Linux 4.11 Doesn't Change The Game For AMD's Ryzen

Linux 4.11 is worthwhile in that it's bringing ALC1220 audio support, the codec used by many Ryzen (and Intel Kabylake) motherboards, but this next kernel version doesn't appear to change Ryzen's performance.

I didn't see anything notable this Linux 4.11 merge window with regard to Ryzen for potentially affecting its performance, but I ran some benchmarks this weekend just to confirm.

With the Ryzen 7 1700 configuration on the MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM configuration I ran some benchmarks between Linux 4.10 and then Linux 4.11 Git as of yesterday.


There are potential gaming performance improvements to find on Linux 4.11, that's when using the AMDGPU DRM driver and in particular AMDGPU changes in 4.11 appear to mostly benefit the RADV Vulkan driver.


In most OpenGL games, the performance is the same.




Nothing really to see on the Ryzen performance side for Linux 4.11. Those that were hoping for any magical scheduler improvements or other refinements to Ryzen's Linux support will need to wait another couple months.