Linux 6.5+ Bringing Some Performance/Efficiency Improvements For The AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme / ASUS ROG Ally

With the recently released Linux 6.5 kernel bringing AMD P-State EPP by default for modern Ryzen systems rather than the generic ACPI CPUFreq driver, running Linux 6.5 (or newer) in various workloads can lead to improved performance and/or power efficiency. Curious about the impact on the mobile side, I recently carried out some benchmarks of the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC from Linux 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6 Git kernels.

This round of testing on the ASUS ROG Ally was done using Linux 6.3.13, 6.4.13, 6.5.1, and 6.6 Git as of last week using all of the latest kernels. The default CPU frequency scaling driver/governor were in use which means prior to Linux 6.5 it's ACPI CPUFreq Schedutil while beginning with Linux 6.5 it transitions to AMD P-State EPP (active) with the powersave governor for looking at the out-of-the-box Linux performance. Of course, those that want to can switch to AMD P-State EPP on recent Linux 6.3/6.4 kernels too while this is simply about looking at the out-of-the-box impact on performance and power with the recent kernel versions.

In addition to looking at the raw performance, the CPU SoC power consumption was also monitored on a per-test basis for looking at the power efficiency. The peak CPU frequency and CPU temperature was also monitored on a per-test basis for looking at these recent Linux kernel versions. (The CPU clock frequency difference in the system table above just comes down to how the CPU frequency is reported via sysfs by the respective CPUFreq / P-State drivers. The Z1 Extreme was running stock for all tests.)