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

The dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ was running Ubuntu 23.10 with the Linux 6.5 kernel and using the Intel P-State performance governor across all of the testing. Again, the "default" run is the out-of-the-box state while the Optimized Power Mode is with the only hardware/software change being enabling the Optimized Power Mode setting from the system BIOS.

With the multi-threaded QuantLib benchmark for that quantitative finance software, for this workload that does a good job keeping all of the CPU cores busy there was no difference in the benchmark result nor the combined 2P power consumption for the Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors....

But when running QuantLib in its single-threaded benchmark mode immediately showed an interesting difference: the performance was effectively the same but on average the dual Xeon Platinum 8592+ server dropped its power consumption on average by around 20 Watts. The peak was much lower at 191 vs. 274 Watts. Activating Optimized Power Mode improved the single-threaded QuantLib performance per Watt by 10% for this simple change.

When running the OpenFOAM CFD software with the rather simple motor bike test, the Optimized Power Mode performance was about 1 second slower but the CPU power consumption on average for this dual Emerald Rapids processor configuration was nearly 80 Watts lower and a peak power consumption 117 Watts lower.

With the more demanding drivaerFastback model, the Optimized Performance Mode result was similar to the out-of-the-box performance but with the average 2P power consumption was 33 Watts lower while the peak power consumption was 37 Watts less.

Or with Altair's OpenRadioss Chrysler Neon 1M model that does a typically good job saturating the CPU, with Optimized Power Mode enabled it delivered the same performance on the Xeon Platinum 8592+ 2P server while doing so at around 30 Watts less... Again not bad for a workload keeping the CPU busy and delivering the same performance with a simple BIOS switch to enable said savings.