AMD EPYC 7302 / 7402 / 7502 / 7742 Linux Performance Benchmarks

Last month we provided launch-day benchmarks of the AMD EPYC 7502 and 7742 under Linux in both 1P and 2P configurations for these exciting "Rome" Zen 2 server processors. For your viewing pleasure today is a fresh look at not only the EPYC 7502 and 7742 processors under the latest Linux 5.3 kernel but we've also expanded it to looking at the EPYC 7302 and EPYC 7402 processors as well with those processors recently being sent over by AMD. Under Ubuntu 19.04 with Linux 5.3, these four different AMD EPYC 7002 series SKUs were benchmarked along with some of the older AMD Naples processors and Intel Xeon Gold/Platinum processors for a fresh look at the Linux server performance.

The AMD EPYC 7302 is a sixteen core part plus with SMT yields 32 threads. The EPYC 7302 has a base clock frequency of 3GHz with a maximum boost clock of 3.3GHz while having a 128MB cache and a 155 Watt TDP. This AMD EPYC 7002 series offering retails for just about $1025 USD. The AMD EPYC 7402 meanwhile is a 24-core / 48-thread part with 2.8GHz base clock and 3.35GHz boost clock frequency while having a 180 Watt TDP. This 24c/48t EPYC processor retails for around $1933 USD, which is another example of AMD's competitive pricing with the Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 at 28c/56t and 2.7GHz base frequency (4.0GHz turbo) retails for around $10k USD.

As a refresher, the EPYC 7502 is the 32-core / 64-thread part at 2.5GHz with a 3.35GHz maximum boost frequency and 180 Watt TDP. The EPYC 7742 is the current flagship Rome processor with 64 cores / 128 threads, 2.25GHz base clock, and 3.4GHz maximum boost clock while having a 225 Watt TDP.

The entire AMD EPYC Rome line-up has 128 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, eight memory channels at DDR4-3200, and other common features as outlined in our EPYC 7002 series overview.

The processor configurations tested for this article include:

- EPYC 7251
- EPYC 7401P
- EPYC 7601
- EPYC 7601 2P
- EPYC 7302
- EPYC 7302 2P
- EPYC 7402
- EPYC 7402 2P
- EPYC 7502
- EPYC 7502 2P
- EPYC 7742
- EPYC 7742 2P
- Xeon Gold 6138
- 2 x Xeon Gold 6138
- Xeon Platinum 8280
- 2 x Xeon Platinum 8280

The selection of processors tested were based upon those I had available. Also in the days ahead we will have Linux benchmark results from the EPYC 7642 processor as well. Thanks to AMD for providing the EPYC CPU samples as well as the Daytona reference server platform while Intel supplied the Xeon Platinum 8280 and Tyan the Xeon Gold 6138s.

Each processor was tested with system memory at its maximum supported number of memory channels and optimal frequency, Intel Optane 900p 280GB NVMe SSD storage was used on each server, and Ubuntu 19.04 x86_64 was running on each server with the Linux 5.3 Git kernel as of 7 September. All of the benchmarks were run via the Phoronix Test Suite.