Processors Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 337 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for processors. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

Given the significant interest from Phoronix readers about how well Apple M2 performs on Linux, especially after it was noted Linus Torvalds using an Apple MacBook Air M2, here are the first of many benchmark articles to come looking at how well Apple's M2 performs under Linux against Intel/AMD x86_64 competition. The new Apple MacBook Air with M2 was benchmarked for this article against the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U "Rembrandt" Zen 3+, Intel Core i7 1280P "Alder Lake P", an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX "Cezanne H", and also for reference an Apple Mac Mini M1 model. All of these laptops were tested under Arch Linux (x86_64) and the Arch-based Asahi Linux (M1/M2).

Earlier this year AMD announced the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series but initially was limited to Lenovo workstations. Earlier this summer it was then announced the Threadripper PRO 5000 WX series would be heading to more system integrators and then the DIY market. Well, finally, these Zen 3 Threadripper chips are heading out to the DYI market and today the review embargo lifts. AMD recently sent over a Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5965WX for my Linux testing at Phoronix and here is my initial review and performance benchmarks for this Zen 3 24-core / 48-thread HEDT chip.

I've begun testing the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U "Rembrandt" SoC under Linux and have some preliminary benchmarks of this Zen 3+ chip up against a variety of Intel and AMD notebooks on hand. Here is the first of several articles looking at the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U Linux performance using a Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen3.

Launched earlier this year was Alder Lake P series for modern Intel laptops with up to 14 cores / 20 threads for modern Intel laptops. Many Phoronix readers have been inquiring about Alder Lake laptop support and performance under Linux and recently I finally got my hands on an Alder Lake P device in the form of the MSI Prestige 14Evo A12M-231 that features the flagship ADL-P model of the Core i7 1280P. Today's article is focused on the Linux performance of that flagship Core i7 1280P compared to other AMD and Intel laptop processors.

Back in March when AMD Milan-X rolled out I published a number of EPYC 7773X benchmarks as well as Milan-X benchmarks in the cloud. Since then there have been new Linux kernel improvements and other changes in the ever-advancing open-source world. Plus simply more time to conduct additional tests over the summer. Here is the latest round of my AMD EPYC 7773X 1P and 2P benchmarking compared to the Milan EPYC 7713/7763 SKUs as well as Intel's Xeon Platinum 8380 "Ice Lake" competition.

From the recent setup of the MSI Alder Lake motherboard flashed with Dasharo/Coreboot I had an extra LGA-1700 motherboard around. With some Phoronix readers in the past having inquired about more Alder Lake benchmarks on the low-end, I picked up a Core i3 12100 processor that features four performance cores / eight threads. For those curious about the CPU performance and that of the integrated UHD Graphics 730, here are some Ubuntu Linux performance benchmarks with the i3-12100 and other similar processors.

With my review last month of the HP Dev One laptop powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U and running Pop!_OS I benchmarked it against various laptops I had locally with both AMD and Intel CPUs, including the likes of the very common Tiger Lake SoCs. At the time I hadn't any newer Alder Lake P laptops but now with a Core i7 1280P laptop in hand, here is a look at how that AMD Cezanne Linux laptop can compete with Intel's brand new Alder Lake P SoCs with the flagship Core i7 1280P.

Earlier this week AWS announced general availability on their new Arm Neoverse-V1 based processors, Graviton3. Right after that I posted some initial Graviton3 benchmarks against prior-generation Graviton2 for showing the very sizable generational improvement with Amazon's new in-house Arm server processors. Since then I have been carrying out a more robust set of around 100 benchmarks across the original Graviton instance, Graviton2, Graviton3, and then up again Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC competing instances. Here is that much larger collection of Graviton3 performance benchmarks carried out on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

At the end of last year Amazon announced their new Graviton3 processors with around 25% more compute performance than their prior Graviton2 AArch64 processors, up to 2x the FP and crypto performance, DDR5 system memory support, and other improvements to their in-house processor for the AWS cloud. Yesterday the C7g instances reached general availability for making Graviton3 processors available to AWS customers. Here are some initial benchmarks.

Intel is kicking off their inaugural "Intel Vision" event today in Texas by making several prominent hardware and software announcements.

As a follow-up to last week's AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Linux review, here are some additional Linux benchmarks of this first AMD Ryzen CPU with 3D V-Cache.

Last week AMD began shipping the much anticipated Ryzen 7 5800X3D as their first 3D V-Cache consumer CPU and their claims to be "the world's fastest PC gaming processor" in being able to outperform even the Core i9 12900K / 12900KS for Windows gaming. We weren't seeded by AMD for this launch, leading us to anticipate that it's not too good for Linux gaming / not their target market. But after the great success I've had with AMD Milan-X performance on Linux, I was very eager to try out this consumer CPU with the 3D-stacked L3 cache and ended up purchasing a 5800X3D. Indeed the Ryzen 7 5800X3D turned out to be disappointing for Linux gaming performance but the 5800X3D was very interesting for a range of other technical workloads and making me very excited for future Ryzen CPUs with 3D V-Cache.

AMD on Monday began shipping the Ryzen 5 5500 as a ~$159 USD processor in the Zen 3 family. The Ryzen 5 5500 offers 6 cores / 12 threads with a 65 Watt TDP rating in making for a fairly robust offering for its low price point. I've had the Ryzen 5 5500 in the lab the past few days and in this article are some initial benchmarks seeing how this mid-range processor performs.

Last Friday the crew at Asahi Linux led by Hector Martin released the first alpha release for running Linux on Apple Silicon hardware. I eagerly loaded up Asahi Linux on an M1-powered Apple Mac Mini knowing the various early limitations of the Linux kernel support that is still settling. Overall the Apple M1 Linux performance ended up exceeding my expectations for the performance in its early alpha state. Here are some benchmarks.

While Milan-X was announced back in November, today is the day of the Milan-X embargo lift for reviewing these new processors and sharing more about these high-end server processors focused on delivering even greater performance for high performance computing (HPC) workloads. In this review is a look at the performance of the AMD EPYC 7773X series against other AMD EPYC parts and the Intel Xeon Scalable competition under Linux.

Today the AMD EPYC 7003 Milan-X processors are officially shipping. See my AMD EPYC 7773X Linux review for more details and plenty of benchmarks. The 768MB of L3 cache per CPU won't be of benefit to all workloads, just as the forthcoming Ryzen 7 5800X3D is focused on gaming. Aside from the dozens of benchmarks covered in my review, if you are still left wondering about whether other workloads stand to benefit from Milan-X, thankfully it's easy to already test drive it in the cloud with Microsoft Azure. Here are some Microsoft Azure HBv3 benchmarks looking at the Milan-X uplift in the cloud.

While AMD EPYC processors offer phenomenal performance at the high-end for servers with up to 64 cores / 128 threads per socket, eight memory channels, and other features, not all server deployments call for such capabilities. In the lower-end dedicated web server rental space, budget web hosting, and similar personal / small office server space, AMD Ryzen processors can prove more than capable. Already some dedicated server providers are offering AMD Ryzen powered servers and more are expected to come soon -- especially with even more server-minded wares for Ryzen expected next generation. In looking at this space, we have been testing a number of AMD Ryzen processors recently compared to Intel Xeon E class competition for looking at the performance and value in the low-end dedicated server space.

It's been well over two years since AMD introduced the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series and subsequently introduced the Threadripper PRO 3000WX series as workstation-focused parts. Today AMD is introducing the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX Series as the first Zen 3 based Threadripper processors.

Last year Amazon launched the EC2 M6a instances powered by AMD EPYC 7003 series while this week they have expanded their range of AMD Zen 3 offerings by launching the EC2 C6a series. The EC2 C6a instances are designed for compute-intensive workloads (hence the "C" series) and AWS is promoting it as offering up to 15% improvement in price-performance over prior-generation C5a instances and up to 10% lower cost than comparable x86-based EC2 instances. I've run some benchmarks of the new EC2 C6a instances looking at how they perform over the prior 2nd Gen EPYC C5a based instances, against the Intel Ice Lake competition over in the M6i stack, and also how the C6a competes with Amazon's own Graviton2-based C6g type.

At the top-end of Intel's current Alder Lake line-up is the Core i9 12900K while at the opposite end is the Celeron G6900... The Celeron G6900 is a dual-core Alder Lake processor with a suggested customer price of $42~52 USD (though for the limited quantities available, I ended up paying $69). Curiosity got the best of me for seeing how well this lowest-end Alder Lake part performs under Ubuntu Linux.

Formally announced at CES, the Core i5 12400 and other Alder Lake non-K desktop CPUs are beginning to appear in retail channels. Last week I was able to buy an Intel Core i5 12400 "Alder Lake" from a major Internet retailer for $209 USD -- and one week later there remains availability during these turbulent supply chain times. The i5-12400 has wound up being a very nice processor for Linux use that exceeded my initial expectations.

Intel is using CES 2022 to announce the 12th Gen Intel Core mobile processors led by the H-series processors, new 35-Watt and 65-Watt 12th Gen Core desktop CPUs, an updated Intel Evo specification, and an update on their DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics efforts.

AMD CEO Lisa Su is beginning her CES 2022 keynote right now. Lisa will be talking up the company's consumer wares for the year with a particular focus expected on the Ryzen 6000 series mobile "Rembrandt" processors and AMD CPUs with 3D V-Cache.

One of the much requested Linux benchmarks since the debut of Intel Alder Lake last month has been for seeing the Core i9 12900K in different core configurations with its mix of P and E cores. Now that the Linux kernel activity has begun settling down around Alder Lake, here are those benchmarks for reference purposes with toggling Hyper Threading and different P and E core counts enabled.

For those looking at upgrading your business notebook this holiday season, here are our first benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U mobile processor under Linux using a Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen2. For ~$1299 USD this holiday season on sale, this Linux-friendly ThinkPad offers a lot with the 8-core / 16-thread Zen 3 processor with Vega graphics, 32GB LPDDR4X 4266MHz system memory, 1TB NVMe SSD, 4K IPS display, and legendary ThinkPad build quality.

A few days ago it marked two years since the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X / 3970X launched. While we are eager to see next-gen Threadripper, for now is a look at how the open-source Linux performance has evolved for these still-impressive HEDT processors by comparing the Linux performance at launch to where it is today with the very latest upstream Linux software.

AMD this morning hosted their Accelerated Data Center Premiere virtual event where they introduced Milan-X as well as the Instinct MI200. With Milan-X there is now 3D V-Cache introduced for the current generation and still-very-impressive EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors. I can personally attest to Milan-X being very exciting for HPC workloads and beyond with impressive gains to performance.

While it was initially communicated by Intel that Alder Lake's Golden Cove P-Cores has AVX-512 "fused off", that has turned out not to be the case at least with the initial batch of processors and current BIOS/firmware configurations. If disabling the power-efficient Gracemont E-Cores, it's possible to enable AVX-512 and make use of it. Here are some initial AVX-512 benchmarks in such a configuration under Linux with the Core i9 12900K.

With the Intel 12th Gen Core processors shipping today along with the new line-up of Z690 motherboards, the review embargo lifts for talking about these Intel "Alder Lake" processors. While by now you've likely heard a lot about Intel Alder Lake on Windows and various leaked benchmarks with Windows 11, how does these processors with the new hybrid architecture work and perform on Linux? Here are the initial benchmarks and support information for Intel's Core i5 12600K and Core i9 12900K processors under Ubuntu Linux.

Intel is using their inaugural Intel Innovation virtual event today to formally announce the highly-anticipated 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors. These first desktop processors built on their "Intel 7" process and employ a hybrid architecture will be available in retail channels next week. Today we can talk more about Alder Lake specifications and features while our Linux performance benchmarks and support analysis will come once the Alder Lake review embargo expires next week.