It feels a little weird to write about performance results for AMD's EPYC processors and not have to tie the word "leak" into it. As we covered just last week, AMD has finally unleashed its hugely anticipated EPYC processor line for the server market, and to say it's long overdue would be a gross understatement.



There is no doubt that Ryzen is important for AMD's desktop aspirations, but EPYC is hugely important for its chance to steal back enterprise market share from Intel.

Today, we get a glimpse of some of what EPYC can deliver, as some results have hit SiSoftware's Sandra repository. The EPYC model tested was AMD's current top-end, the 7601, which boasts 32-cores, 64 threads, and perhaps most notably, an eight-channel memory controller. A close match from the Intel side would be its upcoming Xeon Platinum 8180, falling a pinch short of AMD with 56 threads. Both sets of test results involved dual-socket systems.

Across the three available tests, Arithmetic, Multi-media, and Multi-core Efficiency, AMD performs well, but does lag behind Intel in all but the last test. With the Arithmetic test, AMD peaks at 1242 GOPS, while Intel hits 1345 GOPS - a small but notable difference. Where Intel truly shines is with the multimedia test, which isn't a huge surprise given Intel's historical prowess there. In this case, Intel's 4855MPix/s decimates EPYC's 1347MPix/s.

Where AMD does launch ahead of Intel is with the multi-core efficiency, which sees AMD peak at 283GB/s, versus Intel's 237GB/s. How much that efficiency matters when the overall performance is weakened, we're not sure, but it looks great nonetheless.

These results are just a drop in the bucket compared to what we'd need to see for a fuller picture, so hopefully more results will trickle out soon.