Zen kernels and my chipsets

[MaurokOG]

Background info:

OS: Garuda Dr460nized KDE x86_64 / Linux 6.17.6-zen1-1-zen
Desktop Env: KDE Plasma 6.5.1 / KWin (Wayland)
Rig: hp elitebook 655 g11 / Ryzen 5 7535U (6:12 cores @ 4.63Ghz) / Radeon 680M / 64Gb DDR5 / 4Tb M2

Idk how I missed this little ditty for nearly all of 2025, but I just now learned that Garuda’s Zen kernels are supposed to fit excellently with AMD chips. I’ve just always preferred AMD over Intel, probably because I had an Intel 386/33-66 way back in the day that gave me so many headaches. Anyways, that above is the list of what I’m running currently. With the Zen /AMD bit, are there any conf or setting changes I need/should make to take full advantage of that combo or are there special packages from the chaotic-AUR repo that’d help? Thanks in advance.

[Seimus]

All should work out of the box using the default kernel (zen).

I have 9800X3D, and both zen as well zen5 work more or less the same. But as a daily driver I use zen5 reason is that this kernel get sooner the updates than the zen kernel.

Do not worry about kernels. Just have installed 2 or 3 (default + LTS + mainline). If something goes wrong you can during boot in grub switch the kernel and see if that helps with potential issues.

[MaurokOG]

Ok. Kernel wise though where I’m using zen1, it just feels like I ought to step up the # a bit no?

[Seimus]

Back in the past, various kernels provided various optimality. But nowadays as we speak about gaming. The difference in performance between kernels is negligible.

[TNE]

Heya! I just want to clarify that the zen part on linux-zen does not refer to the zen architecture of Ryzen processors.

In this case, the kernel you are looking for is linux-znver3 alongside linux-znver3-headers.

[MaurokOG]

I switched to the Linux-zen3 (and grabbed the headers too) without problems. FEI (for everyone’s info) I did notice an appreciable performance boost so yeah, definitely worth It. Thanks everyone