AMD Ryzen 9 5900X On Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance: Windows Looks Surprisingly Good This Time

When looking at the geometric mean across 86 benchmarks ran in total on all three operating systems, the Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu 20.04/20.10 Linux performance was basically tied. This is one of the few times we have seen the Windows 10 vs. Linux race so close.

With the AV1 encode/decode tests like dav1d / SVT-AV1 / rav1e / AVIFENC, Windows 10 actually comes out ahead of Linux....

The geometric mean of all the web browser benchmarks in Chrome and Firefox puts Windows ahead to no surprise.

With "creator" workloads encompassing Blender, Appleseed, LuxCoreRender, V-RAY, IndigoBench, all of the video encode tests, MP3/FLAC audio encoding, WebP, Embree, Open Image Denoise, and Basis shader compression saw Linux leading to little surprise there.

When looking just at the CPU rendering workloads of Blender / Appleseed / LuxCore / V-RAY / IndigoBench is where the Ubuntu Linux performance on the Ryzen 9 5900X comes out the strongest at about 10% faster than Windows overall.

All the benchmark results and more can be found via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file.

These Windows vs. Ubuntu Linux benchmarks on the Ryzen 9 5900X are some of the most competitive results we have seen in a number of years. Windows 10 October 2020 was providing some genuine, healthy competition against Ubuntu 20.04/20.10 on the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X system. In many benchmarks they were trading blows and even when Windows 10 was losing it didn't tend to be as by wide of margins as we have normally seen in the past.

With the stronger than usual Windows 10 performance against Linux on the Ryzen 9 5900X has now set off additional benchmarks. Windows 10 performing better may be due to more optimal use with the improved CCX layout of Zen 3, it may be due to targeted AMD Zen/Zen3 improvements in the latest Windows 10 October 2020 Update that we haven't yet benchmarked on many systems, or a combination of factors. Needless to say this month I'm now going to be working on a larger Windows vs. Linux performance incorporating the Ryzen 9 5900X, Zen 2 hardware, and also Intel Comet Lake for helping to see the broader state of play between Windows 10 October 2020 and Ubuntu 20.10.