AMD announces new EPYC processors

AMD has announced some new additions to its 2nd Gen EPYC processor family, with three new processors added to the lineup. 

The three new processors include the AMD EPYC 7F32 (8 cores), EPYC 7F52 (16 cores) and EPYC 7F72 (24 cores). According to AMD, the core aim here is to "expand...performance leadership into workloads" that will be able to leverage up to 500MHz of additional base frequency and large amounts of cache. The eventual aim being to make the EPYC processors the world's highest per core performance x86 server CPUs out there.

According to benchmarks, all three processors will be able to offer up to 17 percent higher SQL Server performance than the competition, with 47 percent higher VMmark 3.1 scores (when using vSAN as the storage tier in a 4-node cluster), with up to 94 percent higher per core computational fluid dynamics individual application performance. 

That's a lot of big talk but then again AMD is keen to push harder against its main competitor - Intel - especially when it comes to the server market where Intel has had dominance for a long time. 

The processors use a combination of Zen2 cores, AMD Infinity architecture, and the use of PCIe 4 and DDR4-3200 memory. For $2,100, the EPYC 7F32 offers 8 cores and 16 threads with a base frequency of 3.7GHz and max boost of 3.9GHz along with a total L3 cache of 128MB. In comparison, the $2,450 priced 7F72 provides 24 cores and 48 threads, a base frequency of 3.2GHz and max boost of 3.7GHz along with 192MB total L3 cache. The higher end 7F52 comes in at $3,100. It includes 16 cores and 32 threads, with a base frequency of 3.5GHz and max boost of 3.9GHz, and 256MB total L3 cache. 

The announcement also came with news that a few key OEMs will immediately adopt the new processors including Dell, HPE, and Lenovo. Microsoft has also provided them with its blessing citing the positive figures for speedy SQL Server2TPM per core performance. It'll be interesting to see how Intel respond (if at all) and what this could mean for server options. 

If you just happen to be in the market for a brand new server CPU, the AMD site has everything on where to track one down from.