Microsoft's Upcoming Windows 11 25H2 Battles Linux In Benchmark Showdown

CPU benchmarks are in for the latest release of Windows 11, version 25H2, and results stacked up against Ubuntu aren't looking particularly flattering for Microsoft's latest and greatest. In Phoronix's run of 41 creator-focused CPU benchmarks, Windows 11 25H2 not only falls behind two recent versions of Ubuntu Linux, but even occasionally trades spots with the older, mostly-identical Windows 11 24H2. These benchmarks were all done using identical hardware, in this case a test bench boasting a Ryzen 9 9950X at stock clocks, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, a Radeon RX 9070, and a Crucial 1TB NVMe Gen5 SSD.

Of course, a set of synthetic benchmarks doesn't tell the full story— there will always be some games and applications that you simply can't use without Windows, or won't work as well without it— but compared to Windows, it's clear that Ubuntu Linux is a far more lean and performant operating system. Phoronix's 41 CPU benchmark run showed Ubuntu 45.10 and Ubuntu 24.04.3 alike maintaining a healthy, consistent lead over Windows 11. For a time, was to be expected, but the fact that some benchmarks still ran ever-so-slightly better on Windows 11 24H2 over Windows 11 25H2 shows that Microsoft isn't particularly focused on performance optimization with it's latest updates.


These performance differences between Windows 11 releases are typically within sub-1 percent margin of error ranges, so it's not a severe problem by any means, but comparing performance to Ubuntu still raises questions as to just how much overhead there is in Windows 11. Outside of bug fix updates, it really seems like each new version of Windows 11 adds more features that no one is asking for at the expense of performance.

Phoronix's writeup offers more detailed look at each individual benchmark run, but overall things aren't looking all that promising for Windows. Other Linux distributions, like the Arch Linux-based SteamOS, have even turned around superior gaming results on hardware like the Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go S, and even back in 2021, we could identify a clear rise in Linux adoption among PC gamers.