Windows vs. Linux Scaling Performance with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X | Hacker News Reader

Windows vs. Linux Scaling Performance with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X

phoronix.com

37 pointsenzo19826 comments

The juicy bits:

"From all of these benchmarks, the geometric mean does show that the Windows 10 Enterprise does perform better than Windows 10 Professional on this HEDT processor particularly at 32 cores and above. Going from 16 to 128 threads on Clear Linux was 3.3x the performance with the tested software to Windows 10 Enterprise at 2.7x. At 16 cores, Linux was just 7% faster than Windows 10 Enterprise with these benchmarks but when taking full advantage of the chip at 64 cores + SMT, Linux was 29% faster. Going from 64 to 128 threads with SMT on Linux led to a 15% boost while Windows 10 Enterprise saw just a 7% boost overall. So, yes, for those wishing to take full advantage of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, so far Linux is offering much better performance assuming your software is natively supported outside of Windows."

Whilst its always interesting to know whether the operating system is bottle-necking performance (as some versions of windows clearly do). I've never experienced a situation where I've actually had a performance reason to choose between Linux/Windows. For me it has always been "This thing I'm doing is linux only" or vice versa so operating system isn't a real choice.

Do people actually make decisions like that? I guess if you're doing some python based data analysis it could make sense.

It was a motivating factor for me when I originally started to look into Linux back in high school. It stopped being relevant for me when my focus shifted to preferring software freedom/transparency (and this is what ultimately pushed me into using Linux as my daily driver instead of "that cool operating system that actually runs decently on my old machines").

Now that Linux gaming is somewhat viable, performance is back on the forefront of my mind; it's fun to know that my (first-gen) Threadripper machine runs significantly better when I install Slackware on it instead of Windows.

> I guess if you're doing some python based data analysis it could make sense.

I think you answered your own question. ;) Any CPU heavy tasks really. If you can squeeze an extra 20% performance boost over Windows, running Linux would a pragmatic and economical choice.

There is a major qualitative difference between Windows and Linux here: Windows can’t automatically balance threads across more than 64 logical CPUs:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/pr...

didn't they use the wrong Windows? "Windows 10 enterprise for workstations" is for massive pc's

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