Linux 3.2 Kernel Benchmarks

Following last week's release of the Linux 3.2 kernel, here is a round-up of Linux 3.2 kernel benchmarks. Also included are a new set of kernel benchmarks comparing the 3.2 kernel to older releases while running Intel's blazing fast Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition CPU.

The Linux 3.2 kernel benchmarks conducted by Phoronix while this release was in development include:

- Btrfs, NILFS2 & EXT4 File-System Benchmarks
- Another Look At Btrfs On Linux 3.2 With Its Beefy Changes
- Nouveau 3.2 DRM Benchmarks
- In addition, there are many other Phoronix articles, hardware reviews, and comparisons where the Linux 3.2 kernel was used as a base. Some of these can be found by a simple query on OpenBenchmarking.org.

The new results today are benchmarks between Linux 2.6.39 and Linux 3.2 from the Intel Core i7 3960X "Sandy Bridge" Extreme Edition setup. This six-core processor that also has Hyper Threading was running with 16GB of RAM, a Serial ATA 3.0 SSD, and an ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card on the open-source Gallium3D driver stack.

Testing could only go as far back as the Linux 2.6.39 kernel as older kernels had hardware compatibility issues with the Intel X79 + i7-3960X configuration. Testing happened when the i7-3960X was overclocked to 4.50GHz. The Phoronix Test Suite benchmarks used range from graphics tests to file-tests and the usual computational selection of programs.