Intel's Flagship 128-Core Xeon 6980P Processor Sets Record $17,800 Flagship Price

[AleksandarK]

The title has no typo, and what you are reading is correct. Intel's flagship 128-core 256-threaded CPU Xeon 6980P compute monster processor carries a substantial $17,800 price point. Intel's Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" family of processors appears to be its most expensive yet, with the flagship SKU now carrying more than a 50% price increase compared to the previous "Emerald Rapids" generation. However, the economics of computing are more nuanced than simple comparisons. While the last generation Emerald Rapids Xeon 8592+ (64 cores, 128 threads) cost about $181 per core, the new Granite Rapids Xeon 6980P comes in at approximately $139 per core, offering faster cores at a lower per-core cost.

The economics of data centers aren't always tied to the cost of a single product. When building total cost of ownership models, factors such as power consumption, compute density, and performance impact the final assessment. Even with the higher price of this flagship Granite Rapids Xeon processor, the economics of data center deployment may work in its favor. Customers get more cores in a single package, increasing density and driving down cost-per-core per system. This also improves operational efficiency, which is crucial considering that operating expenses account for about 10% of data center costs.



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[Frick]

Plus are any of these actually bought at those prices?

 

[Gigaherz]

There are less and less individuals being able to afford enthousiast components by the day.
Watch what they are taking from us!

 

[DaedalusHelios]

There are less and less individuals being able to afford enthousiast components by the day.
Watch what they are taking from us!

I wouldn't really call that an enthusiast component though. That is a data server processor.

Gigaherz, what country are you from? Perhaps you meant that in another way that I wasn't following?

 

[Wirko]

Plus are any of these actually bought at those prices?

True, but memory usually costs more than the CPU in servers. Of course, neither CPUs nor memory are bought at retail prices there.

 

[Frick]

There are less and less individuals being able to afford enthousiast components by the day.
Watch what they are taking from us!

Threadripper and Core i9 are the enthusiast/power user/HEDT* chips.

*intel doesn't really do those anymore

 

[Gigaherz]

*intel doesn't really do those anymore

Yeah, z790 is just a boosted desktop Platform that copes with Add-on cards.

 

[Anoniem]

There are less and less individuals being able to afford enthousiast components by the day.
Watch what they are taking from us!

That's not how it works, you (I suppose) do not understand for which market they are. They are meant for my customers, not for private individuals. These chips get shipped for a much lower price to the likes of Lenovo, Dell, HP, Gigabyte etc.

And besides the above; you don't even want these chips for regular work or gaming, they'll perform extremely subpar. A simple mid range CPU will smack it around in games

 

[John_Boh]

Plus are any of these actually bought at those prices?

actually even higher, usually theese chips are boughts in pre-assembled servers and that price is intended for 1000 units purchase(but off course the oems pays that much lower).

 

[azrael]

Gotta recoup those losses somehow...

 

[Daven]

The highest priced Xeons actually went to the Cascade Lake AP series from 2019. These dual die 56 core beasts were rumored to cost between $25k and $50k at the time.

Hands on with the 56-core Xeon Platinum 9200 CPU: Intel’s Biggest CPU Package Ever

www.anandtech.com

“Pricing for this family of processors is not expected to be disclosed. Intel has stated that as they are selling these chips as part of barebones servers to OEMs that they will unlikely partition out the list pricing of the parts, and expect OEMs to cost them appropriately. Given that the new high-end Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L, with 28 cores and support for 4.5 TB of memory, runs just shy of ~$18k, we might see the top Xeon Platinum 9282 be anywhere from $25k to $50k, based on Intel margins, OEM margins, and markup.”

 

[Vya Domus]

They just wont learn, they're no longer in a position to ask for such an astronomical price premium, a 9754 is like half the price, crazy.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

Plus are any of these actually bought at those prices?

I do not think so. These official pricelists are just a part of PR, they want to make readers believe that these CPUs are so good that they can have these price tags.

Real prices are probably substantially lower.

 

[Ruru]

I do not think so. These official pricelists are just a part of PR, they want to make readers believe that these CPUs are so good that they can have these price tags.

Real prices are probably substantially lower.

Back in the day CPU prices used to be listed in the quantity of 1000, a single retail chip was more expensive. Wonder how it's today.

 

[GhostRyder]

So as far as I can tell AMD has the Epyc 9754 which is a 128 core 256 thread processor which can be bought at a price of around 9,600 dollars that I have found. That is almost double the price, so it better have some serious performance difference for that high of a cost difference.

Edit: Found some listings around $8,000 so it is less than half the price of this...

 

[natr0n]

few years this will be on ebay for less than $100

 

[Squared]

So as far as I can tell AMD has the Epyc 9754 which is a 128 core 256 thread processor which can be bought at a price of around 9,600 dollars that I have found. That is almost double the price, so it better have some serious performance difference for that high of a cost difference.

Edit: Found some listings around $8,000 so it is less than half the price of this...

The Epyc 9754 has Zen 4c cores which have a lower frequency, little over 1/2 the L3 cache, and lower memory speed. AMD's Epyc 9684X has only 96 cores and it's generally more capable than the 9754, and also a lot more expensive.

	Epyc 9754	Xeon 6980P
Boost Clock	3.1 GHz / 3.1 GHz all	3.9 GHz / 3.2 GHz all
L3 Cache	256 MB	504 MB
Memory Speed	4800 MT/s	6400 MT/s or 8800 MT/s

In Phoronix testing the Xeon beats both Epycs in nearly every workload, usually by a wide margin. Last-generation Epyc isn't going to present strong competition, but the upcoming Zen 5 Epycs should do pretty well.

Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" Linux Benchmarks Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Xeon Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/xeon-6980p.c3862
Epyc 9754 Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/epyc-9754.c3257
Epyc 9684X Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/epyc-9684x.c3253

 

[unwind-protect]

At least it is under $20 K.

How much is the highest full-core count Opteron^H^H^HEPYC?

 

[Carillon]

In Phoronix testing the Xeon beats both Epycs in nearly every workload, usually by a wide margin. Last-generation Epyc isn't going to present strong competition, but the upcoming Zen 5 Epycs should do pretty well.

Michael made another article after that:

Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Taking the geomean bergamo is much, much more efficient, on an older node and without AMX. It is also priced much, much lower. I don't believe the current epyc generation to be weak competition.

 

[kondamin]

Michael made another article after that:

Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Taking the geomean bergamo is much, much more efficient, on an older node and without AMX. It is also priced much, much lower. I don't believe the current epyc generation to be weak competition.

wasn't zen 5 released on epyc before ryzen?

 

[Squared]

Michael made another article after that:

Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Taking the geomean bergamo is much, much more efficient, on an older node and without AMX. It is also priced much, much lower. I don't believe the current epyc generation to be weak competition.

Michael said,

On average the Xeon 6980P 2P was consuming around 15% more power than the AMD EPYC 9684X Genoa-X 2P processor.

and,

With the geo mean of the 140+ benchmarks carried out, the Xeon 6980P 2P was around 12% faster than the EPYC 9684X 2P, putting the performance-per-Watt roughly comparable.

Michael's graphs depict Bergamo as more efficient but they also depict it as more efficient than Epyc Genoa, and AMD charges a lot more for Genoa than for Bergamo. And Granite Rapids is faster than Genoa and has equal power efficiency.

I don't understand the power efficiency graphs on Phoronix, but plucking a the apparent averages from the Sierra Forest review summary, it appears that Sierra Forest is 10% more power efficient than Bergamo. I'm sure there's some overlap but I think a lot of prospective Bergamo customers are cross-shopping with Sierra Forest and Genoa customers are comparing it to Granite Rapids.

Also somewhere—probably on Serve the Home—it was said that most of the time these server processors will be run under a 25-50% load. So far I haven't seen any power efficiency tests under those conditions.

 

[Carillon]

No, zen5 is desktop first.
The last digit in the epyc model number designates the generation, if it ends in 4 it is zen4.

Michael said,

and,

Michael's graphs depict Bergamo as more efficient but they also depict it as more efficient than Epyc Genoa, and AMD charges a lot more for Genoa than for Bergamo. And Granite Rapids is faster than Genoa and has equal power efficiency.

I don't understand the power efficiency graphs on Phoronix, but plucking a the apparent averages from the Sierra Forest review summary, it appears that Sierra Forest is 10% more power efficient than Bergamo. Does that make it the best value?

Depending on the workload yes, sierra forest is really good. Granite ridge is also extremely good with AMX.
For the power efficiency it also depends on the workload, but if you go to the last page you find the geomean of all tests. In the article I linked it has both a performance geomean table and a power geomean table.

 

[ns4e921]

Michael made another article after that:

Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC Power Efficiency / Performance-Per-Watt Benchmarks Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Taking the geomean bergamo is much, much more efficient, on an older node and without AMX. It is also priced much, much lower. I don't believe the current epyc generation to be weak competition.

Because you are comparing a lower TDP processor with a higher one. V/F is a curve, not a straight line. This means that a processor's performance and power consumption won't be directly proportional.

 

[Squared]

No, zen5 is desktop first.
The last digit in the epyc model number designates the generation, if it ends in 4 it is zen4.


Depending on the workload yes, sierra forest is really good. Granite ridge is also extremely good with AMX.
For the power efficiency it also depends on the workload, but if you go to the last page you find the geomean of all tests. In the article I linked it has both a performance geomean table and a power geomean table.

My 10% figure takes the middle line in the dark area of the geomean power table on the Sierra Forest review (and divided it from the geomean score). But I did the same from the Granite Rapids review to compare Granite Rapids to Genoa and Bergamo, and it didn't come very close to what Michael said so either I guessed the wrong number for the average line or it's not the average. (I think the figures were like 1.7 pt/W for GNR, 1.9 for Genoa, and 2.8 for Bergamo. From Michael's write-up GNR should be closer to Genoa, and I think Zen 4c is only a little more efficient than Zen 4 so Bergamo and Genoa ought to be a lot closer.)

 

[Dr. Dro]

Haven't seen the most important question, which is... does it run Crysis?