Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ "Emerald Rapids" Linux Benchmarks

For launch day I ran more than 150 benchmarks across all of these processors on Ubuntu Linux. Those interested in all 150+ results and all the per-test power data can find the data via this OB page. When taking the geometric mean of all the results, upgrading from the Xeon Platinum 8490H to Xeon Platinum 8592+ (along with going from DDR5-4800 to DDR5-5600) yielded a 23.5% generational improvement for a single socket comparison or a 17% boost when looking at dual socket results.

The Xeon Platinum 8592+ was now solidly competing with the AMD EPYC 9554 that is a similar 64-core part but AMD's EPYC 9004 series portfolio extends beyond that with up to 96 cores for Genoa(X) or 128 cores with Bergamo. Plus there are the Genoa-X SKUs with 3D V-Cache for really helping in some HPC workloads meanwhile Intel hasn't updated their Xeon Max parts for Emerald Rapids.

The main area where the Xeon Platinum 8592+ could compete with the top-end AMD parts of this generation were for AI workloads that are prepared to make use of Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX). Intel Emerald Rapids performs exceptionally well with software able to leverage AMX albeit the scope there is limited. Emerald Rapids continues to sport Intel's additional accelerator blocks for helping some workloads but the software support there remains rather limited as well.

When looking at the CPU power consumption across all of the benchmarks, the Xeon Platinum 8592+ did slightly better than the Sapphire Rapids Xeon Platinum 8490H. On average the Xeon Platinum 8592+ was pulling around 289 Watts compared to the SPR average at 306 Watts. The peak Xeon Platinum 8592+ CPU power consumption was recorded at 434 Watts compared to the Sapphire Rapids peak of 469 Watts. The AMD EPYC 9554 meanwhile had an average power consumption of 227 Watts and a recorded peak of 369 Watts.

Generationally the uplift from Sapphire Rapids to Emerald Rapids exceeded my expectations overall. The faster DDR5 memory, larger last level cache, and other refinements ended up paying off rather well for being a "refresh" generation that can drop in to existing motherboards. With the geomean average, the Xeon Platinum 8592+ 2P came in at 2x the performance of the Xeon Platinum 8380 2P Ice Lake server or 2.87x the performance of the Xeon Platinum 8280 2P Cascade Lake server. Or if wanting to condense your servers and maximize TCO, a single Xeon Platinum 8592+ was still delivering 1.32x the performance of the dual Ice Lake server configuration.

Emerald Rapids has proved to be a much more capable server processor to compete with AMD EPYC at least on a core-for-core basis. For AI workloads with AMX support, Emerald Rapids is an excellent choice as shown by the OpenVINO and oneDNN results.

The timing for Emerald Rapids is a bit challenging with Granite Rapids and the all-E-core Sierra Forest processors expected around the middle of 2024. With 12 channels of DDR5 memory, all the cores offered by Sierra Forest, and other significant architectural improvements over Emerald Rapids, this is a bit of an odd time for investing when knowing there will be some very significant improvements to be found in about six months -- if Intel releases on schedule -- and will require a new motherboard/platform. Next year's Xeon processors should also be much better in terms of power efficiency. So just months away from Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest may make it hard to justify investing in Emerald Rapids today, but if you are in pressing need to upgrade immediately or looking for more compute power out of existing Sapphire Rapids platforms, Emerald Rapids offers great generational gains. Next year it will be interesting to see how Intel Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest are able to compete with the AMD EPYC platforms at that time.

By far Emerald Rapids exceeded my expectations for what I initially assumed would be a rather minor bump in performance and power efficiency this generation. When comparing top-end to top-end Intel is still lagging behind AMD except for AI workloads and specific software packages that can enjoy accelerator support. But Emerald Rapids is a significant jump in the right direction for Intel regaining its server CPU leadership if they can really make all the stars align next year for Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest in a timely manner.

Coming up in follow-up articles on Phoronix over the days ahead will be more Xeon Platinum 8592+ benchmarks looking at DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-5600 performance, AVX-512 impact generationally, more AI/AMX benchmarks, and other benchmarks stemming from reader feedback. Thanks to Intel for supplying the Xeon Platinum 8592+ review samples and hopefully we'll be able to test other 5th Gen Xeon processors as well for a more diverse look at the product stack. If you have any test/benchmark requests, please be sure to let me know by commenting on this review in the forums.