Intel 5th Gen Xeon Performance Benchmarks: Impressive Efficiency Gains With "Optimized Power Mode"

Of 162 benchmarks ran with the Xeon Platinum 8592+ 2P configuration in the out-of-the-box state and in the Optimized Power Mode (OPM) state, here is the CPU power consumption over that span of roughly 24 hours of constant benchmarking of workloads with varying degrees of CPU resource utilization:

The two combined Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors saw the average CPU power consumption drop from a 445 Watt average down to 366 Watts, or roughly running at 82% the original power consumption from this simple "Optimized Power Mode" BIOS option. As can be seen from the box chart, more time was spent overall running at a lower power consumption in this mode.

When taking a geometric mean of all the raw performance results, the Optimized Power Mode was at 93% the out-of-the-box performance. Depending upon the particular workload and how busy it kept the entire processor(s), the performance hit varied from no measurable difference to greater. But near consistently -- with just web servers like Nginx being one of the rare exceptions -- the performance-per-Watt of running in the optimized power mode did outpace to out-of-the-box/default run.

The new Optimized Power Mode option with Intel 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" was more significant than I had anticipated... Seeing the significant power savings in so many workloads at little to no performance hit was quite a pleasure. But it's unfortunate that better logic can't be applied so such functionality could be found enabled by default on new servers. At the end of the day though the new "Optimized Power Mode" is an important BIOS feature to be aware of with Emerald Rapids and one that should be evaluated prior to new server deployments for determining if your particular workload(s) see any performance hit or if the power savings and cooling benefits outweigh any performance cost.

Given the Intel Optimized Power Mode results exceeding my initial benchmark expectations, I then proceeded to re-benchmark the Xeon Platinum 8592+ in both 1P and 2P configurations to compare 1:1 for all of the launch-day Xeon Platinum 8592+ tests on Phoronix. I was curious to see how running in the Optimized Power Mode would affect the overall ranking against the AMD EPYC competition and prior generation Intel CPUs as well as how the overall power consumption numbers now compared.

When repeating all 150+ benchmarks, the geometric mean of all the raw result data was very close for both the single and dual socket configurations of the Xeon Platinum 8592+ when running in Optimized Power Mode... Less than a 1% performance hit overall for the wide assortment of benchmarks with varying levels of CPU resource utilization. You can see all the Xeon Platinum 8592+ 1P/2P data in OPM mode via this result file but as shown by the geo mean there was a minimal performance hit overall.

But when looking at the CPU power consumption data over that span of 151 benchmarks, it's quite fascinating. The single Xeon Platinum 8592+ saw its average power consumption drop from 289 Watts to 269 Watts and its peak was also reduced from 434 Watts to 405 Watts. The Xeon Platinum 8592+ was still pulling more power than the EPYC 9554 / 9654 / 9684X / 9754 processors, but it was a measurable improvement nevertheless for this Optimized Power Mode. Similarly, when running in the dual socket configuration the combined Xeon Platinum 8592+ power consumption dropped from 556 Watts to 518 Watts and the peak also went down from 836 Watts to 799 Watts. In this case of the 2P testing the average power consumption came in lower than the EPYC 9684X 2P and the 9654/9684X 2P processors when in their power determinism modes.

It was very nice to see this Optimized Power Mode feature new to 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" processors actually yielding a measurable improvement to the power efficiency while coming at a typically minimal to small performance cost. Running the Xeon Platinum 8592+ in Optimized Power Mode wasn't enough to magically make it more power efficient than AMD's EPYC Zen 4(C) processors but it was a step in the right direction.