Intel Granite Rapids WS vs. AMD Threadripper Zen 5 SMT Performance

When taking the geometric mean of all the raw performance benchmarks conducted, the Intel Xeon 678X saw an 11% improvement in performance with Hyper Threading enabled. The Threadripper 9980X whether at 48 cores to match the Xeon 678X or in its full 64 configuration was 16~18% faster with SMT than having it disabled.

Beyond the performance benefit, having SMT enabled on these workstation processors led to slightly lower CPU power consumption than when it was disabled.

There didn't end up being much of a difference in the thermals with SMT enabled versus disabled.

When the Threadripper 9980X was running at 48 cores its peak frequency was hitting higher typically than the 64 core configuration as affecting the thermal behavior between those tested configurations.

Hopefully this data was helpful if you have been curious about the modern SMT/HT benefits on current-generation workstations. If you appreciate all of my different Linux performance benchmarking, consider joining Phoronix Premium to help make more interesting tests possible.