Processors Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 502 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for processors. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

Last week I published fresh benchmarks showing how AMD's EPYC 4005 series for budget servers can outperform the original EPYC 7601 flagship processor when EPYC first launched during the Zen 1 period. Even with lower core counts and fewer memory channels, the modern EPYC 4005 "Grado" processors were able to outpace that original EPYC "Naples" flagship processor from 2017. With carrying out the fresh re-testing of the AMD EPYC 7601 on a modern 2025 Linux software stack, in today's article is a look at how the EPYC 7601 Zen 1 performance compares to the EPYC 9005 "Turin" series with today's flagship EPYC 9755 and EPYC 9965 processors.

For those on very long server upgrade cycles, typically just running the hardware until failure or consider buying second-hand servers that are generations old for lower up-front cost, today's unique article is for you with quantifying a first-generation EPYC server compared to today's entry-level EPYC processors in performance and power efficiency. With the fascinating AMD EPYC 4005 "Grado" budget-friendly server processors I was curious how well they would stack up against AMD's original flagship EPYC processor, the AMD EPYC 7601 "Naples" processor from the Zen 1 era. Can an entry-level brand new Grado server processor with dual channel DDR5 memory outpace an original EPYC server with twice the core/thread counts and eight channel DDR4 server memory? Yes, with huge gains in performance and power efficiency.

The AMD EPYC 4005 "Grado"" processors launched by AMD in May for entry-level servers offer downright amazing value, performance, and power efficiency over the Intel Xeon 6300 / Xeon E-2400 series competition. Intel's top-of-stack Xeon 6300 (Xeon 6369P) / Xeon E processors fail to compete with even the mid-tier EPYC 4005 series processors in either performance, power, or cost effectiveness. Among the many advantages to these budget-friendly EPYC processors is having AVX-512 support with a full 512-bit data path compared to the Xeon 6300 series only having AVX2. For providing more insight into the AVX-512 performance impact with the AMD EPYC 4005 series, here are some enabled/disabled comparison benchmarks and how they are positioned relative to the Xeon 6369P server processor.

While the latest Intel Core Ultra processors have done away with Hyper Threading (HT), Intel Xeon CPUs continue supporting HT/SMT, including with their latest Xeon 6300 series budget server processors. As the new AMD EPYC 4005 "Grado" processors also support Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) and can be found at the same core/thread count count as the flagship Xeon 6369P processor, it makes for an interesting look at comparing the SMT/HT performance impact and power efficiency. Here are some benchmarks showing the Xeon 6300 against the AMD EPYC 4005 in SMT performance.

Prior to the AMD Advancing AI 2025 event last week, AMD shared additional details on their forthcoming Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series processors.

Back in April at Google Cloud Next was the introduction of the new C4D family of VMs powered by AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors. Back on launch day I looked at the C3D vs. C4D performance at some of the smaller, more common VM sizes. In today's article is a look at the top-end performance of the C4D family with 384 vCPUs. For those wondering about the compute potential of the c4d-standard-384, here are some benchmarks of this 192-core / 384-thread EPYC Turin configuration compared to the prior C3D AMD EPYC Genoa based instance that topped out at 360 vCPUs.

Last month with the launch of the AMD EPYC 4005 "Grado" series for entry-level Zen 5 servers we ran benchmarks of the AMD EPYC 4565P and EPYC 4585PX processors as the top-tier 16-core CPUs. They delivered an excellent combination of performance, power efficiency, and most of all value for those looking to assemble an AM5-based budget-oriented server in 2025 and beyond. Those processors destroyed the Intel Xeon 6300 series competition's flagship, the Xeon 6369P that is simply 8 cores / 16 threads in 2025... Being curious about the core-for-core performance between the AMD EPYC 4005 series and Intel Xeon 6300 series, I got my hands on an AMD EPYC 4345P as the Grado 8-core processor to see how it performs against that Xeon E-2400 series replacement as well as how the performance compares to the prior generation 8-core EPYC 4344P.

For some very fun Linux benchmarking on this 21st anniversary of starting Phoronix is looking at the Ryzen AI Max (PRO) 390 Linux performance, the 12-core Strix Halo SoC with Radeon 8050S Graphics. While there have been various benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ (PRO) 395 in recent weeks on Phoronix and other publications, the other Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" SoCs haven't been as widely seen in the industry yet. The 12-core Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 was tested within another HP ZBook Ultra G1a for a very interesting look at the high-end/premium Linux laptop/workstation performance.

While Intel opted against implementing Hyper Threading for their latest Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors, Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) still proves very effective on the AMD side. Even though the top-end AMD Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" SoCs provide 16 Zen 5 cores, the presence of SMT for 32 threads still proves worthwhile from both a performance and power efficiency perspective. Here is an on/off comparison for SMT with the flagship AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 within the HP ZBook Ultra G1a.

Several weeks into testing the AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 flagship "Strix Halo" SoC within the HP ZBook Ultra G1a, I continue to be very impressed with its performance capabilities for a wide range of workloads. While the Radeon 8060S integrated graphics easily turn heads and the 16-core / 32-thread Zen 5 cores deliver incredible performance in a laptop form factor, one feature not to be discounted that together really helps make this laptop/SFF SoC an excellent choice for AI use and other scientific computing purposes is the presence of AVX-512. While Intel's current laptop and desktop processors lack AVX-512, Zen 5's efficient AVX-512 implementation does wonders for the Strix Halo performance and power efficiency. Today's article is exploring the performance and power efficiency benefits of AVX-512 usage on the AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO SoC.

After recently looking at how the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Linux performance has evolved since launch, many Phoronix readers were curious how a similar launch-day vs. now comparison would look on the AMD Zen 5 side. The article today is looking at how the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X Linux performance has evolved since their launch last year. These numbers are put alongside the prior Intel Arrow Lake results for additional context.

With today's announcement of the AMD EPYC 4005P "Grado" entry-level server processors, up for review today are the EPYC 4565P and EPYC 4585PX processors as the top-end Zen 5 processors for budget server builds and basic bare metal server hosting. With the prior-generation EPYC 4004 series AMD was already leading over Intel's entry-level Xeon E processors that have become rather embarrassing for the company with its stagnate line-up of low-cost server processors. Now with the AMD EPYC 4005 series, AMD is in an even stronger position and providing a total knock-out to the new Xeon 6300P competition headlined by the Xeon 6369P flagship model.

Last year AMD launched the EPYC 4004 series for taking Ryzen based processor designs into the EPYC segment for entry-level servers with ECC memory support, server designs with BMCs, and various enterprise software certifications and industry qualifications. Today they are launching the EPYC 4005 series as their new Zen 5 based offerings for entry-level / budget server deployments and other instances when not needing as much compute power or connectivity and other high-end features found with the EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors.

We finally have AMD's Strix Halo in the lab for benchmarking! HP has kindly sent over their ZBook Ultra 14-inch G1a mobile workstation: it's a beast being powered by the top-end AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 SoC with 16 cores / 32 threads and powerful integrated Radeon 8060S graphics, 128GB of system memory, a nice 14-inch 2.8K display, and other top-end features to provide a dominating laptop powerhouse. In today's article are the very initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 Strix Halo SoC under Linux with a focus on the CPU capabilities: a separate article also out today is looking at the AMD Radeon 8060S graphics on Linux.

June 2024 marked the launch of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite to much initial fanfare for finally some compelling ARM laptop designs. While initially -- and still to this day with the likes of the TUXEDO X Elite laptop not materializing yet -- being focused on Windows 11 on ARM, there was hope among Linux users this would lead to a nice ARM Linux laptop experience, since after all Qualcomm and Linaro were working on enhancing the support for Linux. Now approaching the one year point, the overall state of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite support and performance is rather disappointing. Here's a look at where things currently are and performance relative to AMD Ryzen and Intel Core Ultra when making use of the latest Ubuntu Linux support.

This week Intel announced "200S Boost" for Core Ultra "Arrow Lake" K-Series desktop processors as effectively a new overclocking profile rolling out to existing Z890 motherboards via a BIOS update. Enabling the 200S Boost profile is said to help with low-latency workloads like gaming by allowing higher fabric / die-to-die / memory frequencies. While some Windows benchmarks have begun emerging for the Intel 200S Boost mode and some limited gains, I was curious about the performance under Linux so here are some 200S Boost benchmarks with the Core Ultra 9 285K on Ubuntu 25.04.

Today's Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is looking at how the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K performance has evolved since its launch last October. Taking the launch-day benchmarks from October with the same hardware, we are revisiting the Intel Arrow Lake performance under Linux today using the newest system BIOS and the newly-released Ubuntu 25.04 for seeing how the performance has evolved roughly over the past half-year.

As part of the announcements coming out today from Google Cloud Next 2025, the embargo has now lifted on the new Google Cloud C4D VMs. Powered by AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors, the new C4D instances deliver incredibly high performance and can scale up to 384 vCPUs with 3TB of RAM. For web servers, databases, CPU-based machine learning, and other workloads, the new Google C4D instances deliver incredible uplift compared to the prior-gen C3D instances. Here are some of the first public, independent benchmarks of Google's new C4D family.

Last week AMD began shipping the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D Zen 5 3D V-Cache desktop processors. We delivered Ryzen 9 9950X3D benchmarks and review for launch day but AMD sadly didn't seed any review samples of the 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D processor. Being curious about its performance for Linux developers, enthusiasts, and technical computing workloads, I bought the $600 USD processor on launch day for delivering some Linux benchmarks. Here is a look at the Ryzen 9 9900X3D against the rest of the Ryzen 9000 series stack, the prior Ryzen 7000 series parts, and the Intel Core Ultra Arrow Lake competition under Ubuntu.

Merged for the Linux 6.13 kernel was the AMD 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver for being able to influence the kernel's scheduling decisions on AMD processors where only a subset of CCDs have the larger 3D V-Cache. With this new driver users can communicate their cache vs. frequency preference for influencing where new tasks are first placed if on the CCD with the larger L3 cache or with the higher frequency potential. Here is a look at the impact of using the AMD 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver with the new AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

Ahead of tomorrow's availability of the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPUs in retail channels, today the embargo lifts on being able to deliver Ryzen 9 9950X3D reviews and performance benchmarks. Simply put, for Linux creators, developers, enthusiasts, and others running technical computing workloads and other similar tasks on their desktop, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D with its 16 cores / 32 threads and 144MB total cache makes for an excellent desktop CPU. In this review are around 400 Linux benchmarks looking at the captivating performance and competitive power efficiency of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

With the new AMD EPYC 9005 processors there are SKUs up to 500 Watt with the likes of the EPYC 9965 flagship at 192 cores for Turin Dense cores or 128 Turin classic cores with the EPYC 9755. But for those looking at upgrading from an existing EPYC 9004 series server and bound by the motherboard BIOS support and/or cooling/power capacity, 400 Watts is a sweet spot. Many of the existing platforms designed for EPYC 9004 Bergamo/Genoa(X) and now extended for EPYC 9005 Turin are limited to a 400 Watt TDP. With the prior AMD EPYC 9655 testing I have already shown off the great Zen 5 uplift when maintaining the same core counts as Zen 4, but even sticking to 400 Watts at the top-end is room for more. The EPYC 9845 is AMD's top-end SKU for 400 Watts or less that allows for 160 dense cores (320 threads) per socket compared to the 128 core EPYC 9754 Bergamo. Effectively the same power level and 25% more -- and better (Zen 5C) -- cores. Plus with EPYC Turin supporting the new AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver there is greater headroom in optimizing for power efficiency if so desired. Here is a look at how the AMD EPYC 9845 delivers a great leap to performance and power efficiency for those looking at a surprisingly robust upgrade from prior generation EPYC 9004.

For those wondering how the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" series and Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" desktop processors are battling it out on Linux, here are some fresh benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux with the latest software updates as well as the newest system BIOS updates for a fresh, all-new look at these Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs on Linux.

After launching the Intel Xeon 6900P "Granite Rapids" processors last September, today Intel is expanding the family with the launch of the Xeon 6500P and Xeon 6700P server processors.

The AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors that launched last year offer excellent performance and power efficiency out-of-the-box. For those wanting to pursue maximum power efficiency and running in the most optimal configuration for performance-per-Watt, AMD EPYC BIOS tunables as well as recent Linux kernel driver improvements can help in driving even greater efficiency. Today's article is a look at the impact of the AMD P-State driver usage and options with recent kernel versions as well as the Power Profile Selection BIOS option for the impact on 5th Gen EPYC performance and power efficiency.

After recently re-visiting the AMD EPYC 9005 series AVX-512 performance, I followed up with some fresh SMT benchmarks looking at the performance benefits and power of toggling Simultaneous Multi-Threading on the 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" hardware. Here are some fresh numbers looking at the SMT performance with AMD Zen 5 server processors.

Back in October following the launch of the EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors I ran an AVX-512 performance comparison for the EPYC 9755 with 512-bit data path vs. 256-bit data path vs. AVX-512 disabled. That was interesting for showing the benefits of Zen 5's full 512-bit data path support compared to the "double pumped" approach with Zen 4 or optionally used via a BIOS option on Zen 5. AVX-512 continues to prove to be very performant and power efficient with AMD Zen 5 processors unlike with the early generations of AVX-512 on Intel processors. Here is a fresh look at the AVX-512 performance on a Supermicro server with an AMD EPYC 9655 processor.

AMD's CES 2025 keynote was used to announce a slew of new products. They are just announcements today without any immediate availability or any hardware reviews to publish, but a look ahead for what is on the horizon for AMD in the consumer space in 2025.

Using the 5th Gen EPYC BIOS tuning guide published by AMD, I recently looked at the impact of AI and machine learning optimized performance by adjusting some simple BIOS knobs as well as the Java throughput, latency and power efficiency for the EPYC 9005 class processors. In this article is following the AMD BIOS tuning guide to see what performance difference there is for high performance computing (HPC) workloads following the BIOS tuning recommendations compared to the defaults with an AMD EPYC 9575F server.

One of the many changes to look forward to with the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel cycle is the AMD P-State driver to be used by default with the new EPYC 9005 series processors. While AMD Ryzen CPUs for a while now have been defaulting to the modern AMD P-State driver that makes use of ACPI CPPC platform support for allowing better power efficiency, AMD EPYC CPUs have kept to using the generic ACPI CPUFreq frequency scaling driver. But now AMD engineers have deemed amd_pstate ready for use with EPYC 9005 "Turin" CPUs and will be the default choice moving forward. Here is more information and power/performance benchmarks for this shift while testing using the EPYC 9755 processors.