7nm AMD EPYC “Rome” CPU w/ 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K)

Yesterday, we shared the core and thread counts of AMD’s Zen 2 based Epyc lineup, with the lowest-end chip going as low as 8 cores while the top-end 7742 boasting 64 and double the threads. Today, the prices of these server parts have also surfaced, and it seems like they are going to be quite a bit cheaper than the competing Intel Xeon Platinum processors.

The top-end Epyc 7742 with a TDP of 225W (128 threads @ 3.4GHz) is said to sell for a bit less than $8K, while the lower clocked 7702 and 7702P (single-socket) are going to cost $7,215 and $4,955 (just) respectively. That’s quite impressive, you’re getting 64 Zen 2 cores for just $5,000, while on the other hand Intel’s 28-core Xeon Platinum 8280 costs a whopping $18K and is half as powerful.

Intel’s Xeon 9200 lineup is expected to be priced somewhere between in the $25K to $50K range, while the 56-core 9282 won’t be any less than $40K. You are looking at a TDP of 400W and a boost clock of 3.8GHz. Neat, but for that much, you can buy four 64-Core AMD Rome processors plus some extras too. AMD’s Zen 2 architecture also comes with support for PCIe 4.0 and faster memory which the Intel platforms lack as of now. The Xeons also come with an L3 cache of just 70-80MB while the Epyc CPUs pack 256MB for the higher-end models.

Related: Intel Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Sapphire Rapids, Alder Lake, Granite Rapids and Meteor Lake CPU Details Surface

Moving down the ladder, we’ve got the 48-core and 32-core variants, the Epyc 7642, 7552, 7542 and the 7502/P, with the P variant once again costing just $2.5K. Comparing it to the Intel Xeon Platinum 9221 which also comes with the same core count (but a higher power draw of 250W and a boost clock of 3.7GHz) you will have to pay north of $20K. Granted, the Intel part will be slightly faster, but it’ll be nowhere as much to justify this price.

At the bottom of the rug, you’ve got the 8/16/24 core Epyc CPUs with a price tag of just $650 for the 8-core chip and a still affordable $1400 for the 24-core 7402P. If you look into Intel territory, the 8-core Xeon Platinum 8253 costs $3K and packs just 8-cores and half as much cache as its Epyc competitor. And, there’s no way it’s going to be a better buy. In fact, the 7nm Epyc 7402 should be at least 40-50% faster.

So, there you have it, folks. I’m not sure what Intel is thinking but it’ll become apparent soon enough when the Epyc “Rome” chips hit the market with their disruptive price-tags. Looks like Intel is going to have a hard time in both the consumer as well as the server segments, at least till the 10nm Ice Lake SPs arrive.

Read more:

$200 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 OC’d Beats $484 Intel Core i9-9900K in Geekbench Single Core Test