Ubuntu Scores Surprise Victories Over Windows In New AMD Benchmarks

Only 3 years ago, we lived in a world where reviewing new AMD hardware on Linux — even months after its release — was problematic at best. My Radeon RX 6800 review here at Forbes was limited to Windows because despite collaboration with the tech geniuses and graphics driver gurus of the Linux community, it was nearly impossible to get the GPU running on various Linux distributions.

But in 2024, we live in a world where an upstart Linux OS called Bazzite supported the Asus ROG Ally X before it was officially released, and a brand new Asus laptop powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 is performing equally well on Ubuntu and Windows. In fact, Linux is scoring some huge wins in cross-platform gaming benchmarks.

Phoronix recently wrapped up a battery of benchmarks on the newly launched Asus Zenbook S 16. Pitting Windows 11 against Ubuntu 24.04 in more than 100 tests, Canonical’s latest distro walked away with just shy of a 3% performance advantage when analyzing the geometric mean of all test results.

Linux Takes The Gaming Crown

The true highlight emerges when looking at the graphics testing. AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series is an SoC (system on a chip) that bundles in Radeon 880M graphics. Phoronix put the Radeon 880M through the paces using cross-platform synthetic benchmarks like Unigine Superposition, Unvanquished, and Furmark to test OpenGL and Vulkan performance. Crucially, the open-source Mesa driver stack was used alongside the Linux 6.10 kernel.

Ubuntu 24.04 won 15 of the 21 tests. And it frequently won by a large margin.

Windows scored a minor victory with Unigine Superposition’s OpenGL benchmark, with a 5% performance advantage (in practice, that’s a difference of less than 2 frames per second). But Ubuntu 24.04 started running away with the crown in Vulkan testing.

In the popular Furmark Vulkan demo, Ubuntu absolutely trounced Windows 11 by 59% . Yes, five-nine.

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In the cross-platform FPS Unvanquished, Ubuntu 24.04 maintains a noticeable advantage, outperforming Windows 11 between by between 8% and 36% using multiple quality presets. It’s a similar story with Yamagi Quake II (an enhanced open source client for Quake II), as Ubuntu pulls ahead by a ridiculous 44% in the best case scenario, and barely squeaks ahead by a rounding error in the “worst” result.

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This is important, because all of these benchmarks run natively on both operating systems, as opposed to using a compatibility layer such as Valve’s Proton on Linux. It’s Windows vs Linux on fair and equal footing.

The Rule, Not The Exception?

It would seem this performance advantage is quickly becoming the norm, and not an outlier. Back in April, Phoronix carried out another battery of 100+ tests using the Framework 16 laptop. Ubuntu took the crown there as well, outperforming Windows across the board by 20%.

Wallpaper for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS "Noble Numbat"Canonical

Unexpectedly appropriate, then, that Ubuntu 24.04’s default wallpaper boasts a crown, with a decidedly royal color gradient? That being said, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Linux distributions with more finely-tuned kernels executing an even more commanding lead than seen in these Phoronix tests.

I’m looking forward to seeing some real-world gaming performance comparisons on the Ryzen 9 AI 365 with Radeon 880M. Is Linux reaching a point where it can compete despite the overhead of Proton?

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