Linux 5.4 vs. Liquorix Kernel Benchmarks For AMD Ryzen + Radeon Gaming On Ubuntu

The Liquorix kernel is the long-standing effort for providing a "better distro kernel" optimized for desktop/multimedia/gaming workloads. As it's been a while since last testing the Liquorix kernel spin of Linux, I recently carried out some tests of its Linux 5.4 based kernel compared to Ubuntu's generic mainline PPA images of Linux 5.4 as well as the low-latency kernel variety.

The Liquorix kernel continues to tweak its Linux kernel configuration and add in extra patches for aiming to optimize the kernel for gaming/desktop-type workloads. Liquorix employs the MuQSS scheduler, Zen interactive tuning, a 1000Hz tick rate, hard kernel preemption, BFQ for the I/O scheduler, and other tweaks.

On an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X + Radeon RX Vega 64 system I ran benchmarks with its 5.4.0-6.3-liquorix official kernel build for Ubuntu compared to the Linux 5.4.6 mainline kernel builds both of the generic and lowlatency binaries from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA.

No other changes were made during testing besides swapping out the kernel in use. This article is looking at the Linux gaming performance for this system while a follow-up article soon is looking at other desktop workloads while also testing an Intel Core i9 9900K series processor in addition to the AMD Ryzen 9.