Linux 5.16 is looking extremely promising for AMD Ryzen, at least for the APUs. In a recent comparison test conducted by Phoronix, the tested Ryzen APUs have shown up to a 28% performance boost over kernel 5.15. This 28% boost was captured in the
Xonotic game at 4K resolution using low settings (image below). Other games and benchmarks have also shown significant improvements on Linux 5.16 in the range of around 10-20% on average.
Phoronix speculates the performance gain noted may be due to a combination of CPU-specific optimizations, among other things, for this kind of performance improvement. The site says:
This improvement with Linux 5.16 was fascinating and came unexpected. Linux 5.16 has many new features including AMDGPU kernel driver improvements, but this Radeon Vega graphics boost came as a surprise as there wasn't any announced optimization and the Vega graphics support at this stage is quite mature. It may also be a combination of CPU-related improvements with Linux 5.16.
It will be interesting to see if this type of result also holds true for the
upcoming Rembrandt APUs.
