Intel 5th Gen Xeon Performance Benchmarks: Impressive Efficiency Gains With "Optimized Power Mode"

With the new Intel 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" processors there is a new feature called the Optimized Power Mode (OPM). This Optimized Power Mode can be enabled via the system BIOS for Emerald Rapids for helping to reduce the CPU power consumption when not running at full utilization. With Intel claiming that up to 110 Watts of server power savings can be conserved when running at 30~40% utilization, I was curious and set out to run my own Optimized Power Mode benchmarks with the Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors. Here is a deep dive on Intel Optimized Power Mode benchmarks.

5th Gen Intel Xeon "Emerald Rapids" processors already deliver better power efficiency out-of-the-box compared to 4th Gen Intel Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" thanks to a variety of improvements, but what piqued my interest the most during the reviewer event was their brief mentions of Optimized Power Mode. Optimized Power Mode isn't enabled by default but needs to be enabled when running Emerald Rapids Xeon processors -- activating the knob from within the system BIOS.

Intel talked up Optimized Power Mode as being able to help lower power and cooling costs when servers are not at full utilization. In particular, around the 30~40% range that many data centers and server environments operate at are supposed to realize significant power savings -- and lowered cooling needs -- via running in this Optimized Power Mode. Or at around 70% utilization is about 66 Watts saving. Meanwhile when hitting 100% server utilization, the performance in the Optimized Power Mode is still said to be similar to the out-of-the-box performance.

As Intel didn't provide much in the way of detailed benchmarks for showing the Optimized Power Mode impact across various workloads or detailing why they didn't make this the default behavior given today's focus on power efficient data centers, I ran some tests on my own using the Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors.

For those wondering about enabling the feature and since it took me some time myself to find within the system BIOS... On the Eagle Stream reference server at least it was found by going to the Socket Configuration area, entering the Advanced Power Management Configuration area, and then there is a "CPU - Advanced PM Tuning" page. From the "CPU - Advanced PM Tuning", there was the "Optimized Power Mode" entry that is disabled by default but can be then easily enabled.

As of writing I haven't seen any public documents that specifically outline all of the optimizations applied when enabling the Optimized Power Mode, but my testing has reaffirmed what Intel marketed that indeed this feature does work wonders for lowering CPU power consumption when the server isn't fully utilized.

Let's move on with some benchmarks looking at the out-of-the-box Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ dual socket processor out-of-the-box and then repeating the same tests with the only change being the enabling of Optimized Power Mode from the BIOS.