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

When taking the geometric mean of 59 benchmarks run across all of the Linux distributions on this AMD Ryzen 9 9950X system, Intel's Clear Linux easily took the crown. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS -- which was used for all of the Ryzen 9000 series Linux testing so far on Phoronix -- was the slowest. Tapping Intel's Clear Linux netted a 16% improvement on top of the performance offered by Ubuntu 24.04 LTS! Ubuntu 24.04 with the Ryzen 9000 series was already looking great generationally, but as shown today the performance can be even better with further software optimizations.

The Arch Linux powered CachyOS that is tuned out-of-the-box with a similar aim to Clear Linux also performed great. CachyOS was 7% faster than Ubuntu 24.04 LTS based on the geo mean and 3% faster than upstream Arch Linux itself. For different workloads though the CachyOS advantage over Arch Linux varied from a minimal difference to quite significant advantages.

From the performance of PHP and Python scripts atop Clear Linux to compiling various server and HPC minded software, Intel's Clear Linux -- and a commendable second place for CachyOS -- were showing that even greater performance can be achieved on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X. Even for devoted Ubuntu Linux users, these results did show some nice advantages of the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 release over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS thanks to the GCC 14 compiler. Ubuntu 24.10 performance is also still subject to change since the current daily ISOs haven't yet moved past the Linux 6.8 kernel while Ubuntu 24.10 in October will be shipping with Linux 6.11.

One of the common misconceptions of Clear Linux is the belief that these optimizations require the very latest processors to run the software. However, Intel continues to support Clear Linux for hardware platforms going back years... Intel Nehalem processors are/were supported while the latest documentation shows Intel Sandy Bridge and newer as being compatible/tested with the Linux distribution. Basically, Clear Linux can still run on hardware a decade or older and that the optimizations don't severely restrict the range of supported x86_64 hardware.

Intel's software engineers advancing open-source (x86_64) performance continue doing a splendid job showing what's possible. We've seen more performance-oriented work from Canonical over the past year and hopefully other Linux distributions will continue following suit exploring x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels, more optimized compiler defaults, etc. Hopefully we see more software investments from AMD as well in ensuring their newest platforms continue to maximize the hardware's performance potential on open-source software.

Stay tuned for more AMD Ryzen 9000 series Linux testing on Phoronix.