In addition to announcing the Xeon 6500P and Xeon 6700P processors along with the Xeon 6 SoC (Granite Rapids D), the Xeon 6300 series are also making a quiet debut today. The Xeon 6300 series is in effect the continuation of the Xeon E series but with little change over the existing Xeon E-2400 processors.
The Intel Xeon 6300 doesn’t really offer much over the Xeon E-2400 series that launched last year. In fact, seems to largely be re-hashed versions of these Xeon Raptor Lake processors. Intel barely even talked about the Xeon 6300 series during their press briefings in advance of today’s launch. Traditionally the Xeon E processors have been derived from the Intel Core processors but with ECC support and server certifications. However, now with the Intel Core hybrid architecture of P and E cores, this puts the future of the Intel “Xeon E” (x300 class) processors into a peculiar position. It will be interesting if these lower-end Xeons end up going for a mix of P and E cores in the future or simply holding off until Intel is able to deliver higher core count P-only and E-only processor models for this entry level class of Xeon server processors.
The Xeon 6369P has a 3.3GHz base frequency, 5.3GHz all-core turbo, and 5.7GHz max turbo frequency while having a 24MB L3 cache, 95 Watt TDP, and dual channel DDR5-4800 ECC memory support. The Xeon 6369P carries a list price of $545 USD. In comparison, the existing Intel Xeon E-2488 Raptor Lake flagship is the same 8-cores / 16-threads, 24MB L3 cache, DDR5-4800 dual channel memory, and 95 Watt TDP… The new Xeon 6369P just has a slight clock advantage with the Xeon E-2488 having a 3.2GHz base frequency and 5.7GHz max turbo frequency. So +100MHz for this “new” model.
Further confirming the Xeon 6300 series being re-hashed Xeon E-2400 series is that some servers/motherboards support both CPU series. It’s a let-down that the Xeon 6300 series still only scales up to 8-cores / 16-threads, DDR5-4800 memory, and 16 PCIe lanes. The Xeon 6300 series will have a tough time going up against existing AMD EPYC 4004 processors that go up to 16-cores / 32-threads plus the 3D V-Cache “X” variants. The EPYC 4004 series also offers AVX-512 while the Xeon E-2400 / Xeon 6300 series only provides AVX2.
With the existence of the AMD EPYC 4004 series, the Xeon 6300 series is hardly exciting. If/when AMD ends up producing an “EPYC 4005” series derived from the Ryzen 9000 series like they did with the EPYC 4004 derived from the Ryzen 7000 series, Intel will be in an even more difficult position. As I have been running through my many Linux benchmarks across the Ryzen 9000 series processors, the Zen 5 performance is very strong on the Ryzen 9000 series across all classes of workloads — including Linux server workloads from databases to AVX-512 workloads, web services, and more.
So frankly I don’t really see much to get excited about with the “new” Intel Xeon 6300 series besides the fact that it’s more unified branding/models with the rest of the Xeon 6 line-up. Hopefully this more unified CPU model branding continues and is done so consistently, as at least is easier to remember and more consistent/logical. Though the Xeon 6300 series itself does collide with Intel previously having some Ice Lake server processors marketed as the Xeon Gold 6300 series. Intel hadn’t provided any Xeon 6300 review samples so there aren’t any Linux performance benchmarks to share today on these entry level / budget server processors.
