System76 Gazelle Pro: A High Performance Linux Laptop

Over the past several weeks at Phoronix I have been trying out the System76 Gazelle Professional, which has wound up being a nice high performance Linux laptop preloaded with Ubuntu and powered by Intel's latest-generation Core i7 "Haswell" mobile processor.

I wrote my System76 Gazelle Professional review last month for those interested in knowing my thoughts on the laptop itself and performance comparisons to other Intel laptops. Since then, I've used the Gazelle Pro as the basis for a number of other Phoronix benchmarking articles due to its Core i7 4900MQ "Haswell" CPU and HD Graphics 4600. With returning the review sample soon to System76, here's a recap of the other benchmarks that have centered around this latest-generation Haswell Linux laptop:

- Updated graphics benchmarks comparing Ubuntu Linux to Windows 8 on this laptop with Intel HD Graphics. Linux still loses in Intel OpenGL performance to Microsoft Windows.

- Disk encryption benchmarks of Ubuntu 13.10 comparing no disk encryption to eCryptfs-based home directory encryption and LUKS-based encrypted LVM.

- An Ubuntu 13.10 desktop comparison feature Unity, KDE, Xfce, and others when running on this Intel hardware with the latest graphics drivers.

- Mir display server benchmarks with composite bypass support.

- Mesa 9.2 graphics driver benchmarks using an X.Org Server as well as a Mir Display Server with XMir.

- Intel DRM-Next benchmarks of the Intel graphics driver code to be merged into the Linux 3.12 kernel.

- The Gazelle Pro benchmarked against the Serval Pro, a System76 Ubuntu Linux laptop going back to the Intel Sandy Bridge days.

- Ubuntu 13.10 KVM virtualization benchmarks.

- Intel 520 Series SSD Linux tests of the solid-state drive shipped in the Gazelle Pro.

- Gallium3D LLVMpipoe benchmarks of the LLVM-based software rasterizer.

- GCC 4.9 compiler benchmarks for the latest in-development version of the GNU Compiler Collection.

- Core-AVX2 compiler optimization tests for tweaking compiled binary performance for the latest Intel Haswell CPUs.

- LLVM Clang 3.4 benchmarks of the in-development version of the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end in conjunction with the latest LLVM infrastructure.

That sums up most of the other Phoronix articles where the System76 Gazelle Pro has been used as the basis for carrying out high-performance benchmarks. While the laptop may not be as sleek as the latest Apple MacBook Pro or some other hardware from tier-one vendors, the laptop with an Intel Core i7 4900MQ is mighty capable and the integrated HD Graphics are also very good for those not engaging in heavy gaming.

While the Gazelle Pro will need to be sent back soon, System76 will be sending over shortly their Galago Ultra Pro laptop/ultrabook that features the Iris Pro 5200 graphics, which we have been craving for delivering Linux benchmarks and other interesting and unique performance tests. Stay tuned. A Phoronix reader has also lent me remote access to his Galago Ultra Pro for delivering some early performance metrics of the Linux kernel and Mesa for the Iris graphics.

More information on the Gazelle Pro laptop is available at System76.com.