AMD Ryzen 7000 gives Windows users the perfect reason to move to Linux
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AMD Ryzen 7000 processors are on sale now, and those using the silicon in Linux PCs will apparently find the CPUs are faster with security restrictions enabled, which is certainly counterintuitive.
This is according to a report by Phoronix.com (opens in new tab) who tested Linux 6.0 with the new Zen 4 chips – specifically the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X – and said security functionality, which consists of mitigations against the Specter vulnerability (on multiple fronts).
Of course, enabling such defenses comes with the expectation that you could have a minor performance hit – or a heavier one, or perhaps your system is virtually untouched at best. But what you certainly wouldn’t expect is that it would work faster with the applied risk mitigations.
So with the security restrictions disabled, a route some people might take to pursue better performance, the Linux system is actually slowing down – all the while making it more vulnerable to exploitation. A lose-lose situation if there ever was one.
Analysis: Here comes the caveat, but it’s a very minor one
Advantage Linux then? Well, but there’s a caveat here – as is usually the case – which is that the Ryzen CPU was faster with defenses enabled in the majority of cases, but some synthetic benchmarks were faster with mitigations disabled. But not much, and there’s no real argument about whether or not to enable the mitigations.
Overall, the Ryzen 9 7950X was 3% faster on average, with the mitigations enabled during a large number of tests, with particularly large boosts for browser-based apps. And as mentioned, you also have a more protected PC, so it’s the definition of a good idea here.
Phoronix notes that it hasn’t delved deeper into why this is the case, especially since you shouldn’t disable such security measures on your PC for obvious reasons anyway. But it’s certainly an interesting reveal, and AMD seems to get full marks here for properly preparing Zen 4 for applying these defenses to ensure performance isn’t hampered (and indeed, the opposite is the case).
Through Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab)