Intel Xeon Ice Lake vs. AMD EPYC Milan Server Performance, Efficiency & Value In 2023

While AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" and Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors launched a few months ago, for those not yet able to obtain the new processors/platforms, prefer waiting for DDR5 memory prices to recede further, don't necessarily need the latest bells and whistles found with these new server processors, or just looking to maximize value, 3rd Gen AMD EPYC Milan and Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors are readily available and still seeing plenty of new deployments in data centers throughout the world. In this article is a fresh look at the AMD Milan vs. Intel Ice Lake server performance, power efficiency, and performance-per-dollar across a range of processors.

Thanks to Norwegian web hosting company Serve The World and server vendor Nextron, I recently was able to carry out remote server testing of four comparable Intel Ice Lake and AMD EPYC servers in both 1P and 2P combinations with a mix of processors while running out of Serve The World's Oslo data center. Given Milan and Ice Lake servers still being common and readily available, it still makes sense in 2023 benchmarking them and will be complemented by a follow-up article looking more at the real-world data center performance with AMD EPYC Genoa and Intel Sapphire Rapids.

Part of the Serve The World data center in Oslo.

Thanks to both Serve The World and Nextron for providing this gratis remote access to satisfy my benchmarking appetite (plus what a fun way to culminate this load of benchmarking for Phoronix's 19th birthday week). The Milan and Xeon Scalable processors benchmarked for this comparison included the following along with their current actual pricing:

Intel Xeon Gold 6338 SP - 32-Core, 2.00GHz, 48MB, 205W, $2,941 USD
Intel Xeon Gold 6342 SP - 24-Core, 2.80GHz, 36MB, 230W, $2,638 USD
Intel Xeon Gold 6346 SP - 16-Core, 3.10GHz, 36MB, 205W, $2,398 USD
AMD EPYC 7343 Milan DP/UP - 16-Core, 3.2GHz, 128MB, 190W, $1,508 USD
AMD EPYC 7413 Milan DP/UP - 24-Core, 2.65GHz, 128MB, 180W, $1,813 USD
AMD EPYC 7513 Milan DP/UP - 32-Core, 2.60GHz, 128MB, 200W, $2,955 USD
AMD EPYC 7543 Milan DP/UP - 32-Core, 2.80GHz, 256MB, 225W, $3,224 USD
AMD EPYC 7713P Milan UP - 64-Core, 2.00GHz, 256MB, 225W, $4,807 USD

The server platforms tested included:

Single Socket AMD ($4900 USD)

- 2U chassis CSE-826BAC12-R802LPB
- Supermicro H12SSL-i
- Single CPU cooler
- 512GB DDR4 3200MHz ECC REG ( 8x 64GB optimal 8-Channel configuration)
- Dual SATA3 rear Hot-Swap module for OS drives (free up storage backplane)
- 2x Samsung PM983 SATA3 SSD 480GB
- 2x Samsung PM9A3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe 1.92TB

Single Socket Intel ($5200 USD)

- 2U chassis CSE-826BAC12-R802LPB
- Supermicro X12SPO-NTF
- Single CPU cooler
- 512GB DDR4 3200MHz ECC REG ( 8x 64GB optimal 8-Channel configuration)
- Dual SATA3 rear Hot-Swap module for OS drives (free up storage backplane)
- 2x Samsung PM983 SATA3 SSD 480GB
- 2x Samsung PM9A3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe 1.92TB

Dual Socket AMD ($5700 USD)

- 2U chassis CSE-826BAC12-R802LPB
- Supermicro H12DSi-N6
- 2x CPU coolers
- 512GB DDR4 3200MHz ECC REG ( 16x 32GB optimal 8-Channel configuration)
- Dual SATA3 rear Hot-Swap module for OS drives (free up storage backplane)
- 2x Samsung PM983 SATA3 SSD 480GB
- 2x Samsung PM9A3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe 1.92TB

Dual Socket Intel ($5850 USD)

- 2U chassis CSE-826BAC12-R802LPB
- Supermicro X12DPi-N6
- 2x CPU coolers
- 512GB DDR4 3200MHz ECC REG ( 16x 32GB optimal 8-Channel configuration)
- Dual SATA3 rear Hot-Swap module for OS drives (free up storage backplane)
- 2x Samsung PM983 SATA3 SSD 480GB
- 2x Samsung PM9A3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe 1.92TB

The server pricing is to help deliver the performance-per-dollar metrics. The pricing is based on Nextron's pricing at the time of writing, excluding VAT and shipping. For making it a real-world comparison, the prices also include their standard phone/email support and standard service support as well as a five year warranty. Prices obviously exclude each particular CPU cost.

All of the servers/processors were tested while running AlmaLinux 9.1 with its stock GCC 11.3 compiler and EXT4 file-system with the Linux 5.14 kernel.

By now Phoronix readers should be well aware of all the capabilities of AMD EPYC Milan and Intel Ice Lake, so they really need no introduction, so let's move onto the new numbers. In addition to the performance and performance-per-dollar metrics, there is also the CPU power and overall server power consumption (wall power) metrics too for each of the benchmarks carried out in looking at the performance-per-Watt.