It is a bit willy-nilly to get it to do the right thing. We compile with arch specific settings, and add features we’d like as well, but in spite of it it does not look like it is using all the facilities available(unverified claim based on perf outcome). I guessed it ignored our flags once it did not see “Genuine Intel” on the model field. To be honest, I had to calculate cost benefit of trading off my time to figure this out vs the savings I get from going AMD. Two things made us stop, and buy Intel:

1. Our major cost in BOM is memory, not the CPU. So, a 30% savings in CPu cost is not 30% off the bill, but much less.

2. Even if we found a way to tip the scale in AMD’s favour, our binaries still need to run in the rest of the intel servers without significant perf hit. So, our liberty to change is limited.

It’s sad, but reality that we had to buy more intel. But, luckily, their prices are far lower than our last purchase before AMD lit a fire under their asses. So, there is that.