Key Lessons Learned
There are three broad use cases for these entry-level server CPUs. First, they go into dedicated server platforms. There, we have a focus on price, but also low power so that the systems can maintain density. Second, they can go into platforms optimized for per-core performance since these tend to be some of the higher-clocked server cores in the market. Third, they are found in the tower servers that service SMB customers. Beyond those three, there are some other use cases. One of the biggest challenges is that until earlier this year with the Lenovo ThinkSystem ST45 V3, the old, large OEMs, of Dell, HPE, and Lenovo did not have EPYC 4000 series platforms. Now, Lenovo does opening a new market for these parts.
In terms of the first use case, AMD has had a strong position in the dedicated server market for some time. Even in the waning days of the Opteron series, European hosters often used AMD server processors. Now, that set of hosting providers has expanded. Given what we have seen, the AMD EPYC 4005 will do very well here since this gives those providers an EPYC solution instead of a Ryzen.
On the licensing side, AMD likes to point out that it has 16 core parts to align with Microsoft Windows Server license packs. We just went into this a few weeks ago on STH. Yyou can find that here: Mapping Licensing for Virtualization is Cool Now.
We also have a video for that one:
On the tower server front, let us get a bit controversial. If you were optimizing on low power, the Intel Xeon E-2400/ 6300P series has low performance and low power 4 core parts that have lower maximum power consumption than we expect the EPYC 4005’s 6-core part has given what we saw with the EPYC 4004 series. Beyond that, the performance per watt is usually dominated by AMD’s 65W TDP parts. In the tower server market, some folks optimize on getting the lowest power consumption, but in the context of running a commercial space, the jump to 170W CPUs is not that great if you only have a tower server or two at a location.
The big question now is when will Dell and HPE adopt the AMD EPYC 4005 for their lower-cost 1U servers and SMB tower servers? Until they do, their offerings in these segments with the Intel Xeon E-2400/ Xeon 6300P are not competitive. This is not a segment where we are talking 10-20% performance deltas, or a few watts here and there. Instead, this is a bigger gap than in 2019 when the AMD EPYC 7002 Series Rome Delivered a Knockout and set AMD’s market share on a rapid ascent. We expect that to happen in the entry server market as the EPYC 4000 series hits its second generation with a massive performance lead.
Final Words
Given equal platforms, the race between the AMD EPYC 4004 and the Intel Xeon E-2400 series was won last year. Our piece then was titled The AMD EPYC 4004 is Finally Here and Intel Xeon E Needs an Overhaul. Instead of an overhaul, Intel added a few MHz to the line and rebranded it the “Xeon 6300P series.” Conversely, AMD upgraded the EPYC 4005 line with an architectural update and new SKUs widening the gap even more. Perhaps that is another area where EPYC and Ryzen diverge. Intel is putting effort into making its Core line more competitive while it is letting the EPYC 4005 line widen the gap even more in 2025. I said it last year, and will say it again: Intel is no longer competitive in the entry server CPU market and needs an overhaul. This year, it is even more acute than in 2024 given how both vendors refreshed in the first half of 2025.
For those who are on the fence, hopefully, we made this easy. The major OEMs need to step up efforts to bring the best platforms forward for the EPYC 4000 series, but in terms of the CPUs, AMD has a clear winner in Grado. Grado may not be a revolutionary design, but Grado is great because Intel has neglected the entry server segment.
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Without a chipset unlike the Supermicro H13SAE-MF, I’m curious about the idle power consumption of this board. This could be a gem for us who are in Europe.
I know that it is just nitpicking and that I really shouldn’t expect a consistent naming scheme from any company at this point, but I really wish that they had just called the v-cache model 4585PX3D, just like the desktop counterparts. Or would that be too straightforward?
Any idea when these will be available in retail? What was the announcement-to-Newegg-availability lag with the 4004 announcement?
Oh, I can answer my own question: Newegg says release on June 13.
Second that. Any data on the idle power consumption of this platform would be apreciated.
Geir and Kawaii, I will try to get ahold of one of these boards and test power consumption!
Would these be suitable for building an M.2 Gen 5×2 SSD only NAS? How many PCIe-lanes can I typically coulnt being available for storage?
When the title said: “Intel is exposed” I thought this would have a bit about: “TRAINING SOLO – On the Limitations of Domain Isolation Against Spectre-v2 Attacks” and a comparison between the two CPUs and the number of microcode patches in-the-wind; and the resulting performance loss.
You sound like a broken record good Patrick, but you’re right. AMD wins. Intel’s savior is that it takes so long for Dell and HPE to make new models and neither care about this space compared to AI systems because it takes hundreds of these little servers to earn the revenue of a HGX. If Dell and HPE don’t sell, then Intel wins
@Rob
There’s another Intel vulnerability this cycle discovered by ETH Zurich with a performance penalty – CVE-2024-45332. AMD is not affected.
Crucial needs to start making 64GB ECC UDIMMs at a tolerable price premium stat. 256GB kits anyone? Put a logo on the packaging along the lines of “AMD EPYC 4000 series ready”.
I just have to shake my head every time I think about how incompetent Intel has been in the high end consumer / entry level server market, an area they once dominated. It’s been obvious for years that the heterogeneous laptop architecture and endless artificial product segmentation by the marketing groups was absolutely killing them. These two things led them to constantly be late to market with the wrong product. Rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic at this point. I know this is a relatively small market, but the fact Pat never flushed the management in these groups is to me one of the many reasons he had to go. Other than the random annoying model numbers, AMD executing perfectly here.
Can anyone confirm if these new chips drop in compatible with any existing motherboard series ?
I’m curious how much of the Xeon E situation is down to heterogeneity in desktop parts making it genuinely more laborious to keep the Xeon Es up to date, since they have to either be distinct parts or leave a lot of disabled ‘E’ cores on the table; and how much is margin-driven and cannibalization-averse SKU slicing.
AMD presumably has an easier time making an Epyc 4005, since it’s pretty close to a Ryzen with some amount of binning and validation, rather than a distinct P-core only monolithic chip that is not borrowed directly from any Core Ultra; but (going by the benchmarking of non-X3D Zen5 Ryzen vs. current Intel desktop P-cores) it seems as though a P-core part of similar core count absolutely wouldn’t suck, unless your application really needs a 4585PX in which case the results aren’t going to be even close.(Maybe the Xeon Max HBM stuff, in small quantities, could actually be done at an acceptable price; but no sign of them trying that at present)
However, Intel can’t be thrilled at the idea that Xeon E basically needs to do twice as much work to be worth the money they currently want for it; especially if there are Xeon Ds or bottom-tier Xeon Scalables that are ‘supposed’ to fill those niches at their (higher) prices.
Between their current P-cores being at least reasonably credible vs. current Zen5; and them having the option to throw some of the networking features of Xeon D into Xeon E(or, if they want a fast solution; slapping a Xeon D into an LGA package); it seems like Intel absolutely could have a Xeon E that is actually worth buying; I’m just much less clear that they would want to sell one, especially if they can still use OEM loyalty to shift Xeon Es to customers for which if it can’t be purchased from Dell or HPE it doesn’t exist.
@fuzzyfuzzyfungus:
I think it comes down to Intel’s inability to produce their smaller designs themselves. They can’t source enough chiplets from TSMC to even satisfy huge OEM’s desktop needs. There’s still no Dell OptiPlex or Inspiron based on Arrow Lake despite the platform being from 2024. Even their newest Dell Tower line still carries older Raptor Lake with Arrow Lake being available only for the highest SKUs. Same for HP.
Before Arrow Lake released Intel has planned to manufacture the CPU chiplets themselves on A20 process, then only to make lower end themselves, but finally everything is made by TSMC and the A20 process was abandoned.
The entire platform for Arrow Lake had problems since Meteor Lake-S was supposed to be the first CPU on LGA-1851, but it too was so bad the entire line got canceled and repurposed for embedded only Meteor Lake-PS.
@fuzzyfuzzyfungus:
I agree with you that one approach could be to make a cut a down Granite Rapids-D. They have plenty of options to make a competitive product. That’s why it’s completely baffling to me why they decided to base Xeon E/W and consumer desktop off their laptop architectures. As the article pointed out, the inclusion of E cores created other problems like the P cores losing AVX-512 support, something Intel pioneered! They desperately need an entry level P core-only design to cover 4-16 cores, whether monolithic or chiplets. And it needs to have all the features that the E core team forced them to remove, or the marketing teams tried to segment into a ridiculous number of derivative SKU’s (AVX-512, FP16, etc).
Asus B650 Tuf Gaming Plus (Wifi) e.g. lists them already officially as supported (also Epyc 4004 series).
Quite a good board series. With current bios and proper bios-setting, it runs also pcie gen5 on the x16 GPU slot. I got one new for 120 Euro (incl. Tax)
Btw, with this Board an a a reasonable good power supply (e.g. Corsair RMx), you can get Idle as low as ~14-15W with a 9700X at Windows (total system power draw in 230V-Land, i have such a system) if you have no extra PCIe cards in and use iGPU only.
I’d guess, Eypc 4005 will be the same.
Zen5 Desktop paired with selected hardware can idle quite low. :-)
Trying to find a good motherboard capable of 2xM.2 and a PCI x8 slot with lanes to the CPU (not chipset).
I am mirroring my M.2 drives, and I have a HBA card for my spinning disks.
I’m surprised that it is impossible to find a motherboard instock/available!
I’m also interested in the minimum/average power watts. I don’t want to receive an unexpected noticeably higher power bill for a home server.
@praka
You can find 2x m.2(one each side)card with 8x pass through slot on top. Low enough to get low profile HBA card on top in normal case.
You bifurcate pci-e x16 slot to 8x4x4 and you’re done. I’m running my Nas this way for 4th year now. The 4x slot takes 10g NIC and 1x slot takes GPU(used for transcoding so no bandwidth needed)
Unless you’re talking intel, then bifurcation on non platinium xeons i not for you.
Btw 4lane pcie 3.0 is enough for 8 sata drives, and most HBAs are happy with that.
I am probably an outlier here, but I would still love to see more PCIe and quad channel memory (192 – 256GB at DDR5 5600 for up to ~179GB/sec). The 16-core is a bit memory bandwidth starved in certain scenarios. 16-cores is the sweet spot for our use case, so it’s not a limit for us to justify a jump to a 8004, or 9004/5 series CPU. It would just be beneficial to run 8-12 NVMe (32-48 PCIe lanes) + 8-16 PCIe for NIC’s. That would require a platform to offer 64+ PCIe lanes (need lanes for ancillary stuff like BMC, etc.). Just personal experience, but this would be a killer edge / SMB server for most.
Another comparison I would like to see is with the Epyc 4004 series, especially if the new V-Color 2x 64 GB DDR5 is available to show the generational change.