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I got a dual boot system with Mac OS X El Capitan and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, they're running on the same hardware, except the storage (each OS on its own SSD).

Geekbench shows the following scores:

Mac OS X:    4538 (single-core)   /   13850 (multi-core).
Ubuntu:      4316 (single-core)   /   10442 (multi-core).

The complete results can be found here for direct comparison.

Linpack also gives 101 Gflops (Maac OS X) vs 60 Gflops (Ubuntu)...

Hardware specs:

  • Intel Core i7-4770 @ 3.40 GHz
  • 32GB RAM
  • Nvidia GTX 770

What might explain such performance difference, especially multi-core?

SOLVED: It turns out I just had to enable intel microcode driver!

Ubuntu now shows even better scores than Mac OS X: Geekbench results

Byte Commander
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user678268
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    While the question is open to interpretation, I'd venture an opinion that it is the expected outcome of software optimized for hardware vs generic non-otimized software. It doesn't mean you can't tweak Ubuntu to perform better, but the level of expertise required is usually beyond a layman user. Also, much of the optimization is done on the driver level, which is particularly troublesome in Linux for various objective reasons I don't want to bring up here. – mikewhatever Apr 14 '17 at 23:48
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    Is the Intel Microcode enabled in System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional drivers ? – Byte Commander Apr 14 '17 at 23:53
  • @ByteCommander, it was not! It's now, and ubuntu is performing better than mac os, thanks much! – user678268 Apr 15 '17 at 02:48
  • @user678268 Cool that we found such a simple solution. I reposted my comment as detailed answer so that you can accept it in order to mark the question as solved. Thanks and welcome to Ask Ubuntu. – Byte Commander Apr 15 '17 at 11:36

1 Answers1

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As you have confirmed in the comments, you had the use of Intel's "Procesor microcode firmware" driver disabled.

This microcode can be described as hot-patch for the firmware of Intel CPUs, which gets loaded and applied every time you boot Ubuntu (because it can not be written persistently) and fixes some bugs or improves some things.

More information could be found e.g. in the questions Unknown Additional Driver: Processor microcode firmware for Intel CPUs for intel-microcode and Should I activate the additional driver: Processor microcode firmware for Intel CPUs for intel-microcode .

To enable this microcode patch, simply open your System Settings and click on Software & Updates. Navigate to the Additional Drivers tab and wait until the list of drivers is loaded, which can take some moments.

Search for a device that has options mentioning "Intel", "microcode" or similar keywords. Most likely it is labelled as "Unknown" for whatever reasons.

Anyway, make sure that the option named "Using Processor microcode firmware..." or similar is the selected one. You probably should reboot for the changes to take effect after that.

Software & Updates > Additional Drivers > Unknown/Intel Microcode

Byte Commander
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