Does anyone know what the deal is with the Epyc 7453 (28C/56T)?

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solon

Member
Apr 1, 2021
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I've spotted this Epyc Milan in local pricing lists and I'm wondering what's up with it? It has a strange number of cores (4x7C enabled?) and not a hell of a lot of cache, but it's priced almost the same as a 7443P, though it has rather lower clocks.

Does anyone have any experience with these CPU's, preferably in a workstation environment? Mainly the pricing is making me consider one for my home workstation, which I'd probably install with Gentoo and KVM/QEMU for windows gaming with GPU passthrough.
 

ectoplasmosis

Active Member
Jul 28, 2021
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I'm assuming it's a 'quad-channel optimised' part, a la 7282.

For this, and the reasons you mentioned, I'd seek out a 7443P instead.
 

bayleyw

Active Member
Jan 8, 2014
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It's a 4CCD part like the 7443, but the dies themselves are clearly pretty low-grade (defective cache, low clocks). Should be good for a full 8 channels worth of bandwidth though, the 7282 was a 2CCD part with limited internal bandwidth, hence the 4 channel caveat.
The 7443 is better by every metric so if you are looking at the two at the same price get that (the 7453 has a lower MSRP). Also consider waiting for Milan Threadripper to launch, Epyc is a server-only platform and you have to be ready for the idiosyncrasies of using a server board as a workstation (no audio, limited USB, no southbridge, long POST times, dependence on external airflow for VRM cooling, confusing GPU support).
 
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solon

Member
Apr 1, 2021
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Thanks for the insights. 28 cores just feels like a bit of a sweet spot. I run a VM for gaming and sometimes one or two more for other things. 28 cores would give me 8 for the hypervisor, 8 for other stuff, and 12 for the game VM.

You're right though I should wait and see what Milan Threadripper does if it ever appears. Probably be smarter to wait for DDR5 as well really, the 3960X I currently run is fine, except that the board doesn't have SR-IOV which has been somewhat annoying for networking. I should probably just live with it until there's a threadripper/ddr5 solution with SR-IOV, though I don't really see a server board as an obstacle and I watercool, so it's not a big issue to watercool the VRM's as well.
 

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
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It's meant to take on the 28 Core Intel Xeons that are so popular with hyperscalers and in data centers - the EPYC pricing is much lower than the corresponding Intel SKUs