I recently Benchmarked a Lenovo T480 across multiple Linux Distros and Desktop Environments plus Windows 11
Not this is a older 8th Gen intel so the results show bad performance more than a more advanced processor.
I wasn't surprised by the poor Windows performance (a local install without MS account so minimum BG activity) but what did suprise me was how little the Desktop Environments were influencing results in the Linux Benchmarks.
Using a single benchmark that doesn’t emulate actual use cases but raw cpu performance is practically worthless for comparing distros, this mostly just shows how terrible windows overhead is
Here is an article that shows actual variance for some good examples
Might be because most hardware informations on Linux (Fastfetch, Neofetch, etc) give you the boost clock, not default clockspeed, but if that is the reason, then the choice still seems weird, they should have just used official CPU specs as provided by intel instead imo
If this isn't that, it's just blatantly skewing the statistics
I didn’t mean to link to a single page, and cachy actually won for the single gaming benchmark with 15% over windows and 30% over Ubuntu which I thought was interesting as actual variance
Funny seeing you here friend CachyOs is great as a daily driver and for gaming, once I get the game running it generally runs better than windows and it's nice that most games are plug and play nowadays.
Still does not change the fact that W11 sucks and disrespects both new and old hardwares, in exchange for stock price and corporate revenue.
About 80% users are non-tech, and most would want a good performance out of old hardware in this absurdly crazy time of overpriced market, because it's a common sense.
Due to a few comments on the Windows score (and different frequency) I rerun the benchmark on a new offline install in high performance mode. The original runs on windows must have throttled, though the frequency is different as in original post. All the Linux runs were in "as installed" with presumably balanced mode.
May I ask, why the different cpu frequencies for the windows benchmark compared to all linux benchmarks? Is it just that windows does not utilise it fully?
No idea why, I hadn't noticed. but I did repeat the windows benchmark a few times and deleted the worse results.. The only real difference was windows used a GUI wheas Linux was done via terminal. This may have had a small effect.
Google's answer
Windows is displaying 1896 MHz instead of 3600 MHz because Geekbench reports the CPU frequency measured during the benchmark run, not just the stock maximum boost clock.
Why the Frequencies Differ
Linux (3600 MHz / 3.6 GHz): Linux CPU frequency governors typically report the maximum boost target or maximum theoretical frequency for the Intel Core i5-8350U (3.60 GHz Max Turbo).
Windows 11 (1896 MHz / ~1.9 GHz): Windows dynamically adjusts the CPU clock speed in real time based on power plans, thermal throttling, power limits (PL1/PL2), or background battery savings. During the Windows run, the CPU likely throttled down or ran at its base/sustained frequency instead of boosting to peak speed.
I will run it on Max performance in windows to see if difference, though the Linux installs were all based installs so they would have also been balanced performance
Thanks for the info, i do not want to discredit this benchmarks, i am on cachyOS and also see a big performance difference in desktop use favoring linux. I am just curious how windows seems to be so far behind and thought it might be that it utilises the cpu somehow "wrong".
I reran the Windows today in high performance mode and it improved to similar results to.linux so it must have throttled originally, though I had rerun a few times. The improved result still used different frequency from the Linux results. This install was a local account without any bloat.
OP, there’s something seriously wrong with your Windows test. I looked at my last round of Geekbench 6 testing on my gaming PC and laptop, both of which dual boot. The Linux and Windows scores were different by 50 or fewer points, with Windows doing better in one test and Linux doing better in the other 3, but never wildly better.
I knew it! I have laptop with 8845HS (I belive, 780M iGPU) and I felt it is snappier on Cachy. When I bought HP Envy X360 it had W11, automatically I installed W10 Pro on it, 2-3 months ago it had Bazzite and now I'm using CachyOS (I had problems with pen not working on Bazzite). Some apps work just instantly
I am ubuntu user for a lot of year and decided to move to Fedora this year because I heard Fedora is much faster than Ubuntu. Looks like not :)) Probably will stay a few more years. I love stability of ubuntu system
I have a L390 Yoga with an 8th gen i7 and recently went from Windows to fedora first and noticed it running significantly smoother which was no surprise. But I couldn't scratch the itch to try cachyOs too and it does run ever so slightly snappier or at least it feels like it does. As long as the CPU supports the "newer" instructions cachyOs is a great chance as it lets old hardware feel faster than ever.
82
u/ARTIFICIAL_ARGUMENT 1d ago
Using a single benchmark that doesn’t emulate actual use cases but raw cpu performance is practically worthless for comparing distros, this mostly just shows how terrible windows overhead is
Here is an article that shows actual variance for some good examples
https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-hx470-windows-linux/2