Processors Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 474 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for processors. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

One of the many changes to look forward to with the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel cycle is the AMD P-State driver to be used by default with the new EPYC 9005 series processors. While AMD Ryzen CPUs for a while now have been defaulting to the modern AMD P-State driver that makes use of ACPI CPPC platform support for allowing better power efficiency, AMD EPYC CPUs have kept to using the generic ACPI CPUFreq frequency scaling driver. But now AMD engineers have deemed amd_pstate ready for use with EPYC 9005 "Turin" CPUs and will be the default choice moving forward. Here is more information and power/performance benchmarks for this shift while testing using the EPYC 9755 processors.

Last week Google announced the general availability of their C4A instances powered by their in-house Axion processors. I delivered launch-day benchmarks looking at the Google Axion CPU performance with the C4A instances compared to other Google Cloud instance types powered by Ampere Altra and Intel Xeon. In this article is a look at how the Google Axion processor performance compares to the competing Amazon/AWS Graviton4 processor.

With the AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" testing over the past month since launch I have looked at how well the new EPYC Turin CPUs compete against Intel Xeon, how Turin Dense dominates in performance and power efficiency to AmpereOne at 192 cores, and the generational uplift from EPYC Genoa to Turin at the same core counts, among other Turin performance benchmark tests. Up for comparison today is a look at how the NVIDIA Grace CPU performance within the GH200 Superchip compares to the AMD EPYC Turin processors.

Ahead of tomorrow's availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor as the first Zen 5 CPU released with 3D V-Cache, today the review embargo lifts. Here is a look at how this 8-core / 16-thread Zen 5 CPU with 64MB of 3D V-Cache is performing under Ubuntu Linux compared to a variety of other Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktop processors.

Typically in my launch-day Linux reviews of new AMD EPYC processors I try to include results both of the performance determinism (default) and power determinism modes available with these server processors since opting in to the power determinism mode can allow for additional performance uplift at the cost of slightly higher power costs. With the AMD EPYC 9575F / 9755 / 9965 benchmarks and review I didn't have a chance to complete all of the power determinism runs in time for that review, but for those curious about power vs. performance determinism modes with the 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" processors, here is a side-by-side comparison.

With the AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" series launch earlier this month there was launch-day benchmark review results for the EPYC 9575F, EPYC 9755, and EPYC 9965 processors in looking at that frequency optimized SKU, the new flagship 128-core Turin "classic" core model, and the new flagship 192-core Turin "dense" core SKU, respectively. That's interesting for looking at the new 5th Gen AMD EPYC top-end wares but in comparing to 4th Gen EPYC also means higher core counts at the top-end. In being curious about the core-for-core advantages of 5th Gen EPYC, I managed to get my hands on the AMD EPYC 9655 processors for seeing how that model compares to the prior AMD EPYC 9654 "Genoa" flagship model. Here's a look today at how the AMD EPYC 9655 1P/2P 96-core processor compares to the prior EPYC 9654 flagship.

Earlier this year Google announced Axion as their first Arm-based CPU for the Google Cloud. Today already they are taking Axion to general availability with the new C4A instances. These new C4A instances are advertised as offering up to 50% better performance and up to 60% better energy efficiency than their current generation x86 instance types. In this article are some of the first public independent performance benchmarks of the Google Axion CPU along with comparing to existing GCE Arm and x86_64 instance types.

Yesterday for the Intel Core Ultra 200S Arrow Lake launch date was my extensive look at the Core Ultra 9 285K under Ubuntu Linux for that 24-core desktop processor. Under focus today is the lower-tier Intel Core Ultra 5 245K with a large variety of Linux performance benchmarks for showing how this 14-core processor compares to prior Intel Core CPUs as well as the AMD Ryzen competition atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Earlier this month Intel announced the Core Ultra 200S "Arrow Lake" processors and today they go on sale. In turn, the review embargo also lifts for these new desktop processors. Up first today on Phoronix is the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Linux performance review for this flagship 24-core desktop processor.

Following the ASUS AIPT patch posting this weekend from an Intel Linux engineer that was analyzing my previously-published Lunar Lake results showing rather poor performance on the ASUS Zenbook S 14, the performance has been looking much better. On Monday I posted updated Intel Xe2 graphics results showing strong uplift now that the ASUS Lunar Lake laptop was operating in its standard mode rather than whisper mode. In today's article is data from more than 400 CPU/system benchmarks to see how the Core Ultra 7 256V performance has improved with this new Linux kernel patch and compared to the prior AMD Ryzen and Intel Core laptop comparison data.

Continuing on with the testing around the AMD EPYC 9005 series "Turin" processors, today is a look at the Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) performance impact for Turin while using the AMD EPYC 9755 as the highest-end "Turin Classic" processor with 128 cores / 256 threads. Similar SMT on/off tests for "Turin Dense" with the EPYC 9965 192-core / 384-thread will also be coming in a future benchmarking comparison on Phoronix. These tests are mainly intended for reference purposes for those curious about the SMT benefits at such high core counts and what workloads may or may not still benefit from SMT especially when having so many threads while using 12-channel DDR5-6000 memory.

Now past the launch day for the AMD EPYC 9005 series server processors and having delivered initial AMD EPYC Zen 5 benchmarks for the EPYC 9575F / EPYC 9755 / EPYC 9965 SKUs, it's onto one of my favorite areas of testing and that is the more focused benchmarks looking at different specific changes/features of new processors. Today under the benchmarking microscope is looking at the new AVX-512 512-bit data path capabilities of 5th Gen AMD EPYC compared to using a 256-bit data path or disabling AVX-512 entirely.

Last month Intel introduced their Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" processors with up to 128 P cores, MRDIMM support, and other improvements as a big step-up in performance and power efficiency for their server processors. The Xeon 6900P series showed they could tango with the AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa/Bergamo processors in a number of areas, but Genoa has been around since November 2022... With today's AMD 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" launch, Zen 5 is coming to servers and delivers stunning performance and power efficiency. The new top-end AMD EPYC Turin processor performance can obliterate the competition in most workloads and delivers a great generational leap in performance and power efficiency. Here are our first 5th Gen AMD EPYC Turin benchmarks in looking at the EPYC 9575F, EPYC 9755, and EPYC 9965 processors across many workloads and testing in both single and dual socket configurations.

Complementing the AMD EPYC 9575F / 9755 / 9965 performance benchmarks article looking at those Turin processors up against prior AMD EPYC CPUs and the Intel Xeon competition, this article is looking squarely at the 192-core EPYC 9965 "Turin Dense" processor compared to Ampere Computing's AmpereOne A192-32X flagship processor. It's an x86_64 vs. AArch64 battle at the leading 192 core count for performance and CPU power efficiency.

AMD is using their Advancing AI event today to announce 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" processors. With up to 192 cores / 384 threads per socket, 17% IPC uplift, AVX-512 with a full 512-bit data path, and the Zen 5 architectural improvements, these new EPYC 9005 processors deliver a significant generational improvement over the EPYC 9004 Genoa and Bergamo processors.

With the Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids benchmarking at Phoronix the past few weeks it's been in a dual socket (2S / 2P) configuration. For those curious about the Intel Xeon 6980P 128-core server performance for a single socket (1S) configuration, here are those complementary results out today and for both DDR5-6400 and MRDIMM-8800 memory configurations. Thus a well-rounded look at the single Xeon 6980P performance compared to other single and dual socket Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC server processors.

Earlier this week I delivered initial Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics benchmarks on Linux while today the focus is on Lunar Lake's CPU performance. The Xe2 graphics performance under Linux was disappointingly slow with it performing even worse than Meteor Lake while RDNA3.5 graphics led. Intel has been investigating the Xe2 Linux graphics performance but I haven't heard any updates yet. Today the attention is on the Lunar Lake CPU side under Linux and it too isn't looking too good. The performance of this 8-core Core Ultra 7 256V SoC is poor in real-world multi-threaded scenarios and the performance-per-Watt is only compelling in a subset of workloads. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Zen 5 SoCs tended to deliver the superior performance and power efficiency under Linux.

With the Intel Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" processors that launched last week there are SNC3 and HEX clustering modes for these new processors. The default Sub-NUMA Clustering 3 (SNC3) mode for the three compute dies while the HEX mode is like SNC1 mode formerly for all three compute dies acting as one NUMA node. Using the flagship 128-core Intel Xeon 6980P processors, I ran some benchmarks looking at the real-world performance difference for SNC3 vs. HEX clustering modes on Granite Rapids.

Earlier this week in the launch-day Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids review/benchmarks I unfortunately wasn't able to provide any CPU power consumption and performance-per-Watt benchmarks due a Linux kernel issue and the minimal time ahead of launch for testing. I've now repeated the Xeon 6980P benchmarking on the Linux 6.8 kernel of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with power monitoring working and have those power efficiency numbers to share today for how Granite Rapids compares to prior Emerald Rapids / Sapphire Rapids / Ice Lake and against the current AMD EPYC Bergamo/Genoa(X) competition.

With the Intel Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" launch today the review embargo has now expired. I began with my Intel Granite Rapids Linux benchmarking a few days ago and have initial benchmarks to share for the flagship Xeon 6980P processors paired with MRDIMM 8800MT/s memory. This is just the beginning of a lot of Granite Rapids benchmarks to come on Phoronix. Compared to the existing AMD EPYC competition and prior generation Intel Xeon processors, the Xeon 6900P series performance surpassed my expectations and has debuted as an incredibly strong performer. In some areas of HPC and other workloads, Intel is able to regain leadership performance with Granite Rapids paired with MRDIMMs. In AI workloads where the software is optimized for AMX, the new Xeon 6900P CPUs can showcase staggering leads.

Building off the launch earlier this year of the first Xeon 6 processors with the Xeon 6700E "Sierra Forest" processors, today Intel is lifting the wraps on the much anticipated Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" processors. Where as Sierra Forest is optimized for power efficiency and core density, the Intel Xeon 6 P-core processors are optimized for per-core performance and have shown some very strong generational uplift -- and against the AMD competition -- as we'll show today in the first Xeon 6980P Linux benchmarks.

There has been a lot of talk the past few days over the AMD AGESA PI 1.2.0.2 update that has begun rolling out to AMD AM5 motherboards with BIOS updates. The AGESA 1.2.0.2 is said to improve inter-core latency for Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" processors when cores from different CCDs are cross-communicating. Some -- at least under Windows -- have reported performance improvements and thus several Phoronix readers have requested I run some of my tests with AGESA 1.2.0.2. Here are said comparison benchmarks using an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X on Ubuntu Linux.

Motherboard vendors have begun rolling out updated BIOS versions for AMD AM5 platforms that allow a configurable TDP on the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X processors to allow a 105 Watt cTDP compared to the base 65 Watt TDP. For those wondering about the Linux performance and power efficiency impact from running these mid-tier Zen 5 desktop processors at the higher cTDP value, here is the full set of benchmarks compared to my original review data on Linux.

With the Supermicro ARS-211M-NR R13SPD server that's in the lab for a few weeks for reviewing the AmpereOne A192-32X and delivering the first independent benchmarks of the AmpereOne 192-core AArch64 server processor, the AmpereOne benchmarks to date have been comparing to other Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC server platforms. But if looking up to the cloud is the closest AArch64 server competition to AmpereOne there is: Amazon's Graviton4. In today's article ia showdown looking at how AmpereOne and AWS Graviton4 compete at 192 cores for ARM 64-bit server performance.

Earlier this week I began with AmpereOne A192-32X benchmarks and will continue for the next several weeks in finally having hands-on with the 192-core AArch64 server processor using a Supermicro ARS-211M-NR R13SPD 2U server platform. In today's next phase of AmpereOne performance benchmarking is looking at how AmpereOne scales across 32, 64, 96, 128, 160, and 192 core counts plus seeing core-for-core at 128 cores how AmpereOne compares to the Ampere Altra Max M128-30 processor. Plus these AmpereOne benchmarks at varying core counts against the AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon competition.

Last week an AmpereOne server finally arrived at Phoronix! Ampere Computing sent over a reviewer server of the AmpereOne A192-32X flagship AArch64 server processor with 192 custom cores and using a Supermicro ARS-211M-NR R13SPD platform. I have been carrying out a number of benchmarks for this much-anticipated AArch64 cloud native processor and have initial performance and power efficiency metrics to share today to see how it compares to prior Ampere Altra Max as well as the Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC server competition.

With the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X Linux review out of the way yesterday, today's benchmarking of the Ryzen 9000 series is looking closely at the AVX-512 performance impact. With the Ryzen 9000 series the Zen 5 cores have a full 512-bit data-path compared to the "double pumped" 256-bit data path found in the Zen 4 processors as well as the Strix Point SKUs. In this article is an AVX-512 enabled versus disabled comparison for not only the Ryzen 9 9950X but also the prior generation Ryzen 9 7950X and looking too at the CPU power use, thermals, and peak frequency when engaging a variety of AVX-512 workloads.

After talking about AmpereOne for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure since last year, earlier this month Oracle finally announced general availability on their OCI Ampere A2 instances for tapping into these latest-generation Ampere Computing AArch64 server processors in the public cloud. Here's a brief look at the OCI Ampere A2 performance with AmpereOne compared to their prior A1 instances powered by Ampere Altra.

Last Wednesday was the review embargo for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X Zen 5 desktop processors that proved to be very exciting for Linux workloads from developers to creators to AVX-512 embracing AI and HPC workloads. Today the review embargo lifts on the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X and as expected given the prior 6-core/8-core tests: these new chips are wild! The Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X are fabulous processors for those engaging in heavy real-world Linux workloads with excellent performance uplift and stunning power efficiency.

Motherboard vendors have begun releasing updated BIOS versions for Intel Core 13th/14th Gen motherboards that offer the new "0x129" CPU microcode that is intended to address the Raptor Lake stability issues that have been causing instability problems and crashing errors for a growing number of Intel Core 13th/14th Gen processors. Intel reported in their (Windows) testing that the 0x129 CPU microcode should offer negligible performance impact but I was curious to run my benchmarks under Linux of this new CPU microcode.