The Incredible Performance & Power Efficiency Of AMD Zen 1 vs. Zen 4C

First up was running the Nginx web server serving static content via HTTPS. At 32 cores / 64 threads, going from the EPYC 7601 to EPYC 8324P showed the Zen 4C cores at 1.83x the performance of the Zen 1. Or if going up the stack to 64 cores / 128 threads with Siena, the EPYC 8534PN was at 2.5x the performance of the EPYC 7601.

The Nginx results are all the more impressive when looking at the CPU power consumption... The EPYC 7601 was running at 168 Watts on average for this HTTPS web server test while the EPYC 8324P was at a 122 Watt average, the EPYC 8324PN at an 83 Watt average, and even the EPYC 8534PN at only 130 Watts.

Thus on a performance-per-Watt basis, the EPYC 8324P delivered 2.52x the performance-per-Watt of the EPYC 7601, the EPYC 8534PN NEBS-friendly version was at 3.07x the performance-per-Watt of that original Zen 1 flagship, and the 64-core EPYC 8534PN at 3.3x.

When moving to more demanding workloads like OpenSSL, the Zen 1 to Zen 4C difference is even more dramatic. The 32-core Zen 4C (8324P) was delivering 2.9x the performance of the 32-core Zen 1 server processor... Again though the Siena parts were able to run under their TDP rating and the EPYC 8324PN was delivering nearly 5x the performance-per-Watt as the Zen 1 Naples processor.

The AMD EPYC server performance and power efficiency has come a long way over the past 7+ years. Of course, if going with Genoa(X) and Bergamo the performance difference is simply mind-boggling but this article is mainly focused on core-for-core difference and then the EPYC 8534PN run for additional context.