[TABLE=“class: cms_table”]
Blend file
BMW27.blend
[/TABLE]
cpu amd fx 8120 3.1 ghz
gpu Nvidia gtx 970 sc evga
ram 16 gb 1600
os Linux mint
“f12”
render ------gpu ( 370.28)-------cpu
ttile size -------256x256 -------32x32
render time-- 05:25.62 ------20:57.55
Well Linux desktop environements without any fancy 3D effects probably should do a lot better, gnome 3 is not that easy on resources.
Also I don’t really like the bmw bench, it’s not taxing enough for a benchmark. It is like glxgears^^
Actually Lubuntu 16.04x64 is faster than windows 10x64 on my sys
bmw27_gpu.blend
AMD X4 925 2,8GHz, 8GB DDR2LOL, Zotac GTX970 AMP! Omega
Windows 10: 4:35.45
Lubuntu 16.04 4:25.84
You’re on AMD though. My thesis was that NVIDIA’s drivers seem to be faster on Windows than on Ubuntu.
Would be interesting to test Lubuntu with my card.
Does anyone know if running the same render test off a live USB session (as opposed to from an SSD-installed OS) makes sense?
I’d be willing to run that but I’m not too keen on wiping my Ubuntu GNOME SSD and installing Lubuntu instead just for testing. I’ve been installing different distros for more than a week now and am finally happy with the UX of Ubuntu GNOME. 
Ubuntu is based on Debian that uses Gnome as it’s desktop environment and now Unity as a plugin on top of Gnome.
You don’t install different distros you just install different desktop environments like KDE XFCE LXDE and so on.
Log out and then log in to your favourite desktop environment.
Maybe you know this already but just in case you don’t get synaptic package manager then from there install different desktop environments not the whole OS.
Well the driver is more or less identical, I think it is really just gnome being a little more resource demanding, also adds more effects than windows imho. You could also try gnome3 fallbackmode which turns off hardware acceleration iirc …and if that mode still exists ^^
But anyway as your comparison with gnome 3 showed me that the performance difference is diminishing with how demanding your scene is. (classroom 8%) ALSO I would expect that the difference evens out even more with a more optimised tile size. maybe test with 512x512 tiles on both operating systems.
My result is on nvidia as thedeamon already pointed out, GTX 970
Ah sorry, I misread that. Thanks for the correction! 
Is the desktop environment the only performance-sensitive difference between Ubuntu and Lubuntu?
You already installed the engine and the chassis now you just installing bells and whistles (desktop environments) that can be taxing on the GPU.
That doesn’t answer the question “Is the desktop environment the only performance-sensitive difference between Ubuntu and Lubuntu?” though. 
Ubuntu Lubuntu = same just different desktop environment.
Yes mostly, uses same kernel,drivers etc.
… but beware having multiple DEs on the same OS comes with drawbacks.
I think that could be useful information …