Xeon Platinum 8256: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
Xeon Platinum 8256 provides acceptable benchmark performance at 10.57% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.
Summary
Intel started Xeon Platinum 8256 sales 11 December 2018 at a recommended price of $7,007. This is a Cascade Lake-SP architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 4 cores and 8 threads, and is based on 14 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3900 MHz and a locked multiplier.
Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA3647 processor with a TDP of 105 Watt. It supports DDR4-2933 memory.
Primary details
Xeon Platinum 8256 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.
| Place in the ranking | 742 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 1.68 | |
| Market segment | Server | |
| Series | Intel Xeon Platinum | |
| Power efficiency | 9.53 | of 100.00 (Core Ultra 7 164U) |
| Architecture codename | Cascade Lake-SP (2018) | |
| Release date | 11 December 2018 (6 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $7,007 | of 17,906 (Xeon Platinum 8280L) |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
Performance per price, higher is better.
Detailed specifications
Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.
| Physical cores | 4 (Quad-Core) | |
| Threads | 8 | |
| Base clock speed | 3.8 GHz | of 4.7 GHz (Ryzen 9 7900X) |
| Boost clock speed | 3.9 GHz | of 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS) |
| Multiplier | 38 | of 42 (Core i7-7700K) |
| L1 cache | 64 KB (per core) | of 80 KB (EPYC 9965) |
| L2 cache | 1 MB (per core) | of 2 MB (Xeon 6980P) |
| L3 cache | 16.5 MB (shared) | of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X) |
| Chip lithography | 14 nm | of 3 nm (Core Ultra 9 285K) |
| Maximum core temperature | 72 °C | of 110 °C (Core Ultra 9 185H) |
| Number of transistors | 8,000 million | of 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X) |
| 64 bit support | + | |
| Windows 11 compatibility | + |
Compatibility
Information on Xeon Platinum 8256 compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.
| Number of CPUs in a configuration | 8 (Multiprocessor) | |
| Socket | FCLGA3647 | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 105 Watt | of 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P) |
Technologies and extensions
Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Xeon Platinum 8256. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.
| Instruction set extensions | Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512 | |
| AES-NI | + | |
| AVX | + | |
| vPro | + | |
| Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) | + | |
| Speed Shift | + | |
| Turbo Boost Technology | 2.0 | |
| Hyper-Threading Technology | + | |
| TSX | + | |
| Turbo Boost Max 3.0 | - | |
| Deep Learning Boost | + |
Security technologies
Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.
| TXT | + | |
| EDB | + |
Virtualization technologies
Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.
| VT-d | + | |
| VT-x | + | |
| EPT | + |
Memory specs
Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Xeon Platinum 8256's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.
| Supported memory types | DDR4-2933 | |
| Maximum memory size | 1 TB | of 6 TiB (EPYC 9654) |
| Max memory channels | 6 | of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221) |
| Maximum memory bandwidth | 140.8 GB/s | of 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9654) |
| ECC memory support | + |
Graphics specifications
General parameters of a GPU integrated into Xeon Platinum 8256.
| Integrated graphics card | N/A |
Peripherals
Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.
| PCIe version | 3.0 | of 5.0 (EPYC 9655P) |
| PCI Express lanes | 48 | of 128 (EPYC 9655P) |
Benchmark performance
Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Xeon Platinum 8256. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.
Send your test results of Xeon Platinum 8256.
Intel equivalent
According to our data, the closest Intel alternative to Xeon Platinum 8256 is Xeon E5-2695 v3, which is nearly equal in speed and higher by 1 position in our ranking.
Here are some closest AMD rivals to Xeon Platinum 8256:
Similar processors
Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended GPUs
People consider these graphics cards to be good for Xeon Platinum 8256, according to our PC configuration statistics.
These are the fastest graphics cards for Xeon Platinum 8256 in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 11 configurations using Xeon Platinum 8256 in our database.
