Intel’s latest dual socket Xeon E5-2699A is commercially available from a major server OEM. Intel has 22 cores with 44 threads support per socket. A dual socket Intel system supports total 88 threads while the dual socket Naples supports 128 threads.
Intel's platform supports total eight memory channels while Naples supports 16, twice the number. Total memory capacity based on 16GB DIMMs on Naples system is 512GB while the Intel E5 28699A V4 supports 384 GB. Even memory speed is on AMD’s side as Naples supports 2400 MHZ DDR4 memory while Intel supports 1866 MHz.
The total number of PCIe gen 3 lanes to the CPU is 8x16=128 with Naples dual socket System versus 2x40=80 with Intel.
AMD showcased a few demos and the first compared two systems in seismic analysis. This is a computationally intensive analysis involving iterations of 3D wave equations and it taxes the whole system including cores, memory and I/O. It is used to locate natural resources deposits - read oil and gas.
In a billion sample grid, and in a 10 Iterations demo seismic analysis where lower is better, AMD's Naples dual socket system is 2x faster finishing within 18 seconds, compared to the 35 seconds Intel needed. That's not all, AMD disabled 20 cores to give a better sense how 44 cores of Zen would compare to 44 cores on Intel E5 28699A V4. AMD even de-clocked the memory for the demo, making it an even 1866 MHz at both systems.
When AMD enables all 64 cores and 2400 MHz memory, dual Naples finishes the task approximately 2.5 times faster or in just 14 seconds, compared to Intel, that takes 35 seconds. 
The third demo used a four billion sample grid with 10 Iterations workload in seismic analysis, and Intel’s system didn’t even want to load the demo due to insufficient memory. AMD finished this task in 54 seconds. AMD claims that Naples will get you even higher scores when matched with Radeon Instinct compute cards. AMD claims that the computing power of one human brain is within Naples and four Instinct cards, but we would not go that far.
It is hard to put in perspective how computationally intensive this task is and the testing was not done by a third party such as Fudzilla. From what we’ve seen, at least in these selected demos, AMD Naples dominates the Intel E5 28699A V4 dual core system. Bear in mind that Intel’s highest performing 44 core processor currently officially sells for $4938.00 and it is based on Broadwell architecture in 14nm and that the tested system had two of them.
We expect that AMD plans to offer server / data center products at very competitive pricing, which will give it a lot of edge and probably help it to win a lot of business in this insanely profitable market. So it is not all about Ryzen, Naples has a lot of potential too.
