Intel Core i9 12900K vs. AMD Ryzen 9 5950X On Linux 6.0

When taking the geometric mean for all 400+ benchmarks carried out on each processor, this is how things shake out if calculating the geometric mean:

Overall the Core i9 12900K was 18% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X across this wide span of benchmarks and covering many different workloads. But it largely comes down to what workloads are most important to you like the great Ryzen 9 5950X performance in Blender and other 3D rendering workloads while Alder Lake meanwhile has matured to handle many Linux HPC workloads very well now that most of the hybrid architecture issues are resolved.

While the Core i9 12900K is leading many more benchmarks now on Linux than when it launched a year ago with the still-maturing Linux support, it does continue to consume much more power than the Ryzen 9 5950X. For the CPU power consumption across the entire span of benchmarks carried out, the Core i9 12900K was averaging 23% higher power consumption -- 128 Watts versus 104 Watts or a peak 66% higher with the i9-12900K at 247 Watts against 149 Watts on the 5950X side.

Those wishing to go through all 400+ individual benchmarks can see this result page with all the individual numbers in full.

But what about Linux gaming? I ran a batch of Linux gaming tests separately...

The Core i9 12900K was leading in a number of the gaming tests -- consisting both of Linux native games and titles running via Steam Play.

Across all those Linux gaming tests carried out, the Core i9 12900K was about 6% faster there over the Ryzen 9 5950X.

When running these gaming tests, the Ryzen 9 5950X was on average consuming more power now than the Core i9 12900K but that Alder Lake CPU did still carry a higher peak power consumption.

All those benchmark numbers for the Linux gaming tests can be found via this result page.

At launch the Intel Core i9 12900K lacked various optimizations around the P/E core hybrid architecture handling and other performance improvements that have come since that time frame. In many of the HPC benchmarks were huge leads over the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in particular but overall much more competitiveness to the Ryzen 5000 series on recent versions of the Linux kernel. Of course, soon enough it will be about seeing how well Intel Raptor Lake can run against AMD Zen 4 on Linux.