Our Intel Xeon Gold 6130 benchmark and review piece has been a long time coming. You may have seen some of the data pop up in other reviews. This is the last CPU in the Intel Xeon Gold 613x series that we had to review. It is certainly an interesting SKU combining solid core count (16 cores) with mid-range clock speeds. At the same time, it is a clear jump over the Intel Xeon Gold 5120 series in some areas which we are going to highlight.
Key stats for the Intel Xeon Gold 6130: 16 cores / 32 threads, 2.1GHz base and 3.7GHz turbo with 22MB L3 cache. The CPU features a 125W TDP. Here is the ARK page with the feature set.
Here is what the lscpu output looks like for the chips:
This is the last SKU that we had to benchmark in this range. Here are the links to the other pieces:
- Intel Xeon Gold 6132 Benchmarks and Review
- Intel Xeon Gold 6134 Benchmarks and Review
- Intel Xeon Gold 6136 Benchmarks and Review
- Intel Xeon Gold 6138 Benchmarks and Review
Looking to comparables from the previous generation, the closest SKU is the Intel Xeon E5-2683 V4. One gets a new set of features with the new SKU and a greatly enhanced single thread performance capability with this generation.
Let us cover our test configuration before getting into the details of our Intel Xeon Gold 6130 review.
Test Configuration
Here is our basic test configuration for single-socket Xeon Scalable systems:
- Motherboard: Supermicro X11SPH-nCTF
- CPU: Intel Xeon Gold 6130
- RAM: 6x 16GB DDR4-2666 RDIMMs (Micron)
- SSD: Intel DC S3710 400GB
- SATADOM: Supermicro 32GB SATADOM
Supermicro X11SPH NCTF Airflow
Realistically, we expect these to be deployed in dual socket scenarios. We wanted to quickly generate a large number of test results, so we are going through a series of single socket results first. This is a decent system with 96GB of RAM, but it can be expanded to 768GB as needs arise. The other important aspect is that we are keeping this test system stable and consistent for our benchmarking so we can have reliable power and performance numbers. Our readers often wonder, “which CPU should I get?” and that question often has three parts:
- What is the cost?
- What is the performance?
- What is the impact on the price/ performance ratio of my applications?
Our goal with this series is to help our readers understand a relative performance ranking between CPUs. That way if you see two options in your configurator or from a sales rep quote, you have some idea of what you are getting with each option.
Next, we are going to look at the Intel Xeon Gold 6130 benchmarks. After that, we are going to discuss power consumption as well as market positioning before concluding with our final thoughts.
When 256 GB of RAM is enough the Threadripper becomes a viable option in many cases with the introduction of samsung ECC U-DIMM DDR4-2666 CL19 32 GB sticks (Samsung model number: M378A4G43MB1-CTD).
TR2950X is half the price of a 6130 and in many cases a lot faster and it has 60 free PCIe 3.0 slots
Misha Engel – Threadripper / Threadripper 2 are not really competitors in the server space, even with low capacity 16GB UDIMMs. For the past few months, it has been hard to even get 4GB/ 8GB DDR4 RDIMMs. In the last week, we have added 260x DDR4 modules to the lab. 4x are 16GB, 256x are 32GB (48x 32GB RDIMM, 208x 32GB LRDIMM)
There may be a very niche market for a TR server, but without RDIMM support, and single-socket only support, it is a small niche. Single socket server sales are relatively small still.
AMD EPYC was also not a real competitor in the server market and we all know what going on at the moment.
It’s been hard to get any kind of memory for the last few months. ECC-U-DIMM 256 GB might not be perfect but it might be a start of something new. It happened before
There is something about the bar charts here that I think could be better. When a chart has one bar per CPU, the CPU-under-test has a black bar and the others have blue bars, which is great. But, when a chart has two bars per CPU, both colors are used for every CPU, and the CPU-under-test does not stand out, and I have to scan the labels to find it. It’s kind of inconsistent.
Misha, are you sure that M378A4G43MB1-CTD is ECC UDIMM? Can’t find it anywhere mentioned with ECC support. Thanks!
KarelG: Sorry it is M391A4G43MB1-CTD the other one is without ECC
Misha: Cool, this looks like it’s happenning at the end. Ryzen with 128GB, TR with 256GB, nice!
KarelG: If you want single core performance for per-core licensing(3.8 GHz all-core with a 9 cm Noctua air cooler), or a FreeNAS server or just a workstation with a lot of RAM this looks like a great option. And you also have the freedom to overclock those memory (both bandwidth and CL). Xeon-W is not going to like this.
Thanks for the very nice analysis of the Xeon Gold 6130. For single CPU systems, how would Gold 6130 compare with non-scaleable options such as Xeon W-2155?