Intel Continues To Show AMD The Importance Of Software Optimizations: 16% More Ryzen 9 9950X Performance

As part of my ongoing AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Linux testing, last week I provided a look at the AVX-512 benefits to Zen 5 and also the Windows vs. Linux performance for the Ryzen 9 9950X. For sharing today is a look at multiple Linux distributions up and running on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) desktop. Among the distributions in the mix are Intel's Clear Linux distribution that is optimally tuned for maximum x86_64 Linux performance and once again even on AMD hardware shows the significant benefits to a well-tuned Linux software stack.

The Linux distributions for this round of testing on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X included Arch Linux, CachyOS, Clear Linux, Fedora Workstation 40, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and a recent daily snapshot of Ubuntu 24.10 in its current development form.

Intel's Clear Linux is the one most interesting for looking at on the new AMD Zen 5 hardware. While there hasn't been so much Clear Linux news in recent times, it remains the most well optimized x86_64 Linux distribution out of the box. Clear Linux makes use of compiler function multi versioning, performance-minded defaults, aggressive compiler CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS defaults, optional AVX-512 usage for more libraries, and many other patches and optimizations in the name of delivering the greatest x86_64 Linux performance. And while not Intel's focus, it works typically on AMD hardware too.

For those unfamiliar with CachyOS, it's an Arch Linux based distribution that is tuned for performance. CachyOS carries some patches from Clear Linux, makes use of x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels, and makes other tuning such as employing the BORE scheduler alongside other extra kernel patches. CachyOS offers packages for x86-64-v3 and x86-64-v4 and is a nice tuned out-of-the-box Arch Linux desktop OS. CachyOS is a community-driven Linux distribution that does quite well for not having the major backing of any large corporations.

Thus I was eager to see how well Intel's Clear Linux and the Arch Linux powered CachyOS would allow for tapping more performance out of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X.

Using the same Ryzen 9 9950X system, all of these Linux distributions were tested in their default / out-of-the-box state.