Intel 5th Gen Xeon Performance Benchmarks With DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-5600

With Intel's just-launched 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" processors headlined by the 64-core Xeon Platinum 8592+, one of the key upgrades with these new server processors is now supporting DDR5-5600 memory compared to DDR5-4800 with Sapphire Rapids and also the memory frequency limit with AMD's EPYC Zen 4 processors. Here are some benchmarks of the flagship Xeon Platinum 8592+ when being tested with DDR5-4800 versus DDR5-5600 memory modules.

With the new Intel Emerald Rapids processors it's as simple as a BIOS update to existing Intel Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" motherboards. Besides the new processor(s) and BIOS update, no other platform upgrades are needed -- but there is the ability to now handle DDR5-5600 memory compared to DDR5-4800 with Sapphire Rapids. In wanting to quantify the impact of the faster memory, I ran a number of benchmarks with both DDR5-4800 and DDR5-5600 DIMMs to see the difference it made for various relevant workloads. For those considering upgrading from 4th Gen Xeon to 5th Gen Xeon or just trying to weigh the increased costs from DDR5-5600, I hope these benchmarks provide some help in quantifying the difference.

For my purposes with having a limited number of DIMMs on hand, it came down to comparing the memory modules that were supplied by Intel at the Sapphire Rapids launch to the new DIMMs provided as part of the review kit for Emerald Rapids. This meant going from 16 x 64 GB DDR5-4800MT/s Samsung M321R8GA0BB0-CQKEG to 16 x 64 GB DDR5-5600MT/s Kingston KSM56R46BD4PMI-64HAI modules.

For what it's worth the Samsung M321R8GA0BB0-CQKEG DIMMs are currently retailing for ~$195 USD per stick and have a CAS latency of 40. The Kingston KSM56R46BD4PMI-64HAI modules meanwhile are at DDR5-5600 but with 46-45-45 timings. From the same supplier as the $195 price on the other modules, their KSM56R46BD4PMI-64HAI DIMMs are listed for $290 USD per module. So with current pricing and without any special discounts, roughly $95 USD more per DIMM for what was tested: or $760 for an 8-channel 1P server or $1520 USD for a dual socket server with eight memory channels each. Pricing may vary and again these particular DIMMs used were simply what was provided by Intel as part of the review kits.

Besides changing out the 16 DDR5 Registered ECC memory modules in use for this dual socket Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ server running Ubuntu 23.10, there were no other changes made to the system hardware/software during testing.