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.

Beginning today the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX and 2920X processors are shipping and we are now allowed to share our performance benchmarks for these latest Zen+ Threadripper 2 processors. Here's a look at the Linux performance and related metrics for these new 12-core/24-thread and 24-core/48-thread processors.

With my initial Core i9 9900K benchmarks out there following Friday's embargo expiration, for some weekend benchmarking fun I decided to pull out the old Core i7 990X to see how it compares to the new 9900K... The Gulftown and Coffeelake processors were compared not only on raw performance but also overall power consumption and performance-per-Watt.

Intel sent over the Core i9 9900K as their first 9th Gen Coffeelake-S CPU hitting store shelves today. With the embargo on that now expired, let's have a look at how well this eight-core / sixteen-thread processor performs under Linux.

Arriving earlier this month was a Dell PowerEdge R7425 server at Phoronix that was equipped with two AMD EPYC 7601 processors, 512GB of RAM, and 20 Samsung 860 EVO SSDs to make for a very interesting test platform and our first that is based on a dual EPYC design with our many other EPYC Linux benchmarks to date being 1P. Here is a look at the full performance capabilities of this 64-core / 128-thread server compared to a variety of other AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon processors while also doubling as an initial look at the performance of these server CPUs on Ubuntu 18.10.

Arriving last week in our Linux benchmarking lab was a dual EPYC server -- this Dell PowerEdge R7425 is a beast of a system with two AMD EPYC 7601 processors yielding a combined 64 cores / 128 threads, 512GB of RAM (16 x 32GB DDR4), and 20 x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs. There will be many interesting benchmarks from this server in the days and weeks ahead. For some initial measurements during the first few days of stress testing this 2U rack server, here is a look at how well various benchmarks/applications are scaling from two to 128 threads.

At the high-end of the AMD desktop CPU 2018 spectrum is the insanely fast Threadripper 2990WX while at the opposite end of that spectrum is the recently announced Athlon 200GE. For just $60 USD is this Zen+Vega chip that we have begun testing and have our initial Linux performance benchmarks out today compared to a range of lower-end and older desktop CPUs as well as integrated graphics test results, power consumption data, and performance-per-dollar metrics.

NVIDIA's Tegra Xavier SoC is becoming more widely available now that the Jetson Xavier Development Kit has begun shipping. Besides this latest SoC being an exciting design with its Volta-based GPU and having a Tensor Processing Unit / Deep Learning Accelerator, it's exciting on the CPU side as well with NVIDIA's custom-designed ARMv8 "Carmel" CPU cores.

For your Linux benchmark viewing pleasure today are test results from twenty-two distinct Intel / AMD systems when running a recent release of the performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution and the hardware spanning from old AMD FX and Intel Core i3 Haswell CPUs up through the high-end desktop Core i9 and Threadripper processors.

Announced last October was a 24-core ARM developer box being worked on by Linaro/96Boards, Socionext, and Gigabyte. The specifications are appealing with twenty-four ARM 64-bit cores with the SoC on a micro-ATX sized motherboard, support for a PCI Express graphics slot, and onboard Gigabit Ethernet. Here are our first benchmarks of this Socionext 96Boards Developerbox.

Whether you are compiling a lot of code, rendering models with Blender, or running various scientific workloads with OpenMP or MPI, the AMD Threadripper 2990WX is capable of delivering immersive Linux performance with its 32-cores and 64 total threads. While coming in at $1800 USD, the AMD Threadripper 2990WX can deliver better performance than the more expensive Intel Core i9 7980XE. Beyond being mesmerized about the performance today with this high-end desktop/workstation processor with the many thread-happy Linux workloads we encounter daily, this 32-core Zen+ processor has us even more eager to see AMD's next-generation Zen2-based EPYC CPUs next year.

The embargo has expired now for talking about Threadripper 2 performance figures... First up are our initial Threadripper 2950X Linux benchmarks. In this article are the most interesting metrics for this 16-core / 32-thread processor while in the just-published AMD Threadripper 2990WX Linux Benchmarks are a lot more figures complemented by the 2950X and other CPUs plus power consumption numbers, etc. This article is most useful if specifically focused on the performance of the Threadripper 2950X that comes in at $899 USD.

AMD's Threadripper 2990WX 32-core / 64-thread processor is real and launching next week. At the end of July we were in Maranello, Italy for AMD's Threadripper "2nd Gen" Tech Day, and while there have been leaks in recent days/weeks, today the embargo expires for being able to talk about this high-end desktop platform update.

Intel announced the limited edition Core i7 8086K processor in June to celebrate 40 years since the introduction of the original 8086 processor that ushered in the x86 architecture. The Core i7 8086K is now widely available albeit with an apparent limited time available. This celebratory CPU is built off Intel's existing Coffeelake CPU micro-architecture but with an elevated CPU base frequency and a turbo frequency that tops out at 5.0GHz to make it the company's highest-performing mainstream desktop CPU to date.

Back in April we were able to run some IBM POWER9 benchmarks with remote access to the open-source friendly Talos II systems by Raptor Computer Systems. We were recently allowed remote access again to a few different configurations of this libre hardware with three different POWER9 processor combinations. Here are those latest benchmarks compared to Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC server processors.

This month marks one year since AMD returned to delivering high-performance server CPUs with the debut of their EPYC 7000 series processor line-up. It's been a triumphant period for AMD with the successes over the past year of their EPYC family. Over the past year, the Linux support has continued to improve with several EPYC/Zen CPU optimizations, ongoing Zen compiler tuning, CPU temperature monitoring support within the k10temp driver, and general improvements to the Linux kernel that have also helped out EPYC. In this article is a comparison of a "2017" Linux software stack as was common last year to the performance now possible if using the bleeding-edge software components. These Linux benchmarks were done with the EPYC 7351P, 7401P, and 7601 processors.

This week have been various unique and extra articles and benchmarks for commemorating the Phoronix 14th birthday. The latest of these fun articles is taking a look back at how various CPUs over the years compare to today's Intel Core and AMD Ryzen offerings.

Yesterday the latest Spectre vulnerability was disclosed as Spectre Variant 4 also known as "Speculative Store Bypass" as well as the less talked about Spectre Variant 3A "Rogue System Register Read". Here are my initial tests of a patched Linux kernel on AMD hardware for Spectre V4.

Last month we delivered launch-day Linux benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 7 2700X for these new "Zen+" processors while recently we received the non-X Ryzen 5 2600 and Ryzen 7 2700 processors for Linux testing as well. In this article are benchmarks of these new AMD Ryzen processors as well as other Intel/AMD CPUs for delivering a fresh nine-way Linux distribution comparison using the very latest software components.

The embargo on the Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 7 2700X processors has expired now that these Ryzen+ CPUs are beginning to ship today. We can now talk about the Linux support and the initial performance figures for these upgraded Zen desktop CPUs.

Today the Ryzen+ "Pinnacle Ridge" processors begin shipping and we can now share with you the initial performance results for the Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 7 2700X processors. One of the most common questions I've received about these improved Zen processors since showing them off last week was inquiries/hopes about the Linux gaming performance, so those numbers are first up today followed by other Linux benchmark results forthcoming.

You may have heard that next week is the AMD 2000 series Ryzen CPU launch. That's indeed accurate while today is just a meet and greet with these new Ryzen processors.

For several days we've had remote access to one of the brand new Raptor Talos II Workstations that is powered by POWER9 processors and open-source down through the firmware. For those curious how these latest POWER processors compare to AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon processors, here are some benchmarks comparing against of the few other systems in house while all testing was done from Debian GNU/Linux.

While Austrian PC cooling manufacturer Noctua is mostly known for their high-end enthusiast/gamer oriented cooling products, they do offer a line-up of heatsinks for both AMD Ryzen Threadripper and EPYC server processors. In this article we are trying out the NH-U9 TR4-SP3, NH-U12S TR4-SP3, and NH-U14S TR4-SP3 heatsinks on a 32-core / 64-thread AMD EPYC platform for seeing how well these air coolers will do with AMD's promising server platform.

A Phoronix reader granted us remote access to a FOXCONN C2U4N_MB system featuring two Cavium ThunderX 48-core SoCs. For those curious about the potential of a modern 96-core ARM platform, here are some basic benchmark results.

Earlier this week I delivered a number of benchmarks comparing Amazon EC2 instances to bare metal Intel/AMD systems. Due to interest from that, here is a larger selection of cloud instance types from the leading public clouds of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Engine.

Yesterday I posted some initial Linux benchmarks of the Ryzen 5 2400G Raven Ridge APU when looking at the Vega 11 graphics, but for those curious about the CPU performance potential of the Ryzen 5 2400G and its ~$100 Ryzen 3 2200G sibling, here are our first CPU benchmarks of these long-awaited AMD APUs. These two current Raven Ridge desktop APUs are compared to a total of 21 different Intel and AMD processors dating back to older Kaveri APUs and FX CPUs and Ivy Bridge on the Intel side.

Here are our initial performance figures for the Vega graphics found on the newly-released Ryzen 5 2400G "Raven Ridge" APU under Linux and testing both OpenGL and Vulkan graphics benchmarks. CPU tests as well as benchmarks of the Ryzen 3 2200G under Linux are forthcoming on Phoronix.

Following the release of the Linux 4.15 kernel with KPTI and Retpoline introduction, many Phoronix readers were interested in seeing a fresh Linux CPU performance comparison. For those reasons plus in preparing for the Raven Ridge testing, here are benchmarks of 19 different systems when using Ubuntu x86_64 with the Linux 4.15 stable kernel.

Earlier this week I posted some benchmarks looking at Intel Pentium vs. AMD Ryzen 3 performance for Linux gaming. Those tests on the Pentium and Ryzen systems were done with both NVIDIA and AMD Radeon graphics for seeing how the gaming performance compares in the spectrum of sub-$100 CPUs and cheap graphics cards. But for those that were just curious about the CPU performance, here are some benchmarks I also carried out with the Pentium G4600 Kabylake and AMD Ryzen 3 1200.

2018 has been off to a busy start with all the testing around the Linux x86 PTI (Page Table Isolation) patches for this "Intel CPU bug" that potentially dates back to the Pentium days but has yet to be fully disclosed. Here is the latest.