AMD Radeon 880M on Linux faster than Windows 11 with up to 50% performance gains in some Ryzen AI 9 365 benchmarks
A recent review tested the performance of AMD's new Ryzen AI 9 365 processor and its Radeon 880M iGPU in Ubuntu 24.04 on Linux kernel 6.10 and Windows 11 and found that the CPU and iGPU combination performed better under Linux in most scenarios. The biggest surprise comes from GPU benchmarks, where Linux often beat Windows by up to 50%.
The Linux vs. Windows debate is a never-ending one, with solid justification for both operating systems, but one area where Windows has historically had a leg-up over Linux is early support for new hardware. However, that appears to be changing, at least with regard to AMD hardware, if a recent set of performance tests by Phoronix are to be believed.
Phoronix used a number of production and gaming benchmarks to gauge the performance of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 and its Radeon 880M iGPU on both Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux 24.04 in the Asus Zenbook S16 (read our review here). While the overall performance average only favoured Linux by around 3%, there are some interesting standout benchmarks and trends throughout the test suite — especially in the graphics benchmarks.
Forbes:
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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.