AMD Ryzen delivers high clock speed per core, AMD EPYC many cores and high memory throughput. Game servers, databases and everything that computes in one thread benefit from Ryzen. Web servers with many visitors, virtualisation and parallel workloads benefit from EPYC. That is why at FameSystems Ryzen is in the dedicated servers and in its own root server line, EPYC in the KVM root servers.
Two processors, two goals
Ryzen and EPYC share the Zen architecture but are built for different tasks. Ryzen is the desktop processor: few cores, very high clock speed, fast memory. EPYC is the server processor: many cores, many memory channels, many PCIe lanes, but a more moderate clock speed per core.
What counts for which application
| Application | Decisive | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Game servers (Minecraft, ARK, Rust) | Clock speed of one core | Ryzen |
| Databases with many small queries | Clock speed and memory latency | Ryzen |
| Web servers with many simultaneous visitors | Core count | EPYC |
| Virtualisation with many VMs | Cores and memory channels | EPYC |
| Build servers, rendering, compiling | Core count | EPYC |
| TeamSpeak, bots, small services | Hardly relevant | Cheapest variant |
How FameSystems uses the two
The KVM root servers run on AMD EPYC because many customers with dedicated resources share one machine there, and the many cores and memory channels do exactly that well. For customers who need clock speed there is the Ryzen root server line with DDR5. The dedicated servers run entirely on Ryzen 7000: those who rent the whole machine usually want performance per core.
Memory: DDR5 makes the difference
Both lines are available with DDR5. The jump from DDR4 to DDR5 brings considerably more bandwidth, which above all databases, virtualisation and game servers with many players notice. For small websites or bots DDR4 is perfectly sufficient.
Our recommendation
Ask yourself whether your application does many things at once or one thing very fast. At once means EPYC, very fast means Ryzen. If you do not know, the EPYC root server is the safe all-rounder you can upgrade with a click at any time.
Root servers with AMD EPYC or AMD Ryzen
Both lines compared: cores, clock speed, DDR4 or DDR5, NVMe. Dedicated, ready in minutes.