Server with AMD EPYC 9454P
Today I had opportunity to do a small benchmark of the new server with AMD EPYC 9454P CPU inside.
Final thoughts – amazing CPU with enormous number of cores and threads, which provide impressive computing power. In terms of single core performance – this CPU is getting close to desktop higher-end rivals.
Now let’s see and discuss more details. Full CPU specification is here.
AMD EPYC 9454P is a server CPU, it has 48 cores, 96 threads – it is free from the BIG.little technology, which is good on paper, but quite often in real world leads to inconsistent performance spikes and drops, especially in server environment.
Base clock 2.75Ghz – which is not as high as in desktop gamer-oriented CPUs and therefore single core performance will be lower. But on the other hand – it is higher, than for example Xeons, that often stick to 2Ghz mark. And you get a lot of them. Boost clock is 3.65Ghz, which is quite good. Keep in mind – all cores here are the same, no BIG.little crap.
As all servers CPUs – AMD EPYC 9454P has ECC memory support, of course. It is DDR5 and what is more amazing – it support 12 memory channels. That is a huge advantage over desktop CPUs, which only support dual memory channels. Number of memory channels does not matter until certain moment, when there are lot of processes, a lot of CPU cores and a lot of load. We have servers built on a desktop CPUs – with ECC memory, but still 2 memory channels and several busy VPSes on it – server was not able to fully utilize CPU. With so many cores – and to be able to utilize them – you need a lot of memory bandwidth.
The most this CPU shines under heavy load. Single core PHP performance is lower, than with desktop CPUs. But once number of simultaneous requests grows – this EPYC CPU starts to outperform all other CPUs very quickly.
Geekbench 6 server benchmark results can be found here.
WordPress benchmark results, done using wpbenchmark.io plugin.
As you can see – single core performance is slower, than, for example Ryzen9 7950X3D, which is very very fast desktop and server CPU. But look at the Apache Benchmark timings, where large amount of concurrent connections shows how much more power EPYC can provide.
As you can see, already with 15 concurrent WordPress connections – desktop CPUs can not hold and request processing slows down, while AMD EPYC 9454P is able to process them fast. See, how much performance of Intel i9-13900 drops with many concurrent requests.
Do you have any comments about this topic? Do you have any suggestions? Do you have any servers, that I could test? Feel free to contact me.