Recently I finally got my hands on a LoongArch processor, the ISA developed by China’s Loongson Technology as an evolution from their earlier use of the MIPS64 ISA and inspired by RISC-V and other modern ISAs. The Loongson-3B6000 features 12 cores / 24 threads with dual channel DDR4 ECC memory support. Here is a look at how that latest-generation LoongArch desktop processor compares to the current generation AMD Zen 5 and Intel Arrow Lake desktop processors under Linux. Plus also tossing in the Raspberry Pi 5 (Raspberry Pi 500+) for an ARM reference point.
The Loongson Hobbyists Community sent over a motherboard with the Loongson 3B6000 processor for independent Linux testing and performance benchmarking at Phoronix. With that we can finally benchmark L…
Recently I finally got my hands on a LoongArch processor, the ISA developed by China’s Loongson Technology as an evolution from their earlier use of the MIPS64 ISA and inspired by RISC-V and other modern ISAs. The Loongson-3B6000 features 12 cores / 24 threads with dual channel DDR4 ECC memory support. Here is a look at how that latest-generation LoongArch desktop processor compares to the current generation AMD Zen 5 and Intel Arrow Lake desktop processors under Linux. Plus also tossing in the Raspberry Pi 5 (Raspberry Pi 500+) for an ARM reference point.
The Loongson Hobbyists Community sent over a motherboard with the Loongson 3B6000 processor for independent Linux testing and performance benchmarking at Phoronix. With that we can finally benchmark LoongArch hardware at Phoronix. Even back to their MIPS64 days I had been eager to see how the performance compares albeit only now is it my first time setting my hands on any Loongson hardware. In this article are some preliminary benchmarks done over the past week and compared to current AMD Ryzen and Intel Core Ultra procesosrs. There will be more benchmarks in follow-up articles to better assess the LoongArch 3B6000 performance relative to older Intel and AMD desktop processors while this article is just with the current-gen wares with recently testing those latest Zen 5 and Arrow Lake processors for other articles on Phoronix. Plus the Raspberry Pi 500+ was used as a popular ARM reference point.
The Loongson 3B6000 was launched in 2025 and the review sample was the 12 core model with SMT2 for 24 threads. With other Loongson CPU variants it’s possible currently to have as many as 64 LoongArch cores.
The Loongson 3B6000x1-7A2000x1-EVB micro-ATX motherboard is what arrived with the 12-core / 24-thread processor soldered in place.
There is integrated HDMI and VGA display support on this motherboard along with having two PCI Express x16 slots, one PCI Express x4 slot, and an M.2 NVMe slot too. There are four SATA ports too for those relying on Serial ATA storage. The motherboard also has a PCIe slot for a WiFi adapter too.