AMD Ryzen 5800x is the fastest processor for PHP in 2020/Q4 - Development

We have a new THE FASTEST FOR THE TASK processor for running a PHP/Wordpress/Magento... website.

If you consider for a moment that in 2020 35%+ of all the webpages in the world run on Wordpress and that Wordpress runs on PHP, it makes a lot of sense keeping an eye on this.

PHP is a single-threaded process and runs much better on CPUs with higher frequencies. AMD Ryzen 5800X is not a typical server CPU, but as it is semi-workstation-oriented and has one of the best single thread performances based on many benchmarks, it might be a hidden gem for PHP. For quite some time Intel i9 series was the leader in this workload if you'd consider it for this task. We wanted to test if this has changed with Ryzen 5800x.

We have a clear interest in PHP performance as we use it for our SaaS (invoicing + webshop platform WPX.si) and for a really fast Wordpress hosting at WPX.si. For that reason we like to test different CPUs for their PHP performance before putting them in production use. We've also put up a map representing which CPUs are good and which are relatively bad for PHP workload.

Below is a representation of how we conducted a PHP performance test with PHP Bench test by Phoronix on Ryzen 5800X (Proxmox 6.3 installation, Linux Debian 10). We got a score of 851.205 (screenshot) which was at that moment higher than any listed CPU (list is made of average scores by a specific CPU so some results could be higher than ours).

Benchmark on Ryzen 5800X

Test result

./phoronix-test-suite benchmark pts/phpbench

Phoronix Test Suite v10.2.0

    Installed:     pts/phpbench-1.1.6

System Information

  PROCESSOR:          AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core @ 3.80GHz
    Core Count:       8                                         
    Thread Count:     16                                        
    Extensions:       SSE 4.2 + AVX2 + AVX + RDRAND + FSGSBASE  
    Cache Size:       32 MB                                     
    Microcode:        0xa201009                                 
    Core Family:      Zen 3                                     
    Scaling Driver:   acpi-cpufreq performance (Boost: Enabled)        

  MOTHERBOARD:        Gigabyte B550 AORUS MASTER
    BIOS Version:     F11                                   
    Chipset:          AMD Starship/Matisse                  
    Audio:            AMD Cedar HDMI Audio                  
    Network:          2 x Intel 82599ES 10-Gigabit SFI/SFP+ 
                      + Realtek Device 8125                 
                      + Intel Device 2723                   

  MEMORY:             2 x 16384 MB DDR4-3200MT/s CMK64GX4M4B3200C16

  DISK:               Samsung SSD 960 EVO 500GB + 240GB SAMSUNG MZ7KM240
    File-System:      ext4                          
    Mount Options:    errors=remount-ro relatime rw 
    Disk Scheduler:   NONE                          
    Disk Details:     Block Size: 4096              

  OPERATING SYSTEM:   Debian GNU/Linux 10
    Kernel:           5.4.78-2-pve (x86_64)                                                                                 
    Security:         itlb_multihit: Not affected                                                                           
                      + l1tf: Not affected                                                                                  
                      + mds: Not affected                                                                                   
                      + meltdown: Not affected                                                                              
                      + spec_store_bypass: Mitigation of SSB disabled via prctl and seccomp                                 
                      + spectre_v1: Mitigation of usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization                  
                      + spectre_v2: Mitigation of Full AMD retpoline IBPB: conditional IBRS_FW STIBP: always-on RSB filling 
                      + srbds: Not affected                                                                                 
                      + tsx_async_abort: Not affected                                                                       

AMD Ryzen 5800X, Gigabyte B550 AORUS MASTER (F11 BIOS, xmp, pbo) on Proxmox 6.3, Debian 10    

PHPBench 0.8.1:
    pts/phpbench-1.1.6
    Test 1 of 1
    Estimated Trial Run Count:    3                     
    Estimated Time To Completion: 2 Minutes [17:54 CET] 
        Started Run 1 @ 17:53:44
        Started Run 2 @ 17:54:12
        Started Run 3 @ 17:54:39

    PHP Benchmark Suite:
        851360
        855004
        847252

    Average: 851205 Score
    Deviation: 0.46%

So in 2020/Q4 for the first time AMD climbed over the fastest Intel CPUs on top of our our map representing which CPUs are good and which are relatively bad for PHP workload.

Povezane vsebine

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(24.08.2020)

2 new PHP performance numbers for a better estimate of real-life performance by a specific CPU

PHPBench score result alone and the way it is conducted do not reflect well enough real-life performance by a specific CPU SKU

(06.09.2020)

Impact of CPU speed on websites running PHP

If your webpage is running on Wordpress, WooCommerce, Magento etc. and is running slow, picking the right CPU can have a significant impact.

(24.08.2020)

We care for performance a lot. So if you are looking for a fast website, we have 2 options:

If speed is among your top concerns we provide a custom-made, very fast SaaS platform for websites and webshops. Where platforms like Magento or WooCommerce (on common hosting, not our WPX.si :-) will often struggle (uncached pages, cart, stock status, shops with hundreds of catalog items, multiple filters applied...) with Klik MALL responses are close to instant. You will pretty much forget talking about performance issues.

WPX.si is our Managed Wordpress Hosting for those who want to use Wordpress or WooCommerce and manage content by themselves. It has pretty much instant responses on cached pages and extremely-fast-for-Wordpress response times on uncached pages. This hosting will make your website run as fast as possible based on your installed plugins and themes.

Send us a message to info@wpx.si