Processors Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 423 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for processors. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

For those craving some Linux gaming benchmarks from the newly-released AMD Ryzen 7 1800X processor, here are some test results. In this initial comparison are benchmarks of the Ryzen 7 1800K to Core i7 7700K when running these processors at stock speeds while using a Radeon R9 Fury graphics card paired with AMDGPU+RadeonSI for the Linux graphics driver stack.

The day many of you have been waiting for is finally here: AMD Zen (Ryzen) processors are shipping! Thanks to AMD coming around at the last minute, I received a Ryzen 7 1800X yesterday evening and have been putting it through its paces. Here is my walkthrough of the Linux experience for the AMD Ryzen and new motherboard and a number of the initial Linux benchmarks for this high-end Zen CPU while much more coverage is coming in the hours and days ahead.

When posting last week our Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Radeon benchmarks and Windows vs. Linux NVIDIA Pascal benchmarks and then the Windows vs. Linux relative performance analysis, as usual, it didn't take long for some to argue that the Linux gaming performance is actually faster but "Unity 7 is slower" and the similar FUD that is usually waged whenever looking at cross-platform performance.

At the end of January I published my initial Core i3 7100 Linux benchmarks while for those still on older Sandy Bridge hardware and thinking of upgrading to a Core i3 Kabylake, here are some interesting comparative benchmarks. For these weekend tests are raw performance and performance-per-Watt metrics for the Core i3 2100 Sandy Bridge to the Core i3 7100 Kabylake processors.

Earlier this week we posted Linux benchmarks of the Intel Pentium G4600 as a 3.6GHz processor for around $90 USD. It was an interesting processor for the value, but if your wallet is tighter, the Celeron G3930 is selling for about $40 as a dual-core sub-3GHz Kabylake processor. Here are those test results.

If you are looking to upgrade to a Kabylake processor but the Core i7 7700K at $350 and other higher-end models are too expensive, the Pentium G4600 is available at under $90 USD for a dual-core processor with Hyper Threading and clocks up to 3.6GHz.

If you have been curious how well Intel's new Core i7 7700K "Kabylake" processor performs under Linux, I received this CPU a few days ago and have begun putting it through its paces. Here are my initial i7-7700K Linux benchmarks compared to various other Intel CPUs running Clear Linux.

Last week I began delivering Linux Kabylake benchmarks with the Core i5 7600K while this week I finally am set to receive the Core i7 7700K. But for those curious how Kabylake is looking on the low-end, I picked up a Core i3 7100 as currently the cheapest Kabylake desktop processor. Here are some initial Linux benchmarks of this Core i3 processor on Ubuntu Linux.

After ordering a Core i5 7600K Kaby Lake CPU last week, I've been spending the past few days trying it out under Ubuntu Linux. If you happened to pick up an early Kaby Lake CPU and seeing low performance, I wanted to pass along a little PSA while I am still working on additional tests.

While the Core i7 6800K has been available for a few months now, there hadn't been any review on it since Intel hadn't sent out any Broadwell-E samples for Linux testing this time around. However, I did end up finally buying a Core i7 6800K now that the Turbo Boost Max 3.0 support is finally coming together (at first, Intel PR said it wouldn't even be supported on Linux) so that I can run some benchmarks there plus some other interesting items on the horizon for benchmarking. Here are some benchmarks of the i7-6800K from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the Linux 4.8 kernel.

Recently I purchased a Xeon E5-2609 v4 Broadwell-EP processor as a $300 Xeon with eight physical cores but clocked at just 1.7GHz and without any Turbo Boost while the TDP is 85 Watts. Here are some benchmarks compared to other LGA-2011 v3 CPUs in my possession under Linux along with an AMD FX reference point too and followed by some Skylake Xeon benchmarks.

For those looking at upgrading a server or workstation to an Intel Xeon E3 v5 "Skylake" processor, here is a nine-way benchmark comparison of these processors compared to older Haswell Xeons as well as an AMD FX processor for reference. The benchmarks today were done under Ubuntu Linux and besides looking at raw performance we also have test results for the CPU thermal performance, system power consumption, performance-per-Watt, and performance-per-dollar metrics with a total of 14 AMD/Intel processors.

In continuation of last week's article about building an Intel Xeon E3 v5 Skylake Linux system, here are my complete performance figures on the Xeon E3-1245 v5 as a $300 Skylake processor featuring HD Graphics P530.

If looking for budget laptops right now, the Core i3 5010U and Core i5 5200U "Broadwell" processors tend to be very common, but how do they compare under Linux? Here are some benchmarks on Ubuntu 15.10 with the Linux 4.4 kernel to answer that question.

After starting to run some Raspberry Pi Zero benchmarks this weekend, I'm back today with more benchmarks. In this article is also an interesting comparison showing the performance of the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi 2 against old "Northwood" Pentium 4 and Celeron processors from the Socket 478 NetBurst days. The many results in this article also include power consumption and performance-per-Watt metrics for this $5 ARM single board computer.

The Pentium G4400 is currently the cheapest available Skylake socketed processor with a retail price of under $70 USD. Curious about the performance for this dual-core Skylake CPU, I decided to buy one for some Linux benchmarking at Phoronix for looking at the dual-core Skylake performance and the HD Graphics 510 capabilities.

With Skylake's retail availability improving, we're starting to see more of the Skylake processors in stock besides just the i5-6600K and i7-6700K. One of the other processors now widely available is the Core i5 6500, which is a step down from the Core i5 6600K, but retails at just $199 USD -- making it an attractive offer for many building new PCs and trying to stick to a decent budget. I've been testing out an i5-6500 under Ubuntu Linux and so far this processor with HD Graphics 530 is running well and offers compelling CPU performance relative to older Intel hardware as well as AMD's APU/CPU competition.

This summer I wrote about some issues I had with the Core i7 5775C on Linux where under Ubuntu 15.04 the experience was unstable but this socketed Broadwell was running great on Fedora 22. Fortunately, the Ubuntu experience for the i7-5775C with Iris Graphics is much better under the upcoming Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" release.

Last week from the new Intel Core i5 6600K "Skylake" processor I posted the initial Linux CPU benchmarks as well as results for the new HD Graphics 530 graphics processor with Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver stack. In this article are some complementary data points for this Core i5 Skylake CPU compared to Haswell and Broadwell processors as well as a AMD A10-7870K Godavari APU.

Earlier this week I began my Intel Skylake Linux benchmarking by posting some initial results from the HD Graphics 530, the new Intel "Gen9" graphics. While more Intel Linux HD Graphics 530 results are on the way, completed for this weekend are the initial CPU benchmark results comparing the Core i5 6600K to various other Intel Haswell/Broadwell processors as well as some AMD APUs and CPUs.

NVIDIA's Tegra X1 64-bit ARM SoC running (non-Android) Linux is a beast! I was given access to a SHIELD Android TV that was configured to run Ubuntu Linux, which has led for some exciting benchmarks. In some workloads, the Tegra X1 comes up just shy of an Intel Core i3 "Broadwell" system. The Tegra X1 has me very excited about the future of ARMv8 hardware on Linux and NVIDIA's continued Tegra advancements.

With my Intel Core i7 5775C Linux review having gone out earlier this week, out of curiosity one of the other follow-up tests I wanted to run was comparing the performance and efficiency to an old Pentium 4 and Celeron Socket 478 CPU from the NetBurst era.

For the past few weeks I've been testing out the Core i7 5775C on Linux as mentioned in a few posts up to this point. While there were some initial headaches on getting this socketed Broadwell CPU playing nicely under Linux, once working around those problems, this processor is great on Linux. With its Iris Pro Graphics 6200 is able to serve as a compelling choice for those who want a powerful open-source system.

This week has been fun testing out the Braswell-powered NUC5CPYH. This NUC features the Celeron N3050 SoC and in this article are some of the first benchmarks of this new Intel design when testing under Linux.

Two weeks ago AMD launched the A10-7870K "Godavari" APU. As there haven't been too many independent benchmarks of the A10-7870K yet, this week I picked up the new high-end APU and have been running a plethora of performance tests under Ubuntu Linux. Here's the first batch of the AMD A10-7870K Linux tests.

With Phoronix having turned 11 years old last week, there's been several interesting articles looking at the historical performance of Linux, large GPU/driver comparisons, etc. Today is arguably the most interesting birthday article yet. I dug out an old Intel Socket 478 system with the i875p Canterwood chipset and Pentium 4 and Celeron CPUs that still manage to power up. I compared the Linux performance of this 11+ year old system to a variety of today's x86 and ARM systems. Beyond looking at the raw performance, the performance-per-Watt was also measured to make for a very interesting look at how CPU performance has evolved over the past decade.

For curiosity sake and as part of a more interesting article coming later this week in celebrating 11 years of Phoronix with its birthday on Friday, here are a range of CPU benchmarks on 45 different Linux systems with quite a range of hardware from low-power Intel Atoms and many AMD APUs to dual socket Opterons and Xeons. There's also a mix from laptops to nettops to desktops and servers.

For at least some Intel Bay Trail systems, the Linux 4.0 and Linux 4.1 kernels bring measurable performance improvements as shown by this latest round of Phoronix kernel benchmarking.

Chances are if you have a Haswell ultrabook/laptop, you're probably not looking at upgrading to a new Broadwell design unless your Haswell laptop had hardware issues, you really need a longer battery life via more power efficient hardware, or you just fall in love with one of the new Broadwell devices. If you're running an Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge laptop on the other hand, it might be time for an upgrade to get faster Intel graphics and greater power efficiency. Here's some preliminary figures I have for showing off the new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Core i7 5600U compared to some older SNB and IVB laptops.

Back in September AMD announced new FX CPUs that included the FX-8370, FX-8370E, and FX-8320E. Back then we reviewed the FX-8370/FX-8370E CPUs under Linux but at the time didn't have our hands on the more affordable FX-8320E processor. In December AMD sent over the FX-8320E and so for the past few weeks I've been happily using this new Vishera CPU.