Is Windows 7 Actually Faster Than Ubuntu 10.04?

Our last Unigine test is their newest Heaven benchmark. Unigine Heaven originally launched with the premiere of Microsoft Windows 7 as the first DirectX 11.0 capable benchmark, but the Linux version with the OpenGL 3.x renderer was not released until earlier this year when the benchmark hit version 2.0.

While Ubuntu with ATI graphics was normally faster than Windows 7 with the other Unigine tests, with Heaven it was in favor of Microsoft. However, the one exception is with the AMD Opteron setup and its ATI FirePro graphics where Ubuntu 10.04 narrowly beat out Windows 7.

Next was our X-Plane 9 testing courtesy of Laminar Research. As can be gathered from the results straight lines, this test is rather CPU limited with its high quality settings. Windows 7 x64 came out ahead when it was using NVIDIA graphics this time and ATI graphics in some instances. The Intel Linux driver could not handle running X-Plane 9.