Running Linux 5.8-rc1 Benchmarks On The Intel Core i9 10900K + Radeon RX 5700 XT

Since yesterday's big release of Linux 5.8-rc1 I have begun benchmarking this new kernel on various systems. Here are some tests on the first system that was being vetted, the Intel Core i9 10900K Comet Lake with Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics.

See our Linux 5.8 feature overview to learn about all of the changes for this next kernel version. When it comes to overall performance, at least with this i9-10900K system in most benchmarks there wasn't broad performance differences compared to Linux 5.7/5.6 stable series.

Of course, tests on other systems are still ongoing, so stay tuned with this just being one of many tests:

Of the tests carried out so far, seeing some improvement out of Linux 5.8 was Facebook's RocksDB database:



Those were the areas tested where Linux 5.8 was performing better with RocksDB.

Out of 176 system/CPU test cases for this kernel comparison, the outcome on this Core i9 10900K system was flat. All the data points via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. But when looking at the AMDGPU graphics performance with the Radeon RX 5700 XT, the results were a bit more lively.

Unfortunately, there did seem to be a few AMDGPU regressions hit on Linux 5.8-rc1 with the Navi RX 5700 XT.




In particular, for a number of the CPU-bound micro-benchmark cases, Linux 5.8-rc1 was showing noticeably lower performance than Linux 5.6 and 5.7. While only a few games were tested, at least there the Radeon RX 5700 XT showed no measurable difference.

But with the micro-benchmarks it was enough to point the AMDGPU Linux 5.8-rc1 performance lower than the prior two stable series. Those graphics data points via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. Will be running some further AMDGPU Linux 5.8 tests shortly as well as with more games for seeing if there are more performance drops to note. At least there still is about two months to go until Linux 5.8 stable so the possibility of seeing the regression addressed in time.