AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme: Windows vs. Linux CPU Performance

As part of our Linux-focused look at the ASUS ROG Ally handheld, last week I provided a number of Windows 11 vs. Linux gaming performance on this gaming handheld with RDNA3 graphics found on the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC. Today's testing is not about the gaming but looking more at the general CPU performance for this Zen 4 powered SoC.

Today's testing is looking at a wide-range of CPU benchmarks using the Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC. This particular article isn't gaming focused at all but more about curiosity over the CPU performance of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme with the ROG Ally being the first device featuring this SoC featuring this new SoC.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme as a reminder features eight Zen 4 cores (16 threads) with a maximum boost clock up to 5.1GHz and a base clock of 3.3GHz. The Z1 Extreme has an 8MB L2 cache and 16MB L3 cache. AMD rates the Z1 Extreme as having a 9 to 30 Watt cTDP.

The benchmarks today are of Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 23.04 Linux for a wide variety of general CPU performance benchmarks. For those wanting to see how the Z1 Extreme compares to other SoCs like Ryzen notebook SoCs and the custom APU in the Steam Deck, a separate article likely to be published in the next week explores that aspect. Before getting to that multi-device comparison, I first wanted to see how Ubuntu Linux on the Ryzen Z1 Extreme was performing and that there were no issues relative to the Windows performance.

The Windows/Linux configurations used for testing today of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU performance with the ASUS ROG Ally included:

Windows 11 - The default Windows 11 Home ASUS install on the ROG Ally with all stable updates as of testing.

Windows 11 - Turbo - The above configuration but using ASUS Crate to switch over to the "Turbo" mode rather than the default behavior.

Ubuntu 23.04 - Ubuntu 23.04 out-of-the-box with the Linux 6.4 kernel. On Linux 6.4 by default this means using ACPI CPUfreq with the scheduer utilization "Schedutil" governor.

Ubuntu 23.04 - Perf - Ubuntu 23.04 configuration above but switching to the "performance" ACPI platform profile, similar to the prior article with the gaming tests and akin to turbo mode on Windows.

Ubuntu 23.04 - P-State Active - Ubuntu 23.04 in the default balanced ACPI platform profile but running with the AMD P-State driver in active mode rather than the ACPI CPUFreq driver. AMD P-State with active mode is the default moving forward with Linux 6.5+. On prior kernels like Linux 6.5 the amd_pstate=active option can be used.

Ubuntu 23.04 - P-State Active + Perf - Running Ubuntu 23.04 with the AMD P-State active configuration from above but switching up to the "performance" ACPI platform profile.

During the Linux runs, in addition to the raw performance benchmarks the CPU fan speed, CPU power consumption, and CPU temperature were monitored as additional data points. Unfortunately I don't have this capability implemented under Windows thus only Linux metrics there.

So let's move on with this unique testing for getting a better idea of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU performance capabilities in general and how the Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux performance is looking for this new SoC.