The AMD EPYC 7203 is a server/workstation processor with 8 cores, launched in September 2023, at an MSRP of $338. It is part of the EPYC lineup, using the Zen 3 (Milan) architecture with Socket SP3. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 16 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to two EPYC 7203 CPUs can work together in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. EPYC 7203 has 64 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.8 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.4 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is making the EPYC 7203 on a 7 nm production node using 8,300 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of TSMC. The multiplier is locked on EPYC 7203, which limits its overclocking potential.
With a TDP of 120 W, the EPYC 7203 consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. AMD’s processor supports DDR4 memory with an eight-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 3200 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the computer, EPYC 7203 uses a PCI-Express Gen 4 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the EPYC 7203, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) can run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.