While the results shouldn’t be too surprising given the recent AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Windows 11 vs. Linux testing, when the HP ZBook Ultra G1a powered by the step-down AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 arrived with Microsoft Windows 11 Pro, I also took the opportunity to run some Windows vs. Linux performance benchmarks on that AMD Strix Halo SoC.
Complementing the data from last month that found AMD Strix Halo on Linux typically outperforming Windows 11 by nice margins, today’s article is a look at the Windows 11 Professional vs. Ubuntu 25.04 on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a mobile workstation model featuring the AMD Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 12-core SoC with Radeon 8050S Graphics
Tests were done on the HP OEM install of Windows 11 Pro as shipped out-of-the-box for the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop with all Microsoft Windows updates applied as of testing. The performance was then compared to Ubuntu 25.04 with the Linux 6.14 kernel and other software defaults in seeing how this 12-core Strix Halo laptop compares between these competing operating systems.
A variety of CPU and GPU tests native to both Windows and Linux while being of similar quality were used for comparing the performance. Many of the same benchmarks overlapping with last month’s AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 cross-OS tests.
The same HP ZBook Ultra G1a was used for all of these benchmarks with the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 with Radeon 8050S integrated graphics, 64GB of LPDDR5-8000 memory, 2TB WD SN810 NVMe SSD, and 2880 x 1800 panel. This is all-around quite a powerful notebook and you can learn more via the recent HP ZBook Ultra G1a Linux review of both the Strix Halo models tested.
