AMD has released two Zen 4c-based server families, including Bergamo (128 cores) and Siena (64 cores). The former focuses on compute density and core counts while the latter is aimed at cost-effective establishments wary of large power bills.
The Epyc 8534P is the Siena flagship with 64 cores and a boost clock of 3.1GHz. It has a stock TDP of 200W that can adjusted from 155W to 255W. It retails for $4950 and supports all Zen 4 features, including AVX-512, hex-channel DDR5-4800 memory, and 96 PCIe Gen 5 lanes.
Phoronix tested the Epyc 8534P (and its PN variant) and were pleasantly surprised by the efficiency and affordability of these parts. We’ll skim through the important bits to highlight the same.
In rendering workloads like Blender, the Epyc 8543P is ~50% faster than the Xeon Platinum 8468 (Sapphire Rapids) while drawing almost a third as much power. In the 155W mode, it manages to beat the Xeon while drawing just over 120W of power.
The performance/cost graph indicates that the Epyc 8534P is over 2x more viable than the Sapphire Rapids Xeon in cost-limiting scenarios where rendering is a major workload.
SHA256 encryption is the standard for SSL-secured domains. The AMD Siena flagship is 64% faster than the Xeon Platinum 8468 in the 225W mode, while the 155W profile beats it by 20%.
The power consumption monitor produces similar results as last time. The Epyc 8534P draws 100W less than the Xeon Platinum 8468 in the 225W mode, reducing it to nearly a third in the 155W mode.
Apache Cassandra is a vital component of server backends, including ours. Interestingly, it’s less affected by the cTDP than other tests. The Epyc 8534P has a throughput of 265.67K ops per sec, 110K higher than the Xeon 8468.
The Siena flagship has a peak power consumption of 135W in this test, once again half as much as its Sapphire Rapids rival.
The Epyc 8534P offers 45 ops per dollar, dwarfing the Xeon 8468’s 18.6 ops per dollar output. Even with the cTDP set to 155W, the former has a remarkable performance-cost ratio of 39.50 ops per dollar.
PostgreSQL 16 is one of the most widely used database management systems, one that favors the Siena processors. The Epyc 8534 nets 2.29 million TPS at 155W and a staggering 3.15 million TPS at 225W cTDP. The Xeon Platinum 8468 is limited to just 2 million TPS, highlighting a 50% delta between the two SKUs.
The power consumption graphs don’t change much, either. The Epyc 8534P tops at 220W in the 225W power mode, while the Xeon pulls in well over 300W, reaching its 350W power limit across all scenarios.
The performance/cost factor is more than twice as consumer-friendly for the Epyc Siena flagship, delivering 538 TPS per dollar, up from just 251 TPS on the Xeon competition.
