Linux Performance

Built around several freely available benchmarks for Linux, Linux-Bench is a project spearheaded by Patrick at ServeTheHome to streamline about a dozen of these tests in a single neat package run via a set of three commands using an Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD. These tests include fluid dynamics used by NASA, ray-tracing, OpenSSL, molecular modeling, and a scalable data structure server for web deployments. We run Linux-Bench and have chosen to report a select few of the tests that rely on CPU and DRAM speed.

C-Ray: link

C-Ray is a simple ray-tracing program that focuses almost exclusively on processor performance rather than DRAM access. The test in Linux-Bench renders a heavy complex scene offering a large scalable scenario.

Linux-Bench c-ray 1.1 (Hard)

NAMD, Scalable Molecular Dynamics: link

Developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NAMD is a set of parallel molecular dynamics codes for extreme parallelization up to and beyond 200,000 cores. The reference paper detailing NAMD has over 4000 citations, and our testing runs a small simulation where the calculation steps per unit time is the output vector.

Linux-Bench NAMD Molecular Dynamics

Redis: link

Many of the online applications rely on key-value caches and data structure servers to operate. Redis is an open-source, scalable web technology with a strong developer base, but also relies heavily on memory bandwidth as well as CPU performance.

[words]Linux-Bench Redis Memory-Key Store, 1x

Linux-Bench Redis Memory-Key Store, 10x

Linux-Bench Redis Memory-Key Store, 100x

Professional Performance on Windows Gaming Performance: Alien Isolation, Total War Attila, & GTA V
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  • nevcairiel - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    Even if it is, its like 2 years and 2 generations late to the party then. By the time Zen is out, we have Kaby Lake, and they advertise being on-par with not the current, not the previous, but one gen even before that?
  • Spunjji - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    Their claims (if true) would signify rough IPC parity with Broadwell, which Skylake outclasses by a mighty 2.3% according to this site. That was in turn a staggering 3.3% over Haswell so even matching that won't leave them far off the mark. We have no reason to suppose the Kaby Lake release will alter than pattern substantially.

    It's all big ifs, though, and of course it'll be compared to whatever's out when it finally arrives.
  • Flunk - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    We can hope I guess, I gave up hope long ago.
  • maxxcool - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    If you are buying a 8 core cpu from EITHER vendor specifically 'game on' your a proper idiot, tool and dumbass.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    If you are telling people what they can and can't do with their money along with slinging personal attacks, you're a proper idiot, tool, and you need to get a job so you can manage your own money, rather than someone else's.

    Seriously though. This is the internet. You should really stop caring about what other people spend their own money on. People much richer than these kids are spending money on sports cars and getting into a wreck a week later, often involving other vehicle(s) and/or innocent people.

    I really couldn't care less if 10,000 people on this article's comments section thought the new extreme edition processor was a "good value" and bought one (or more). More power to them.
  • hoohoo - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    AMD is not a charity.

    AMD will charge as much as the market will bear.

    Ninety percent of the performance probably costs about ninety percent the price.
  • Michael Bay - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    >supposed to be
    >Zen
    At this point in time it`s not even remotely funny anymore.
  • Bulat Ziganshin - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link

    >Zen is supposed to be really, really close to Broadwell in IPC.

    are you really believe that AMD, who was a lot behind Intel back in 2008, and then lost a few years on Bulldozer development, in a miraculous way will jump over? i expect that Zen will be a little better than their last Phenom, and that their first implementation of SMT will be as inefficient as Nehalem one. And higher core count, as well as AMD huge lag in lowering-heat-dissipation technologies, will mean more heat and therefore stricter limits on frequency - the same limits as in 10-core Broadwell and probably even stricter. So it may be like 8-core Nehalem at 4 GHz (with best overclocking). That's better than i7-6700K for multi-threaded tasks, but of course slower for tasks with 1-4 threads, including most of games. Or you may continue to believe in Santa :)
  • jchambers2586 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    you spend $434 on a CPU and it does not perform than a $ 250 6600K in gaming you would think spending more would get you better gaming performance. I don't' think spending $434 on the i7-6800K is worth it for gaming.
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    This is the take-away. Useless for gaming for now. If 6-cores will actually benefit from DX12 remains to be seen. If I were I game developer I would focus on making use of the iGPU versus scaling above 4-cores because most of my user base has an idling iGPU and very few more than 4 cores.

    If it would at least have edram. For broadwell it's 5775c or else skylake for gaming.

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