AMD Ryzen 7 2700X: Windows 10 vs. Linux Performance

Recently there have been several Linux distribution benchmark comparisons on Phoronix to test the latest Linux OS releases, including several comparing to the current Microsoft Windows 10 performance. Those recent tests have all be done with various Intel CPUs, but for those curious about the AMD Windows vs. Linux performance, here are some fresh benchmarks as we approach the end of July.

This round of benchmarking featured an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (eight cores / 16 threads) running at stock speeds, the ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR VII HERO motherboard, 2 x 8GB DDR4-3400MHz memory, a 256GB Samsung 950 PRO NVMe SSD, and Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics. The same hardware in the same BIOS/system configuration was maintained throughout the entire benchmarking process.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite the various configurations were tested on this AMD Ryzen + Vega desktop system:

- Microsoft Windows 10 Pro with all available system updates in its default configuration.

- Microsoft Windows 10 Pro when tested after using W10Privacy to disable all unnecessary services / performance optimization tweaks. This includes disabling the Windows Defender and other services. Since discovering W10Privacy earlier this summer and the potential it has for improving the Windows 10 performance, I've been testing it on a few other systems. But the impact of W10Privacy appears to be quite mixed with finding a significant benefit on some higher-end systems but less on lower-end desktops/laptops from the basic testing I've done with Windows testing not being a high priority focus at Phoronix.com.

- Fedora Workstation 28 with all available system updates bringing it to the Linux 4.17.6 kernel, GCC 8.1.1, GNOME Shell 3.28.2 on Wayland, and Mesa 18.0.5.

- Antergos 18.7-Rolling that is the popular Arch-based Linux distribution and currently up to the Linux 4.17.6 kernel, GCC 8.1.1, and GNOME Shell 3.28.3 atop X.Org Server 1.20.

- Clear Linux 23830 with the Linux 4.17.8 kernel, GCC 8.1.1, GNOME Shell 3.28.3 on X.Org Server 1.20, and Mesa 18.2-dev. While Clear Linux is an open-source Intel project, our past testing at least has found Clear Linux to still work on AMD systems and to do so still in a very performant manner.

- Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with the latest updates bringing it to the Linux 4.15 kernel, GCC 7.3.0, GNOME Shell 3.28.2 on X.Org Server 1.19.6.

All of these Windows and Linux benchmarks were run in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.