Linux is performing better than Windows 11 according to this benchmark test

[harlan4096]

When it comes to benchmarks, most computer users are probably interested in performance comparisons of hardware and software running on the same operating system. Is this or that graphics card better for a gaming PC? Which Android device offers the better performance?



Cross-operating-system benchmarks are not seen as often, but they may provide insight on how well, or not, a particular operating system is doing in comparison to another.

The most recent Phoronix benchmark suggests that Linux is beating Windows 11 in most benchmarks on devices that are powered by Intel Alder Lake processors. Phoronix, for those who have never encountered the site before, has been around since 2004. It is a site that focuses on Linux hardware and other Linux topics.

The site performed the test several times since the release of Intel's Core i9 12900K Alder Lake processor. Windows 11 outperformed Linux in the initial test back in November 2021, and this came down to missing Linux kernel patches according to the author. The Linux kernel received performance fixes for Alder Lake in the meantime, and the author decided to run the benchmarks again to see if the situation has improved.

The same computer system was used in the benchmark. It is powered by an Intel Core i9 12900K processor at default speeds, an ASUS ROG STRIX z690-E gaming WiFI motherboard, 2x 16 Gigabytes of DDR5-6000 memory, a 500 Gigabyte Western Digital Black SN850 NVMe SSD, and a Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card.

Windows 11 Pro, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS after installation of the Linux 5.18 Stable kernel, and Intel's Clear Linux 36580 were tested in the benchmarks.

The author threw lots of benchmarks at all four operating systems. No system came out at top all of the time, but Windows 11 Pro performed worse in most of the tests. While at least one of the Linux systems did better in most benchmarks than Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 Pro did beat all three Linux systems in some of the benchmarks.

Some benchmarks had rather bizarre results. Take the data visualization benchmark ParaView as an example: Windows 11 Pro had the worst performance score in three of four benchmark runs, but in the last, it came in first. An other interesting observation is that Ubuntu 22.04 LTS without the kernel 5.18 stable patch fared better in some of the benchmarks than Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Linux kernel 5.18.

Closing Words

If anything, the benchmarks highlight that Linux performance on systems with Intel's Core i9 12900K processor has improved in the past ten months. That is a good development of course. Windows 11 Pro did not perform overly well in many benchmarks, but performance is just one part of the equation.

Now You: do you run Windows or Linux? Would you switch to Linux as a Windows user?
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