AMD Radeon 880M on Linux faster than Windows 11 with up to 50% performance gains in some Ryzen AI 9 365 benchmarks

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 favored Linux by around 3%, there are some interesting standout benchmarks and trends throughout the test suite - especially in the graphics benchmarks.

In most tests where Windows 11 pulled ahead of Linux, the margins were small, like in Furmark 2.1 OpenGL tests, where Windows 11 scored 27.41 FPS and Linux scored a marginally worse 26.92 FPS, but in cases where Linux pulled ahead, the gains were often much larger. This indicates that AMD's drivers for Linux are either more efficient or more mature than those available for Windows. In the same Furmark test running at the same 1920 × 1080 resolution via the Vulkan API, Linux pulled ahead of Windows 11 by a whopping 59.8% (15.13 FPS on Windows vs 24.19 FPS on Linux).

The same is true for the cross-platform game Unvanquished, where Linux pulled ahead of Windows by anywhere between 6% and 36.2%, with the gap widening at higher resolutions. YQuake2, a similar cross-platform game that runs on Vulkan or OpenGL, showed similar results, this time with Windows 11 trailing Ubuntu 24.04 by as much as 44.7%.

One outlier where Windows performed significantly better than Linux was in the LZ4 Compression tests, where Windows 11 pulled ahead of Linux by nearly 50%. Windows also beat Linux by around 10% in image encoding tests, which was reportedly an abnormal result in Phoronix's testing.

Linux, however, once again took the performance crown when it came to CPU-accelerated 3D rendering in programs like Blender, OSPRay Studio, and LuxCoreRender, with Linux either matching Windows 11, falling behind by a small margin (around 7%), or performing significantly better than Windows. Linux also beat out Windows 11 when it came to V-Ray rendering, with a lead of 15%.

There are a handful of other benchmarks, such as video encoding and image denoising, in the test round-up showing Linux and Windows 11 trading blows, but it's safe to say that the results show once again that Linux is a viable option for everything from high-performance workstation needs.

What's perhaps most interesting about the results, though, is that Phoronix was running the open-source RADV Mesa drivers for AMD, as opposed to the proprietary Linux drivers. AMD's minor changes to the new CPU and iGPU might explain some of the excellent performance figures, but it's also almost a guarantee that performance and stability will improve as the drivers mature, so this is a great start for AMD's new CPU.

Check out the Asus Zenbook S 16 featured in these tests at Best Buy (curr. $1.399.99).