Loongson's 12-core CPU Gets Crushed by AMD's 6-core Chip

Okay so I saw these benchmarks from Phoronix and had to share because wow, this is rough. China's homegrown Loongson 3B6000 processor just got put through its paces on Linux, and the results? Not great.

Here's the thing that caught my eye. This is a 12-core chip going up against AMD's Ryzen 5 9600X, which only has 6 cores. You'd think double the cores would mean something, right? Nope. The Loongson chip performed about three times slower on average. That's not a typo. Three times slower with twice the cores.

The culprit seems to be clock speeds. While AMD's pushing their cores hard and fast, Loongson's chip is crawling along at much lower frequencies. It's like having a 12-cylinder engine that's limited to 30mph. Sure, you've got all those cylinders, but what's the point if they can't rev up?

Now look, I get why China's pushing hard to develop their own processors. Makes total sense given the current tech landscape in 2026. But if you're looking at this thinking it might be a budget alternative to AMD or Intel for your next build? Hard pass. The performance gap is just too massive to ignore, even if the price ends up being attractive.

What strikes me most is how this shows raw core count means nothing without the architecture to back it up. AMD learned this lesson years ago when they stopped chasing core counts and focused on IPC improvements. Seems like Loongson's still figuring that out.