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Comment by Prunkton | Hacker News Reader

the Linux test leaves me quiet confused how to pick my next linux gaming cpu.

On the one hand side Gamers Nexus is making a point [0] (there are on/off performance charts later in the video) why it is super important to install the latest windows drivers + special windows gaming software to make use of the heterogeneous architecture. On the other hand side the linux tests are much better then I would expected since it can not know out of the box what core to pick. Maybe the 50/50 pick is good enough for how the charts look...

[0]: https://youtu.be/9gCzXdLmjPY?t=350

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It's not quite the same out of the box experience (after making sure you have the latest chipset drivers, use the balanced power plan and NOT the performance plan, and have Xbox Game Bar..), but it's possible to force certain processes and executables to run on specific CPU cores in Linux using taskset and verify that they're running on the correct cores. It will be a little tedious if you play a lot of games on Steam as you'll inevitably run into games that use proton and others that use native binaries, but there's nothing that should prevent you from being able to manually schedule games/programs that need the extra cache onto the cores that have the extra cache.

What about a VM with GPU pass-trough? Let's say I have plenty of storage and just create different VMs with selected distro or winXI that have certain games. Could that also be an option? Just drag and drop the appropriate game in the VM storage?

Yes, for GPU passthrough you usually assign specific cores to the VM and isolate them (to reduce hiccups caused by other tasks using the core), so in this case you'd just assign the cores with the extra cache.

good point, so a low budget solution that whitelist games for specific cores shouldn't be to hard to assemble

TBH if you are CPU bottlenecked in your linux games (hence you need a new CPU), you are probably playing simulation games, and these tests are kinda useless anyway.

So far I'm deciding between 7950X and 7950X3D and it's not clear cut which one is better. I plan both to compile stuff on it and play games.

https://youtu.be/jNMcdIkef_c?t=106

Keep the one you have now and pick a better GPU?

in like 2 weeks it will be the 10th anniversary of the PC. The GPU is a nvidia GTX(?) 1060 aka already oversized for the 3. Gen i7 setup, so: nope :D

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