AMD Linux Gaming Performance Largely Unchanged With Linux 6.6 Git

With the AMD performance uplift on the Linux 6.6 kernel due to the EEVDF scheduler code, the workqueue enhancements for chiplet-based processor designs, and other improvements, many Phoronix readers have speculated over AMD Linux gaming performance improvements with this in-development kernel.

The AMD gains on Linux 6.6 with lower-core count Ryzen processors hasn't been as wild as seen as some of the large EPYC servers tested so far. In any event I did run some Linux 6.6 kernel gaming benchmarks with both an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card.

Even with all of the Linux 6.6 kernel performance optimizations as well as the newest AMDGPU kernel graphics driver code, the Linux 6.6 performance in this testing was largely flat over Linux 6.5 stable.

The lone exception was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive running about 7% faster on the Ryzen 9 7950X + Radeon RX 7900 XTX system when moving from Linux 6.5 stable to the Linux 6.6 development kernel... But in other games, including more CPU-bound scenarios, there wasn't anything close to a 7% boost seen by CS:GO.

In other gaming tests and graphics benchmarks -- from very visually demanding workloads to rather CPU-bound lightweight open-source games, the Linux 6.6 kernel upgrade didn't provide any real change:











Some speculated that the EEVDF scheduling code would be a big help, but based on the initial results it doesn't appear to make a significant impact, at least for this test system.










Linux 6.6 testing on other hardware and workloads remains ongoing at Phoronix.