I feel like a broken record. If everything were about technical merits, the AMD EPYC 4005 “Grado” processor should take over almost all of the entry server market. That is simply because with the new six SKU stack, AMD is simply offering a lot more for the dollar. Indeed, this is one segment where we expect AMD to pick up share this year. In this article, we are going to show and explain why.
We also have a video for this one that you can find here:
As always, we suggest opening this in its own browser, tab, or window for the best viewing experience. A special thanks to ASRock Rack and AMD for the help on this one so we could have launch day figures for you. We have to say it is being sponsored.
The AMD EPYC 4005 SKU Stack
With the AMD EPYC 4005 SKU stack, there are now only six parts. Two at 170W TDP for high-performance 16-core setups. Then there are four 65W SKUs designed for lower-power computing. In all cases, however, the clock speeds are at least 3.0GHz as base, and over 5.4GHz at their maximum boost levels.
The SKU that will make many salivate is the AMD EPYC 4585PX. That X stands for 3D V-Cache adding another 64MB of L3 cache to one of the CCDs for 128MB total.
Since these parts are based on the same base silicon platform as their Ryzen counterparts, it is easy to just say that EPYC is a rebranded Ryzen. We will get into that in a bit more detail, but even at the SKU level, Ryzen does not have a 16 core 65W AM5 Ryzen 9000 series part today as just one example of the differentiation. That 65W part allows low-power servers for low-power dedicated hosting and colocation.
In terms of pricing, the Intel Xeon E-2488 and Xeon 6369P are the top-of-stack competition at 8 cores and the same $606. With AMD you can pick between a similar 8-core SKU for closer to half the cost, or get twice as many cores for less either in higher or lower TDP. The only SKU that costs more than Intel’s entry Xeon flagships is the AMD EPYC 4585PX, the part with 3D V-Cache which is a different chip.
Something one of our team members mentioned, is that if you have applications that thrive on high cache per core, the AMD EPYC 4585PX is the Zen 5 option for higher cache per core in this generation as we do not have a Turin-X follow-up to Genoa-X in the EPYC 9000 line.
Let us next get to the chips.
A Look at the AMD EPYC 4005
The AMD EPYC 4005 series is going to look a lot like two other AMD product families. It is essentially a Zen 5 update to the Zen 4-based EPYC 4004 series in the AM5 socket, so those are going to look a lot alike. Also, these platforms will look quite a bit like the AMD Ryzen 9000 series since those are the sister Zen 5 parts.
The major changes in this generation are the update to the Zen 5 architecture with the full 512b AVX-512 data path. There is also an update to DDR5-5600 ECC UDIMM memory speeds. On a competitive note, the Intel Xeon E-2400/ Xeon 6300P series only scale to 8 cores, do not support AVX-512, and support only DDR5-4800 memory.
On the pre-brief call for this launch, and in our EPYC 4004 series content, we repeatedly heard folks ask for more I/O and more cores. The latter is interesting since this offers double the core count of the Xeon competition in this segment. Still, the answer if you want more is really that you go to a higher-end SKU. The AMD EPYC 7000, 8000, and 9000 series all offer more memory, more PCIe lanes, and more cores, while also having single-socket options. As much as I love having more memory and more PCIe lanes, AMD EPYC is now supporting four different sockets with increasing capabilities.
Another difference between the EPYC series, and the Ryzen series, aside from the obvious ones like having a 16-core 65W TDP SKU, is that AMD EPYC means we have validation work for server OSes like Ubuntu and Microsoft Windows Server. We also have the validation work to support ECC UDIMM memory. This is not just a certain motherboard manufacturer offers ECC that they are supporting themselves with a Ryzen part. This is the entire line supporting ECC memory from AMD to the OEM. AMD also has the RAIDXpert2 for Server which is the software RAID solution. This matters for some segments if you need to have RAID for Windows Server as an example. Some still add RAID cards, but every generation PCIe-based RAID controllers continue to lose share when we ask OEMs.
With that, we thought it might be worthwhile looking at a platform since that really helps understand what is going on here.
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