Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 20.04 Linux Performance On The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U

While most of you are well aware how Linux often slaughters Microsoft Windows performance on high-end desktop and platform servers with large core counts, on smaller systems it can be a different story and often comes down to the particular workloads and any peculiarities of the hardware under test. With recently buying the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (14) for our AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Linux benchmarking, here are some benchmarks for how that Zen 2 laptop is comparing with different workloads between Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

The AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Renoir with its eight cores and Vega graphics were running within the Lenovo IdeaPad with 2 x 8GB DDR4-3200 memory, 512GB Samsung NVMe SSD, and 1080p panel. I have been quite impressed by the Ryzen 7 4700U performance so far under Linux as my lone Zen 2 laptop so far for testing.

The OS as shipped by Lenovo with Microsoft Windows 10 Home Build 18363 was tested on the IdeaPad before wiping it for our Linux benchmarking. All system updates were applied prior to benchmarking as well as using the latest Lenovo BIOS.

Following that the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS benchmarking was carried out. As outlined in earlier articles on AMD Renoir graphics on Linux, Renoir graphics need a kernel than what is shipped by Ubuntu 20.04 (Linux 5.4). Using Linux 5.6~5.7 users are in good shape for Renoir laptops. For this testing it was Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed plus all system updates and then moving to Linux 5.7 Git.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range benchmarks were run on Windows 10 and Linux for seeing how the performance looks for this AMD Zen 2 laptop.