Valid point, although a few considerations: 1. generally speaking, kernel version increases don't translate to performance improvements (example: https://www.p

Valid point, although a few considerations: 1. generally speaking, kernel version increases don't translate to performance improvements (example: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-50-sliding&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-50...) 2. the Dell 840 are latest generation servers (https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/poweredge-rack-servers/sf/poweredge-rack-servers https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/poweredge-rack-servers/...), so I doubt that they're not optimized to be competitive with latest operating systems). after all, this is a real-world machine one buys, so it's supposed to be highly performing. All in all, the performance improvement seems to be proportional to the single thread performance improvement (however small) componded by the higher core count. However of course, it can't be excluded that the difference is at least partially caused by the different setup.