[coder543]

This article goes into great detail: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7002-series-rome-deliv...

Another follow-up article: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-7702p-review-redefinin...

AMD is offering incredible performance on every metric: single threaded, multithreaded, total RAM per socket, PCIe 4.0, power consumption, total performance, total price, performance for price, etc.

Outside of some very niche applications, the only reason someone would choose Intel for servers right now is because "no one ever got fired for choosing Intel."

AMD's Epyc Rome processors are truly excellent, best-in-class processors.

[thedance]

There are literally no server benchmarks anywhere in those articles. Unless you are planning to run a distributed C build node there's nothing in these articles that can inform your choice. Distributed building is an extremely narrow, niche use case. Where are the nginx and mysql and grpc benchmarks?

[coder543]

There's absolutely no way you could've read those articles in the last four minutes. They go into great detail about what makes the Rome processors so important -- it's not just some random amalgamation of benchmarks, but the benchmarks serve to provide hard numbers that back up the textual analysis.

The benchmarks are not just "distributed compilation" either... that's a very misleading characterization. There was one compilation benchmark for the Linux kernel, and that's the only compilation benchmark I remember seeing.

No one benchmarks nginx because nginx can easily saturate the network card on a server without saturating the processor.

Here's a postgres benchmark: https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=2002066-VE-XEONEPYC...

Or a rocksdb benchmark: https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=2002066-VE-XEONEPYC...

MariaDB was a rare win for Intel: https://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=2002066-VE-XEONEPYC...

("rare win" is literally the wording used in the Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux55-...)

ServeTheHome had access to more comprehensive Intel hardware, so I preferred to link to their articles, but Phoronix saw more of the same stuff.

Intel was thoroughly destroyed in every Linux review of Rome vs Intel's latest that I've seen. Intel can eke out some rare wins when applications are heavily optimized for the nuances of their CPUs, but it's not guaranteed even then.

If you can't be bothered to read articles to understand the answer to the question you asked, then this is my last reply.

[dang]

Please don't cross into personal attack. It breaks HN's rules and invites worse from others. Your comment would be fine without the last (and arguably also the first) bits.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[thedance]

Every morning, I beg my God to make morons stop replying to me on HN. Today is the first day anyone has promised to make my dream come true.

I didn't read those articles in the last 4 minutes because I read them when they were published. A massively parallel run of 7zip was a really stupid benchmark in August and it remains stupid today.

These other benchmarks are certainly more relevant but none of them jumps out at me as a killer claim. An EPYC 7402 with 50% more cores, drawing 80% more power, and costing 35% more dollars than a Xeon Silver 4216 delivers 24% more pgsql ops per second. What TCO equation do you plug that into? I would describe these results as mixed.

[dang]

Please don't cross into personal attack or break the site guidelines even if someone else started it. That's how we get a downward spiral. Conversely, if you respond by not getting personal and sticking to the site guidelines, you contribute to preserving the commons.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[coder543]

Calling someone a moron is not acceptable on HN, to start with, but it's also just not a great way to conduct a discussion. Secondly, you explained that you HAVE read the articles, so why would I stop replying to you?

> These other benchmarks are certainly more relevant but none of them jumps out at me as a killer claim. An EPYC 7402 with 50% more cores, drawing 80% more power, and costing 35% more dollars than a Xeon Silver 4216 delivers 24% more pgsql ops per second. What TCO equation do you plug that into? I would describe these results as mixed.

That's some interesting cherry picking. If I may do some of my own...

- The Epyc 7642 is doing 66% more pg sql ops per second than the Silver 4216, but only using an average of 34% more power than the 4216.

- The Xeon Platinum 8253 is consuming about the same amount of power as the Epyc 7402, costs twice as much, and yet the 7402 is performing 34% faster.

The Xeon Silver 4216 is competitive in this one benchmark, and you declare that the results are "mixed". It gets thoroughly destroyed in tons of other benchmarks.

So, yes, if you will only ever run this specific version of MariaDB on this one server, then it might be a toss up... IF you don't benefit from using PCIe 4.0 to access more (or faster) SSDs, and you don't want to have the option of putting in more RAM.

AMD is consistently better in the overwhelming majority of benchmarks here, especially as you get away from the low end. Saying that Intel has one "toss up" victory in the low end category is not exactly a ringing endorsement to pick Intel here.