Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks

While compiling the Linux x86_64 kernel with all modules, the Xeon 6980P dual socket server is easily the fastest of all the current tested processors... But now we have a look at the combined dual socket CPU power consumption. On average while compiling the kernel the dual Xeon 6980P was consuming 653 Watts with a recorded peak of 1080 Watts but as you can see from the graph it was just a few off-chance readings where it was above 1000 Watts. This aligns nicely with the Xeon 6980P having a 500 Watt default TDP and at least not seeing readings well and consistently above that threshold. On average the Xeon 6980P 653 Watt average was just about 5% higher than the EPYC 9684X 2P (621 Watts) while taking just 72% the amount of time required of that Genoa-X server to build the kernel.

For John The Ripper OpenMP crypto workloads the Xeon 6980P was delivering the best performance while on a performance-per-Watt basis was comparable to AMD Genoa(X) processors. Xeon 6 Sierra Forest and EPYC Bergamo were delivering the best power efficiency ahead of Genoa and Granite Rapids.