Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance On A $199 AMD Ryzen Laptop

When carrying out our Windows vs. Linux benchmarks we normally are doing so on interesting high-end hardware but for today's benchmarking is a look at how a $199 USD laptop powered by an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U processor compares between Windows 10 as it's shipped on the laptop against the forthcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Linux distribution.

The $199 AMD laptop being used for testing is the Motile M141, a 14-inch laptop with Ryzen 3 3200U and Vega 3 graphics, 4GB of RAM, 120GB solid-state drive, and 1080p display. This 14-inch Ryzen 3 laptop is currently selling for just $199 USD at Walmart. While never hearing of Motile previously, I decided to go ahead and buy this laptop for some Linux testing... Motile is a private-label brand from Walmart.

The Ryzen 3 3200U powering this laptop is dual core plus SMT yields four threads, there is a 2.6GHz base frequency, 3.5GHz boost clock, and 4MB L3 cache. With the Vega 3 graphics there is a 15 Watt combined TDP for this chip.

I've been running the Motile 14 for a few days now and was quite surprised by the laptop for this very low price point. The build quality is better than expected for $199 USD, the ports on this laptop are sufficient, and everything has been working as expected. As of publishing, the Motile M141 is still being sold at Walmart.com for $199 USD. The next cheapest Ryzen 3 3200U laptop we've found is an HP model that goes for $269 USD while most other Ryzen 3 3200U laptops are $400+ USD.

One of the downsides to this Motile M141-SL laptop is that the 4GB of RAM is a single DIMM. I'll run some additional tests after upgrading to two DDR4-2400 (the max speed supported by the Ryzen 3 3200U) DIMMs that should allow this Picasso APU much better performance. It is nice though that this Motile laptop has upgradeable RAM and storage.

So for $199 USD, no major complaints. While Microsoft Windows 10 Home is preloaded on this budget laptop, Ubuntu 19.10 / 20.04 LTS daily does run fine on it along with other Linux distributions -- I'll be testing more Linux distributions on it as time allows. UEFI Secure Boot can be easily disabled from the BIOS.

Today the focus is just looking at the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS daily vs. Windows 10 performance from this Ryzen 3 laptop. Coming next week will also be tests of this Ryzen 3 3200U laptop against other laptops for putting the AMD mobile performance capabilities under Linux into more perspective.