Windows 10 Build 21370 vs. Ubuntu 21.04 Linux On AMD Ryzen 5900X

Last month when carrying out tests of Windows 10 vs. Linux on the Intel Core i9 11900K "Rocket Lake" processor we were very surprised to see Windows 10 frankly performing so well compared to Ubuntu and picking up more wins than usual. That unexpectedly strong showing for Windows 10 might be due to Intel's P-State behavior with Rocket Lake or other power management tuning or there the lack of on Linux at this time. But it led me to wondering if the latest Windows 10 updates spelled out anything different on the AMD Ryzen side... So here are some benchmarks of the latest Microsoft Windows 10 against Ubuntu 21.04 on the same AMD Ryzen 9 5900X system.

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro x64 Build 21370 was benchmarked as the very newest Windows Insider Preview build for getting the latest software support and also using the latest AMD drivers as of testing. On the Linux side was the recently released Ubuntu 21.04 with the Linux 5.11 kernel.

The same hardware platform was used for benchmarking both operating systems with the Ryzen 9 5900X, ASUS CROSSHAIR VIII HERO motherboard, 2 x 8GB DDR4-3600 memory, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics, and 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus NVMe SSD.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range of Windows vs. Linux benchmarks were carried out, namely in line with the Rocket Lake benchmarks to see if there was any differing outcome...

Unlike the recent Intel Rocket Lake results with Windows' very strong showing, Ubuntu 21.04 was leading on the Ryzen 9 5900X (Zen 3) desktop. Out of more than 100 benchmarks run, Ubuntu 21.04 was in first place 63% of the time.

When taking the geometric mean of those 103 benchmarks, Ubuntu 21.04 was about 8% faster than the latest Windows 10 build. So it seems the Windows 10 showing last month on the Core i9 11900K was indeed due to Rocket Lake optimizations on Windows or there the lack of on Linux, seemingly around power management as shown in the P-State testing.

Let's dig into some of the individual benchmark results.