Earlier this month I looked at [1]the AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics with Strix Point between Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04 Linux . The testing showed the AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics on the open-source Linux driver up to around 96% the performance of Radeon Software on Windows. The most frequent question that came up from that most recent round of benchmarking was wondering how the Intel Xe2 graphics on Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" now compares between Windows 11 and Linux given that both drivers have been maturing the past several months. Here's the story of the Xe2 graphics between Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04 while using a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop.

[2]

There was a lot of interest in seeing fresh Intel Windows vs. Linux iGPU benchmarks with the inquiries raised from that recent AMD Strix Point testing using [3]the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 on the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 . I got my hands on a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition to carry out similar Lunar Lake tests. Today's article is just looking at the Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 25.04 graphics performance in some cross-platform/native tests while benchmarking other Linux workloads from the X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition will be in various follow-up articles.

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Last year [5]when Lunar Lake first launched, the Linux graphics driver state left a lot to be desired . But with time [6]the Lunar Lake Linux support has improved a lot and have ran numerous follow-up benchmarks using a Core Ultra 7 256V within the ASUS Zenbook S14. Once things started maturing, [7]the Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics on Linux have been running nice and reaffirmed by the results about to be shown in this article.

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When initially getting Linux booting on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 though, the performance was horrendous across both CPU and graphics work... This was rather surprising given the robust experience I've been having for several months now with the ASUS Zenbook with Lunar Lake. I quickly noticed the Core Ultra 7 258V within the X1 Carbon was running at 400MHz across all cores... Even under demanding workloads!

It turns out I'm not alone and after some searching there are others reporting this issue too for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13, such as on [9]Reddit with users finding their Lunar Lake SoC getting stuck at 400MHz across all cores. I experienced this both out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora Workstation 42. The easiest solution to workaround this has been switching over to the "performance" ACPI Platform Profile rather than sticking to the "balanced" default. When switching the platform profile, the Core Ultra 7 258V within the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 was able to successfully run up to its 4.8GHz maximum turbo frequency rather than being stuck at 400MHz.

[10]

When hitting this 400MHz bug, it's extremely clear performance-wise... Even interacting with just the GNOME desktop is painfully slow. Within the graphics benchmarks here is a look at the impact for reference. The "- Balanced" run is in the default balanced platform profile stuck at 400MHz while the other Ubuntu 25.04 run is in the performance profile to properly engage the Core Ultra 7 258V compared to Windows 11 Pro as shipped by Lenovo.

[11]

Once working around that 400MHz issue on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition, the Xe2 graphics were delivering a very capable experience atop the latest upstream open-source Intel graphics driver stack and competitive to Windows 11. Both Fedora Workstation 42 and Ubuntu 25.04 as a reminder are on the Linux 6.14 kernel and Mesa 25.0 drivers for providing a very up-to-date experience.

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Here are benchmarks showing how Ubuntu 25.04 can compete with Windows 11 Pro on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition with the Core Ultra 7 255V. The same hardware was used throughout testing. Windows 11 Pro was tested in the Lenovo pre-installed configuration with all available updates as of testing and Ubuntu 25.04 was done from a clean install and just working around the 400MHz bug but otherwise at the defaults. Reported hardware differences (such as the CPU frequency) in the system table just come down to how the information is exposed by the interfaces on each operating system.

A variety of OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks native to both Windows and Linux were run for getting an idea how Lunar Lake Xe2 graphics are competing between Windows and Linux for Q2'2025. More Core Ultra 7 258V / X1 Carbon Gen 13 Linux benchmarks coming up on Phoronix in additional articles. With focusing just on the driver quality and not looking to get into the overhead of Proton/VKD3D/DXVK and other API translation layers, various native graphics benchmarks were used on both operating system.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-rdna35-ubuntu-2504

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=lunarlake-xe2-windows-linux-2025&image=x1carbon_windows_linux_1_lrg

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-ai-7-360-thinkpad-t14s-gen6

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=lunarlake-xe2-windows-linux-2025&image=x1carbon_windows_linux_7_lrg

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/review/lunar-lake-xe2

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-lunar-lake-aipt-xe2

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-xe2-lunarlake-compute

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=lunarlake-xe2-windows-linux-2025&image=x1carbon_windows_linux_2_lrg

[9] https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1hkmzoz/linux_on_x1_carbon_gen_13/

[10] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=lunarlake-xe2-windows-linux-2025&image=x1carbon_windows_linux_4_lrg

[11] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=lunarlake-xe2-windows-linux-2025&image=x1carbon_windows_linux_5_lrg

[12] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=lunarlake-xe2-windows-linux-2025&image=x1carbon_windows_linux_6_lrg