Signal65 benchmarks: Intel Xeon 6 runs agent workloads 11% faster for less money
ryanshrout · x · 2026-10-16
Signal65 tested AWS m8i (Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids), m7i (4th Gen Xeon), and m8a (5th Gen AMD EPYC Turin) on Terminal Bench 2 using a record-and-replay framework that eliminates LLM variance and isolates CPU-side agent work.
Key findings:
- m8i finished tests 6.9–11.0% faster than m7i; despite a 5% hourly price premium, compute cost per test was 2.2–6.6% lower, with the widest gap at 10 concurrent tasks (11% faster, 6.6% cheaper).
- m8i matched or beat m8a on cost at four of five concurrency levels.
The takeaway: between model responses, agents run shell commands, compile code, run tests, and manage containers—this CPU work determines how many agents a server sustains and per-task cost, so CPU sizing matters as much as GPU sizing for agent deployments.
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