifecta of performance, value, and energy efficiency for those looking at single socket servers and not needing to maximize the core count or density where Genoa and Bergamo come into play or for really driving HPC workloads where Genoa-X is able to deliver stunning results. With Siena, AMD really is now able to deliver a well-rounded server portfolio with Zen 4(C) in the eight to sixty-four core space and opening them up to new markets with the NEBS-friendly "PN" SKUs. The versatility of Siena is also coming out via various interesting ODM platform designs largely catering to TCO value and/or maximizing power efficiency.

Thanks to AMD for providing the EPYC Siena samples for this round of benchmarking. Coming up shortly will be a look at the 64-core EPYC Siena server performance at the top-end.