Linux 3.0, 3.4, 3.10, 3.12 AMD Kernel Benchmarks

How does the Linux kernel performance compare if simply bouncing between some of the recent long-term kernel releases? Well, to try to answer that question on Phoronix today we have benchmarks of the Linux 3.0.101, 3.4.68, 3.10.18, and 3.12.0 kernel releases tested from an AMD Opteron system with Radeon graphics.

Originally the intention was to go back as far as the Linux 2.6.32 long-term kernel release since it's used widely in the enterprise environment, but the mainline 2.6.32 kernel failed to boot on this Opteron 2384 quad-core system with Radeon HD 4870. Even with the Linux 3.0 kernel, the user-space R600 Gallium3D driver had broke so we didn't even get 3D acceleration on the HD 4870 until the Linux 3.4 kernel with this user-space configuration even though KMS/3D was supported much longer than that for this RV770 graphics card. Thus, we're left with testing the mainline releases of the Linux 3.0.101, 3.4.68, 3.10.18, and 3.12.0 kernels.

A wide variety of tests were run on each kernel release from the system, but the most interesting results tended to be with the Radeon open-source graphics driver performance. On the following pages are our interesting results from the Phoronix Test Suite when swapping out the kernels and leaving the same user-space from this Opteron 2384 + Radeon HD 4870 + OCZ Agility-EX SSD system.