[naffrancois]

Dear all,

Any of you has any idea about the performance with CFD of 4th gen Xeon Scalable CPUs ?

More specifically, how would Xeon 6430 perform versus Genoa 9354 ?

From what I can read about the specs, Genoa has 12 memory channels and 256MB L3 versus 8 channels and 60MB. Frequency is also higher for the Genoa.

But Genoa is 60% more expensive, is it worth ?

[flotus1]

If you are dealing with expensive per-core licenses: absolutely.

A Xeon Gold 6430 has 8 memory channels at DDR5-4400.
For the Epyc 9354 it's 12 memory channels at DDR5-4800.
And while cache sizes can not really be compared 1:1 for different architectures, the raw numbers are just too far in favor of Epyc.

Intel does not do itself any favors with their "all-in" approach to product segmentation for this generation.
Also, when comparing the price for the whole server, and the cost to run it, a 2000$ difference for the CPUs themselves is barely more than a rounding error. Even before factoring in license costs.
The reason to go Intel these days are a few edge-cases, where you know beforehand that your software does not play nice with AMD CPUs. Or benefits from Intel-exclusive hardware acceleration features.

[naffrancois]

Thank you Alex for your answer.

I should have specified, there is no license costs involved. You are right, when comparing the price of the full server this difference should vanish, but it does not that much at least with this famous big company. I still get Genoa solution more expensive by 47% considering a dual-socket configuration. Intel is equipped with 16*32DDR5 4800 and Genoa with 24*16DDR5 4800.

I am still inclined with the EPYC solution given all the benchmarks that we can find here in this forum, but I am not the one to convince

[flotus1]

Trust me, I know about the difficulty of persuading people that the more expensive, but faster hardware is the economical option in the long run
Dual Xeon 6430 will still perform pretty ok. Certainly faster than most setups from the DDR4 era. So don't beat yourself up if that's all you get approved.