While the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo SoCs have a nice out-of-the-box experience with modern Linux distributions for the Radeon 8050S and Radeon 8060S graphics, if going for the recently-released Linux 6.15 kernel there are some performance gains to enjoy as well as if opting for the latest Mesa 25.2 development code for the latest RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan driver support.
Linux 6.14 and Mesa 25.0 work well for the Radeon 8050S/8060S Graphics with Strix Halo laptops but if opting for even newer kernel and/or Mesa there is some additional performance to tap besides extra Vulkan extensions and the like. Complementing the general purpose focused Linux 6.15 and 6.16 Git kernel benchmarks on Strix Halo from yesterday, today’s article is looking at Ubuntu 25.04 with its stock Linux 6.14 kernel and Mesa 25.0 compared to upgrading to Mesa 25.2-devel (via the Mesa ACO PPA archive) and newer Linux 6.15/6.16 kernels (via the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA) for seeing what additional performance gains may be on the horizon.
The benchmarks continued to be carried out using an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 within the HP ZBook Ultra G1a.
A variety of different Linux gaming/graphics tests were then carried out on this HP ZBook Ultra G1a for looking at the open-source AMD driver improvements on the horizon:
Linux 6.15 and newer was bringing slightly higher frame-rates for some Steam Play games with the AMD Radeon 8060S Graphics.
Counter-Strike 2 on Strix Halo ticked higher meanwhile with the current Linux 6.16 Git code.
Metro Last Light Redux also gained on Linux 6.16 Git.
Even in some open-source games there was boosted performance when running on Linux 6.15+ for this AMD Ryzen AI Max+ laptop.
But in some games, the performance was flat across the tested kernel and Mesa versions.
Vulkan ray-tracing saw some minor gains on Strix Halo when upgrading to Mesa 25.2-devel.
The Unigine OpenGL performance with RadeonSI increased when running on Linux 6.15 and Linux 6.16 Git.
There weren’t any monumental performance changes at this point if using Linux 6.15/6.16-Git or Mesa Git compared to what is shipped by Ubuntu 25.04, but some minor improvements. For those comfortable running a newer kernel and Mesa on Ubuntu or the distribution of your choice there are some gains to find, but otherwise Linux 6.14 + Mesa 25.0 is still in good shape for AMD Strix Halo hardware and is what was used for nearly all the tests these past few weeks.
