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AMD Genoa 96-Core CPU Towers Over Intel Sapphire Rapids 56-Core CPU In 2P System Benchmark

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AMD (110,230) is a commanding win over Intel (69,777) in Cinebench R23 nT tests.

Twitter’s YuuKi_AnS has been lucky enough to be able to test the latest and greatest workstation and server processors from AMD and Intel. The tech enthusiast and digital creator has put both an AMD EPYC Genoa two-processor (2P) system and an Intel Xeon Platinum 8480+ Sapphire Rapids 2P system through the Cinebench R23 rendering benchmark. The result is an obvious win for the AMD Genoa Engineering Sample. However, before going on, please take the results with a pinch of salt, as YuuKi_AnS admits this type of shared data isn’t guaranteed to be accurate but is “for reference only.”

There is something of an anomaly in the way Cinebench either uses or reports processor cores. The rendering benchmark appears to be somehow limited to 125C/256T. It is evident from the system info section of the benchmarking app. Meanwhile, the Windows Task Manager correctly shows that the AMD’  Genoa’ machine under test is a 2P system using a pair of 96C/192T processors working together. So clearly, Cinebench R23 should report and use 192C/384T of processing available but may not be; it might be limited to the readout – 125C/256T for now.

With the above system setup explanations and provisos out of the way, let us look closer at the results through the medium of a table.

According to the test results, the AMD ‘Genoa’ ES 2P system is 38% faster than the Intel Sapphire Rapids 2P system. It is because the AMD system wields more cores, and Cinebench R23 responds well to core scaling. Cinebench says the AMD system has 14% more cores, though according to Windows, it has 71% more cores, and if the benchmark were utilizing them, the score would be even better.

While consumers are getting excited at the impending launch of Zen 4 architecture Ryzen 7000 processors towards the end of this month, AMD’s EPYC Genoa parts (based on the same microarchitecture) are also causing ripples. A week ago, YuuKi_AnS posted a photo of an EPYC 9654 ES 96-core CPU (one of the CPUs in the tested system above?). The Genoa launch could be as soon as next month, but we aren’t sure as AMD isn’t as upfront about its non-consumer-related business plans. These powerful EPYC chips are scheduled for H2 2022, and we are in that part of the calendar now.