A Quick Look at Rendering Performance in Windows vs Linux

Table of Contents

Introduction

One of the questions we hear regularly from customers building rendering workstations is whether Windows or Linux offers better performance. There seems to be a long-standing belief in the industry that Linux is faster, but that sentiment may predate the rise of GPU rendering, so it is worth revisiting with modern hardware and workflows.

Featured Image for Rendering Performance in Windows Versus Linux with Text Overlaid on a Picture of a Three NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Video Cards in a Workstation

To get an initial look, we compared the two operating systems we see requested most often: Windows 11 and Ubuntu. For applications, we selected Blender and V-Ray because they offer stable, cross-platform benchmarks that cover both CPU and GPU rendering.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of operating system performance. It represents only two rendering engines on a single Linux distribution, and other applications or distros may behave differently. Our goal here is simply to identify whether meaningful performance differences exist and whether a larger, more detailed investigation would be valuable. In practice, users will also want to consider software compatibility and workflow requirements, as not every content creation tool supports Linux. At the same time, Linux remains an attractive option for render servers due to its cost (especially compared to the per-core licensing for Windows Server), stability, and flexibility.

Test Setup

Software and Render Engines

Unlike some of our larger studies, this article does not use a custom scene suite. Instead, we relied on the benchmark tools provided by Blender and V-Ray. These were chosen because they offer consistent, automated workloads that run identically on both operating systems and avoid variables such as scene preparation, asset loading, and caching behavior.

Operating Systems

Testing was performed on:

Windows 11 Pro
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Ubuntu was selected because it is the most commonly requested Linux distribution among our rendering customers. Other distros may perform differently, and this article is not intended to represent Linux as a whole.

Hardware

CPUs Tested

AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 9975WX (32 cores)
AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 9995WX (96 cores)
AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 9980X (64 cores)
Intel Core™ Ultra 9 285K (24 cores)
Intel Xeon® w7-3565X (32 cores)

These processors represent a mix of workstation-class and high-end desktop platforms across a wide range of core counts.

GPUs Tested

NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 5080 16GB
NVIDIA RTX PRO™ 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Edition (tested in 1x, 2x, and 3x configurations)

All GPU tests were run in the same workstation, using the Threadripper 9970X, to eliminate potential platform differences.

CPU Rendering Results

Across both Blender and V-Ray, using CPU rendering, the trend was consistent: Ubuntu Linux outperformed Windows on every CPU we tested, often by 10–15%, and in some cases even more!

Across all the CPUs we tested, Linux delivered higher performance in both V-Ray and Blender’s Cycles CPU benchmarks. The gains were not only consistent across architectures, ranging from high-core-count Threadripper PRO models to more mainstream desktop processors, but also substantial enough to matter in real production workloads. In V-Ray’s CPU tests, Linux was roughly 12% faster than Windows. Blender showed an even larger spread, with Linux coming in around 16% faster on average.

These performance differences can stem from various factors, including compiler optimizations, kernel scheduling behavior, and overall system overhead. Regardless of the cause, the net result is clear: Linux remains a more efficient platform for CPU-based rendering tasks. For studios or artists whose workloads rely heavily on CPU rendering, whether for animation, simulation, or high-volume batch processing, Linux presents a compelling performance benefit as long as the rest of the software pipeline supports it.

GPU Rendering Results

GPU performance showed a more mixed picture, with differences depending heavily on the rendering mode.

Unlike CPU rendering, GPU results varied significantly between rendering engines and modes. In V-Ray’s CUDA tests, there was effectively no performance difference between Windows and Linux, suggesting that NVIDIA’s CUDA implementation is well-optimized across both platforms. Blender’s Cycles GPU results followed the same pattern, with only minor shifts that fall within normal test-to-test variation rather than indicating any meaningful OS impact.

The exception in our testing was V-Ray RTX, where Windows consistently outperformed Ubuntu by roughly 10–12%. This advantage likely stems from driver-level optimizations for RTX workloads on Windows, which aligns with broader trends we’ve seen in past GPU-focused evaluations. For users who rely heavily on V-Ray’s RTX rendering path, Windows currently provides a measurable performance benefit – while for most other GPU workloads, the choice of operating system is unlikely to significantly affect throughput.

Conclusion

While this was a quick test rather than a full-scale analysis, several clear trends emerged. CPU rendering consistently favored Linux, with double-digit performance gains in both V-Ray and Blender. GPU rendering was more mixed, with most workloads performing similarly across operating systems, although V-Ray’s RTX mode showed a noticeable advantage on Windows. It is important to emphasize that this comparison only looks at rendering performance in two applications and only on a single Linux distribution. Other rendering engines may behave differently, and performance can vary across distros as well.

Users should also consider the broader software environment they depend on. Not all content creation tools, plugins, or pipeline components support Linux, and compatibility often plays a larger role in choosing an operating system than raw performance. At the same time, render servers and large-scale farm deployments may still find Linux appealing due to its lower cost, stability, and flexibility for customization.

These early results highlight meaningful differences and suggest that a more extensive evaluation across additional engines, distributions, and hardware configurations may be worthwhile for a future article. If that interests you, or if you have particular software or Linux distros you are curious about, please let us know in the comments below!