Ubuntu 12.04.4 vs. 13.10 vs. 14.04 LTS Desktop Benchmarks

With Ubuntu 14.04 LTS being released today, here's some fresh benchmarks comparing the Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit performance against Ubuntu 13.10 and Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS. In this article are desktop and gaming benchmarks comparing these versions of Ubuntu Linux.

We have been delivering Ubuntu 14.04 LTS development benchmarks for months while now crossing the finish line of the Trusty Tahr release are some benchmarks from the Intel Core i7 4960X Ivy Bridge Extreme Edition system we haven't tested in a while along with the Radeon HD 4870 (RV770) graphics. Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, Ubuntu 13.10, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS were installed cleanly each time and the default settings were used each time.

With Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS back-porting the kernel and graphics stack from Ubuntu 13.10, its OpenGL performance on the R600 Gallium3D driver is close to the same. Fortunately, even for this old AMD graphics card, the performance is still improving with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS... Thanks to the Linux 3.13 kernel and Mesa 10.1 are faster open-source graphics in many of the cases.

This testing is quite straightforward so let's get straight to the results. If you're interested in benchmarking Ubuntu 14.04 LTS yourself to see how it compares to the current deployment within your organization, it's very easy to do so using the Phoronix Test Suite software.