News AMD unveils EPYC 4004 CPUs: AM5 gets server-grade processors

[Admin]

AMD takes aim at dedicated hosting and small businesses with the new EPYC 4004-series CPUs for socket AM5 packaging.

AMD unveils EPYC 4004 CPUs: AM5 gets server-grade processors : Read more

 

[usertests]

Wouldn't it be nice if ECC was standard (even if memory prices have to be jacked up ~15%) and not a confusing enterprise feature? No, not the DDR5 pseudo-ECC.

Other than that, I guess these are the enterprise features:

The platform features RAIDXpert2 for servers, AMD secure processor enclave, and transparent memory encryption (TSME).

Pricing looks very reasonable compared to the Zen 4 desktop lineup, for carrying the Epyc name. EPYC 4124P looks like it's based on an APU die with half the L3 cache.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

One odd thing I noticed is that both the top two SKUs cost the same: EPYC 4564P and EPYC 4584PX costing $699 respectively !

One is the 3D V-Cache variant with 128MB cache, and the other one is obviously the vanilla SKU.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

It's nice to see AMD also showcased a Cryptography and Cryptocurrency "CPU Mining" performance slide as well.

EPYC 4004 CPUs appear to offer a 2.4x performance per $ gain, and 60% better efficiency.

 

[cleavet]

These should outperform Intel's 4004 by a decent margin, especially in floating-point operations.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

You mean to say the Xeon E-2400 CPU lineup ? How does that ancient 4-bit 4004 processor compare with this series ?

 

[helper800]

How does that ancient 4-bit 4004 processor compare with this series ?

I would say, very well.

 

[LabRat 891]

There's but one, incredibly important question:

Can we OC 'em?

[K8 Opteron flashbacks intensify]

 

[usertests]

One odd thing I noticed is that both the top two SKUs cost the same: EPYC 4564P and EPYC 4584PX costing $699 respectively !

One is the 3D V-Cache variant with 128MB cache, and the other one is obviously the vanilla SKU.

That's amusing. Some (many?) customers will definitely prefer the vanilla one with higher clocks, and may have no applications at all that benefit from 3D V-Cache. So AMD might as well charge the same and see if they can get away with it.

Too bad AMD didn't take the opportunity to launch a dual cache model (192 MB total L3).

There's but one, incredibly important question:

Can we OC 'em?

[K8 Opteron flashbacks intensify]

I don't know, but who needs it? These are clocked just as high as the identical Ryzen chips out of the box, which is unusually high for Epyc, and hitting up to 5.7 GHz which is still crazy to think about.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/2140...unches-entrylevel-zen-4based-epyc-4004-series

This does mean that, by EPYC server standards, the 4004 series is not particularly energy efficient. This is a lineup that is intended to be cost-effective first and foremost. Instead, energy efficiency remains the domain of the EPYC 8004, with its modestly-clocked many-core Zen4c designs.

 

[abufrejoval]

Darn, I just built such a workstation, that I'd have liked to have a few enterprise featuresd like a BMC and on-board 10GBit!

But that included a rather bad experience with regards to dual DIMMs per RAM channel for 128GB (or 192), which contrary to my AM4 experience, was a disaster. I had to settle with 96 GB in two DDR5-5600 ECC 48GB DIMMs which did cost as much as 128GB via 2x32GB.

The ASUS X670E board claims ECC support, so I guess that includes validation this time. On AM4 ECC "worked", but came without validation from the vendor.

Without error injection capabilities, I just had no way to make sure and I've not seen corrected errors on my systems yet, some of which run 24x7 from patchday to patchday.

When ECC DRAM cost a 100% markup, such lack of validation was a bit harder to stomach, these days the ECC markup is within the range of a slight overclock premium and I know where I place my bets.

Drivers that actually work on Windows 2022 would be a welcome change, that's been a pain in the rear since Windows 2008!

Software RAIDs have given me far too much trouble, too.

Things that really shouldn't work, did actually work. Like when I upgraded from an Intel Xeon E3-1280v3 to a Ryzen 9 5950X and a SATA SSD based RAID0 cache drive created via the Intel BIOS just kept on working on Windows 2022 just using a "raid" setting in the BIOS but no AMD drivers...

Even Linux recognises Intel softRAIDs, after all, so this kind of backward compatibility seems backed in in more places than ever officially advertised.

Yet when I replaced another Ryzen 9 5950X with a Ryzen 7950X3D, the AMD RAID0 (basically just an LLM cache) wouldn't be recognized for the longest time on Windows 10. Switched to a Windows 11 temporarily to create an HDD backup and it was picked up immediately!

And just when I had done the backup, another Windows 10 reboot gave me back the RAID!

No idea if some bit got flipped and then reset, but it wasn't an experience I enjoyed and I'd rather have Intel/AMD/Windows simply adopt Linux MD signatures and algorithms, which are vendor agnostic, fast and as robust as they can be.

The main feature I'd expect from this enterprise variant is support for per VM memory encryption, which IMHO is just the sort of feature fuse-off reserved for EPICs, that AMD was proud not to use, when they lauched Zen.

Can't say that I need it personally, but when it comes to deploying hardware on an edge where you can't entirely exclude malicious physical access, it could make a make or break difference.

These smaller machines tend to be far more exposed than the big servers!

 

[TerryLaze]

I don't know, but who needs it? These are clocked just as high as the identical Ryzen chips out of the box, which is unusually high for Epyc, and hitting up to 5.7 GHz which is still crazy to think about.

Because they are the same ryzen chips, there is no way AMD paid for the same validation as for actual epyc but then sells them so cheaply.
They just added the I/O ,ecc mem, and whatnot to a normal ryzen package.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Because they are the same ryzen chips, there is no way AMD paid for the same validation as for actual epyc but then sells them so cheaply.
They just added the I/O ,ecc mem, and whatnot to a normal ryzen package.

Doing what you say is a great way to kill the Epyc brand-name. From AMDs PDF about the release "By choosing the established EPYC brand for enterprises, you can be confident in using the EPYC 4004 Series as the foundation for your
growing business, hosting facility, or server appliance development. You can choose from a variety of solutions from key system vendors
with a multi-year CPU lifecycle support from AMD. We engage with our partners with server design and BMC validation, software RAID,
and chipset support. We’ve tested and validated the EPYC 4004 Series with the leading server operating systems, including Microsoft
Windows® Server 2022, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 9.3 and 9.4, SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server 15 SP5, and Ubuntu® 22.04"
https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/products/epyc/amd-epyc-4004-processor-datasheet.pdf

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

That's amusing. Some (many?) customers will definitely prefer the vanilla one with higher clocks, and may have no applications at all that benefit from 3D V-Cache. So AMD might as well charge the same and see if they can get away with it.

In fact AMD's slides haven't mentioned 3D V-cache explicitly, but I'm sure these are based on the same design as the consumer Ryzen parts, boasting 128MB of combined L3 cache.

Also, there aren't many productivity tools that could leverage this additional 64mb of L3 cache on the die, except some apps.

 

[TerryLaze]

Doing what you say is a great way to kill the Epyc brand-name.

And doing that (validating them the same way they would server CPUs) is a great way for them to kill the whole company...

 

[helper800]

And doing that (validating them the same way they would server CPUs) is a great way for them to kill the whole company...

If they call them EPYC, which they are, customers are going to expect the same validation. If AMD doesn't do this validation but keeps the branding they are going to get sued by someone. AMD should know this, yet they still call them EPYC. AMD wont kill their server CPUs by releasing these parts like this... That's just incorrect...

 

[jeremyj_83]

And doing that (validating them the same way they would server CPUs) is a great way for them to kill the whole company...

By your thinking the Xeon-E 2XXX or Xeon-D lineup wouldn't have the same validations as Xeon Scalable or Xeon E5/7. That is completely false. These companies aren't going to put the enterprise label on their product without the same level of validation. Doing so would open them up to lawsuits that could kill the company.