Recently I looked at the performance of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. Windows 11 on the Intel Xeon 678X running within the HP Z4 G6i workstation. Linux performed admirably as one would expect. With this Intel Xeon Granite Rapids WS workstation from HP though commanding a retail price more than $46,000 USD, you likely want nothing but the utmost performance out of it. So for those looking to maximize the OS performance, here are some numbers from the HP Z4 G6i workstation when running not only Ubuntu 26.04 LTS but also Fedora Workstation 44, AlmaLinux, and the performance-optimized CachyOS.

The HP Z4 G6i I have been testing the past few weeks is a very powerful workstation with the 48-core / 96-thread Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS processor, 4 x 32GB DDR5-6400 memory, 2 x 2TB NVMe SSDs, and the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell graphics card.

With today's wild PC component pricing, the HP Z4 G6i workstation review unit as configured ends up coming up to a price tag of $46,088 USD! The Xeon 678X is the top-tier configuration of the Z4 G6i, the 4 x 32GB ECC DDR5-6400 memory configuration alone is priced at $10,767 over the 1 x 16GB base configuration, and the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell coming in at around $13,479 of the price tag. While Windows 11 Pro shipped with this review unit, if opting for an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS pre-load or just a "Linux Ready" no operating system configuration you can at least shave $446 off the price without a Windows license.

While the HP Z4 G6i workstation was in the Phoronix lab for testing prior to shipping it back, I was curious to see how the performance-optimized CachyOS was performing on this high-end workstation. After all, if dropping $46+ on a tower PC you are likely wanting to ensure the most optimal performance for whatever production workloads you are running.

Today's benchmarks feature the Windows 11 Pro install as shipped by HP with all available OS updates and then clean installs of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, AlmaLinux 10.2, CachyOS, and Fedora Workstation 44. Each at the OS defaults and software updates applied as of testing. Opting for using the official NVIDIA Linux driver stack supplied by each OS.

AlmaLinux 10.2 was the only Linux distribution defaulting to using the Intel P-State "performance" governor on this workstation rather than the common "powersave" default. So for additional perspective, there is a secondary "CachyOS - Performance" run when it was set to the performance governor to match the AlmaLinux 10.2 configuration for that downstream of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.2.

Thanks to HP for supplying this review sample for a few weeks of interesting Granite Rapids WS testing at Phoronix.