Squeezing Extra Performance Out Of The Intel Core i9 10900K With Clear Linux

Besides disabling CPU security mitigations (not recommended if security is of importance), for those wanting to squeeze extra performance out of Intel CPUs like Comet Lake with the Core i9 10900K, loading Intel's performance-optimized Clear Linux is one such way. Here is a look at the current performance that can be gained out of using the latest rolling-release Clear Linux on the i9-10900K in comparison to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

While Intel's Clear Linux team is investing less in the desktop to focus on cloud and server workloads, the distribution does continue maintaining its desktop ISO and more or less will still work fine on desktop systems like with the new Comet Lake S-Series. Just expect a more vanilla GNOME Shell experience with less customizations and focus on desktop packages/bundles.

Loading Clear Linux 33250 on the Core i9 10900K with Gigabyte Z490 AORUS MASTER didn't yield any troubles.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Clear Linux both in their default/out-of-the-box configurations were tested on this 10-core / 20-thread desktop CPU with the same hardware and same settings (the slight differences in the system table just come down to how the information is parsed on the respective platforms). Via the Phoronix Test Suite 172 benchmarks were run on both Linux operating systems.