AMD EPYC Genoa/Genoa-X & Bergamo vs. Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids On Ubuntu 23.10

While Ubuntu 23.10 isn't a long-term support (LTS) release and thus won't see too much exposure in the enterprise space, it's worthwhile today looking at the AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon server performance. It's interesting for a look ahead being just a few months until Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and with Ubuntu 23.10 incorporating GCC 13 that will also be the default compiler of Ubunu 24.04 among other close software package versions, the kernel not too far off from what will be in this next LTS release, and with Ubuntu 23.10's Linux 6.5 kernel bringing some nice performance optimizations. So with that said I recently wrapped up some fresh benchmarks looking at the current generation Intel Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids performance against AMD EPYC 9004 Bergamo, Genoa, and Genoa-X processors.

From Ubuntu 23.10 with its default software packages, I ran some fresh benchmarks on the AMD and Intel reference servers this generation with the following processor configurations:

- EPYC 9554
- EPYC 9554 2P
- EPYC 9654
- EPYC 9654 2P
- EPYC 9654 2P - Power
- EPYC 9684X
- EPYC 9684X 2P
- EPYC 9684X 2P - Power
- EPYC 9754
- EPYC 9754 2P
- EPYC 9754 2P - Power
- Xeon Platinum 8490H
- Xeon Platinum 8490H 2P

Based on the CPU review samples I had available these processors were tested in both single and dual socket configurations. Plus with EPYC CPUs having both performance (default) and power determinism modes that can impact the power/performance behavior, with the notable SKUs I ran benchmarks in both configurations.

Besides being interesting for all fresh data on Ubuntu 23.10, it's also a last look at Sapphire Rapids vs. Genoa(X) and Bergamo ahead of Intel's upcoming Xeon Scalable Emerald Rapids launch.

The only change made to Ubuntu 23.10 for these benchmarks was running in the "performance" CPU frequency scaling governor mode across all the server CPU benchmarks. Each configuration was tested with the DDR5 memory at its maximum rated number of memory channels and frequency. A 3.2TB Micron 7450 Max NVMe SSD was the storage drive used for testing on both of the servers.

In addition to looking at the raw performance with these Ubuntu 23.10 server benchmarks, the CPU power consumption was also monitored using the RAPL/PowerCap interfaces for providing a look at the performance-per-Watt too.