AMD brings Zen to new performance heights with their 64-core EPYC 7H12

AMD has officially announced their EPYC 7H12, a 64-core processor which offers users a 350MHz boost in base clock speed over AMD’s existing EPYC 7742 and a TDP of 280W. 

With this new processor, AMD is aiming for the high-performance compute market while delivering the memory bandwidth and PCIe connectivity that EPYC is famous for. When looking at raw LINPACK performance, AMD’s EPYC 7H12 offers a performance uplift of around 11% over the EPYC 7742. Not bad for what’s effectively a server CPU overclock. 

AMD’s EPYC 7H12 is explicitly designed for HPC customers, and the chip’s TDP requirements demand a cooling solution that’s a little better than the average EPYC chip. This will mean water cooling in many cases, which will be more than worth it for the customers that demand the chip’s increased performance. 

Strangely, AMD’s new EPYC chip ships with decreased maximum boost clock speeds when compared to the EPYC 7742. While this is a small downside, the 7H12’s boosted base and all-core clock speeds are more than worth this minor degradation in maximum core clock speed.