Intel Skylake Tests On Linux 4.3 Bring A Few Changes

Written by Michael Larabel in Software on 9 October 2015 at 02:00 PM EDT. Page 1 of 4. 6 Comments.

With development activity on the Linux 4.3 kernel settling down, here are some fresh benchmarks comparing the Linux 4.2 and Linux 4.3 Git kernels atop Ubuntu when using an Intel Core i5 6600K Skylake system.

Linux 4.3 brings many new features and specifically for new Intel Skylake users is enabling the Gen9 graphics hardware acceleration by default, Skylake sound support, various power management updates, and more. There are also general Linux 4.3 improvements like changes for SMP workloads, x86 Assembly optimizations, and other work that will make this Linux 4.3 benchmarking of interest.

Note that when going from Linux 4.2 to Linux 4.3 with Skylake processors, the default CPU scaling governor behavior changes from CPUFreq Ondemand to P-State Performance. That's also why the reported CPU frequency is different just for showing the turbo frequency now rather than base frequency.

The Core i5 6600K with MSI Z170A GAMING PRO motherboard was used for benchmarking. Ubuntu 15.10 x86_64 in its current development state was tested while using the Xfce 4.12 desktop, GCC 5.2.1, and Mesa 11.0.1. The default EXT4 file-system was used during benchmarking. All tests were facilitated via the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.


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