Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks

Earlier this week in the launch-day Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids review/benchmarks I unfortunately wasn't able to provide any CPU power consumption and performance-per-Watt benchmarks due a Linux kernel issue and the minimal time ahead of launch for testing. I've now repeated the Xeon 6980P benchmarking on the Linux 6.8 kernel of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with power monitoring working and have those power efficiency numbers to share today for how Granite Rapids compares to prior Emerald Rapids / Sapphire Rapids / Ice Lake and against the current AMD EPYC Bergamo/Genoa(X) competition.

Today's article is focused on looking at the power efficiency / performance-per-Watt of the Xeon 6980P dual socket server with MRDIMM-8800MT/s compared to prior Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the AMD EPYC competition. The same benchmarks run as found on launch date but repeating the Xeon 6980P benchmarks while using Linux 6.8 with working RAPL/PowerCap sensor monitoring for recording the dual socket (combined) power consumption.

There are no AC wall power "system power consumption" numbers due to Intel AvenueCity being a reference server without tuned fan curves, etc. Both Intel and AMD do not recommend comparing total server power consumption when using reference platforms since they are not representative of retail OEM/ODM servers.

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