When running Windows vs. Linux performance benchmarks one of the real-world areas where Linux consistently dominates across both AMD and Intel platforms is for the Blender 3D modeling software's rendering performance. For CPU-based rendering in Blender as well as other 3D modeling software, Linux typically dominates by wide margins. With the upcoming Blender 4.1 release, it looks like Linux's lead will only further expand.

With the work-in-progress release notes on the upcoming Blender 4.1 it notes:

"Linux CPU rendering performance was improved by about 5% across benchmarks"

5% on top of the already leading Linux rendering performance is exciting. This Linux speed-up comes by using huge pages in jemalloc for faster allocations.

Blender 4.1 is due for release on 19 March. It will be fun to put Blender 4.1 through the benchmarking paces.

The work-in-progress release notes also mention Blender 4.1 is delivering on GPU accelerated Intel Open Image Denoise denoising for NVIDIA / AMD / Intel / Apple Silicon GPUs, AMD GPU rendering support for RDNA3 APUs, and other enhancements.