Windows 10 vs. Linux Performance On The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X

The new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X is performing faster on Linux than Microsoft Windows 10. When carrying out more than 80 different tests on Windows 10 compared to five Linux distributions, Windows 10 was beat out by the open-source competition. However, the performance loss for Windows isn't as dramatic as we have seen out of earlier generations of Ryzen Threadripper HEDT workstations. Here are those benchmarks of Windows 10 compared to Ubuntu 19.10, CentOS 8, Clear Linux, Fedora Workstation 31, and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

This is our first cross-operating-system look at the Threadripper 3970X since it was released last week. All five tested Linux distributions installed fine when using the MCE workaround to boot. There were no other problems to report for hardware compatibility with this Zen 2 HEDT system on the different Linux distributions. The hardware used for all of this Windows/Linux testing was the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X at stock speeds, ASUS ROG ZENITH II EXTREME TRX40 motherboard, 4 x 16GB Corsair DDR4-3600MHz memory, 1TB Corsair Force MP600 NVMe SSD, Radeon RX 580 graphics, NZXT Kraken water cooling, and a Thermaltake Toughpower 1250 Watt power supply.

The operating systems benchmarked on this Threadripper 3970X system included:

Windows 10 Professional - Windows 10 Professional with the November 2019 Update and the latest AMD chipset drivers and other stable updates as of testing time. The latest Windows software updates paired with Zen 2 architectural improvements put it in a better state than a year ago when Threadripper on Windows 10 was coming up well short of Linux due to scheduler woes.

Ubuntu 19.10 - The current release of Ubuntu with its Linux 5.3 kernel and other default packages.

Clear Linux 31700 - The rolling-release Intel Linux distribution currently on Linux 5.3.12, GCC 9.2.1, and other up-to-date components.

openSUSE Tumbleweed 20191126 - The other rolling-release Linux distribution used that is also on Linux 5.3, GCC 9.2.1, and other up-to-date components.

Fedora Workstation 31 - The new release of Fedora that with its updates is also similar to the other Linux distributions under test.

CentOS 8 - The community rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. The CentOS/RHEL 8 packages are at their enterprise versions of Linux 4.18, GCC 8.2.1, etc.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range of benchmarks were carried out across the Linux and Windows operating systems under test amounting to 82 different test cases in total.