1y ago

Arch and other Linux operating systems Beat Windows 11 in Gaming Benchmarks

www.tomshardware.com Three gaming-focused Linux operating systems beat Windows 11 in gaming benchmarks

All three Linux distros managed to beat Windows 11 while using Vavle's Proton compatibility layer.

Arch and other Linux operating systems Beat Windows 11 in Gaming Benchmarks::ComputerBase benchmarked three different Linux operating systems and found that all three can achieve better gaming performance than Windows 11.

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1y ago

Three gaming-focused Linux operating systems beat Windows 11 in gaming benchmark

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1y ago

Three gaming-focused Linux operating systems beat Windows 11 in gaming benchmarks

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1y ago

Three gaming-focused Linux operating systems beat Windows 11 in gaming benchmarks

www.tomshardware.com /software/linux/three-gaming-focused-linux-operating-systems-beat-windows-11-in-gaming-benchmarks

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82 comments

Gonna fire the first bullet:
(I also use Arch btw)
- As an Arch user myself... I feel seen.
- Ironic when 95% of Lemmy is full of people telling others to use Linux.
  
  Implying we're people
- to be fair if you use windows its expected and normal, its the regular thing that come with the computer. you dont really need to talk about it because everyone is already using it.
  if you use a linux distro its different and you are probably doing it for a specific reason. you might recommend it for people who would benefit because they didn't even think of it as an option.
  
  I always assume people use daily either mac or linux. I am always genuinely surprised when they mention they use windows. I live in a tech bubble where unix is the norm, and I find instinctively strange otherwise. Then I think about stats, and I remember we are the exception
- Ha, petty
  I, on the other hand
  Use arch
  (BTW)

Crazy how far Linux gaming has come in the past 5 years. From practically non-existent, to now often running games better than the actual OS and graphics API they were designed to run on.
The only major roadblock is some anticheat software requiring highly invasive Windows rootkits to function, which Linux doesn't really work with.
(btw has anybody noticed how people on Reddit/Lemmy are pissed off about Philips, with the financial backing of Sony, doing this on CDs in the late 90s, yet they'll happily install half a dozen other rootkits and data harvesting programs when they install a video game? What's up with that?)
- The only major roadblock is some anticheat software requiring highly invasive Windows rootkits to function, which Linux doesn’t really work with.
  I consider that more of a feature then a bug
  
  Word.
  
  Facts!
- also Proton-GE with AMD FSR is basically just like downloading more FPS no matter which game you're playing
  
  deleted
- All hail our lord and saviour Gaben!
  
  Confirmed!

I don't understand why new Linux folks immediately go for Arch-based distros and insist on using Nvidia GPUs. Like, are you guys into suffering or something?
- I used endeavorOS (basically pure Arch with a GUI installer) and I have had 0 issues with Nvidia GPUs, in fact it was a smoother experience than anything else.
  
  That's rad, man. Glad you're happy.
- Ugh, I got a 2080 years ago and it's been such a pain in the ass. Never again.
  
  Yeah that's a bummer, but in Windows that's still a good card for gaming/CUDA. Nvidia, unfortunately, is a lot like Apple. They do have some neat tech, but they lock it behind both price and exclusivity. That's great for C-Suite pockets, but very anti-consumer at its core.
- When I started using Linux circa 2008 Nvidia was the way. ATI/AMD would never work as well. Fast forward and I still use Nvidia because of cuda cores and davinci resolve for video editing. I've just been on the Nvidia card game for a long time. I have no problems with it still.
  As for arch base, I started that in 2015. Just found it more flexible and AUR is awesome. So much more software that I could not get on a debian based system.
- I never understood what you people do with your machines, through the years i must have used at least half a dozen nvidia gpus and never had any real issues.
  Of course early on you had to compile your drivers in the kernel yourself, but then I'm not even sure ati had drivers at the time. And that's how you configured the kernel anyway.
  
  I think a lot of users kinda jump in the deep end, which is fine, but expect their experience to be flawless. Then when it inevitably isn't they get upset and disheartened. I get that.
- The reason is very simple, Arch has tons of software & all available in it's repository (need more software you can check AUR)
  The other reason is flexing to other users
  For NVIDIA case it's not that hard especially if you know what you doing, if you're newbie you can use Garuda Linux & it will detect and install NVIDIA driver it self for you
  
  NVidia has a pretty good capture on the gaming market. Especially during the 980/1080 generations. I've also seen a ton of non media people insist on NVidia cuz of shadowplay.
  This is speculation, but I don't think most new Linux users are building computers specifically for Linux. They're letting their computers age, then considering Linux when they see the cost of the new generation of NVidia hardware.
  Let us not overestimate the general publics knowledge of hardware compatibility and operating systems in general. I think they conceptualize it like replacing a brick in a Lego wall. They'd have no reason to suspect it wouldn't work.
  
  Do you know of any guides to getting started with Arch?
  I’ve been wanting to switch for a while but the challenge is daunting and I am very tech literate.
- I moved from a gtx 1060 to an RX580 and it has been terrible, recording in obs is horrible to the point that the cpu yields better results and now a recent kernel version broke the power meter on all the polaris gpus.
  
  Damn, sorry to hear that, my experience with the 480 was really good. Admittedly AMD wasn't quite caught up yet with hardware video encoding at the time that card was designed (basically a reskinned 480). Specifically, hardware video encoding has gotten drastically better since then on AMD cards.
  
  That sucks, bud. Sorry AMD let you down.

Three gaming-focused Linux operating systems beat Windows 11 in gaming benchmarks
Arch is a gaming-focused Linux OS now lmao
- I mean, it can be, if you do the right fine-tuning.
  But yeah, I think they kind of missed the point. Arch seems to work pretty damn well for gaming with a completely vanilla, standard configuration.
  
  For sure, I’m just giving them a hard time with semantics haha
- If I had to guess why Arch, probably because Steam OS (on the Deck) is based on Arch
- Pop!_OS too, somehow.

No mention of important metrics like frame times, and 1-0,1% fps lows. You can feel these in game, even if you have 200+ fps.
- I found the original study in the article, it's in German. Here it is (Linux Gaming: Test Results and Conclusion), it looks like most Linux distros have worse lows and frame times than Windows 11, other than Arch Linux which seems to be a tossup.
  
  Interesting, the article isn't working well under translate and I can't see the frame time graphs on my phone. Does it state which kernel their running these games under or if these are x11 / Wayland?
  If their just using the stock kernel there are probably some gains (even just minimal) using another with some tweaks.
  
  Arch is doing surprisingly well. Nice
- FH5 is awful on Linux. Even after I switched to an AMD card it'll cause system-wide crashes.

Are we not talking about the author spelling it "Vavle"?
- Summarises the quality of this article

Makes you wonder how much faster these games could go if Proton wasn't needed.
I'd like to see more configurations tested though. I have a 7950X3D CPU and I'm interested how well Linux handles assigning the "correct" cores (3D cache vs. higher frequency) depending on the game. Would also love to see whether games under Linux further profit from the large cache.
- I think the impact of Proton is negligible nowadays. It's basically just an implementation of a library the game uses. If it wasn't Win32 it could be another library like SDL. The normal game logic is usually done in something nearer to the CPU anyways, which will be the same regardless of OS. And if the game uses Vulkan instead of Direct3D the graphics are also running almost directly on the GPU.
  
  The real force multiplier we could see is when game engine devs push optimizations upstream, which is just something you can't do on windows.
  
  You're probably right.

Nice article!
I know it's hearsay but I'll throw in that on my mint rig with a ryzen CPU and nvidia GPU I haven't had any problem with any game I've run through steam in the past 3-4 years. I just buy what I want and fire it up.
I don't play comp games but haven't had issues with the few multiplayer games i be tried
- Is that considered hearsay or is that just anecdotal?
  Edit: Just checked, it's not hearsay. Hearsay is when you only have information given by someone else's words.
  
  Man I was thinking about that all day and knew I should have used anecdotal instead 😄
- I know it’s hearsay
  fyi the word you are probably looking for is Anecdotal:
  (of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.

Amazing what happens when you don't use your overhead to run bullshit ads for your Xbox controllers and games.

I recently made the switch to Manjaro.
I feel like these are all kinks that I’ll eventually be able to work out, but these are the issues I’ve faced so far:
Extreme stuttering in Yuzu. It reads 60fps but it is absolutely not. Using the AUR version, since the Flatpak can’t load my roms folder from my NAS. (Before you assume the network drive is the issue, know that it is over a 10g SFP+ on an NVMe on the NAS. No problems in Windows.)
Input issues in AUR Cemu. Cannot get my DS5 controller to work. I think it doesn’t have permissions to write to my config file for some reason so I can’t save my controller settings. Flatpak version works fine though.
Wayland does not support my dual screens on Nvidia. Was hoping that could help with my stuttering issues… shot in the dark.
BeamNG needs to render shaders for about 5mins before loading. Skipping leads to extreme stuttering. That is way too long for startup. Even big Yuzu games don’t take that long.
As an aside I’m pulling my hair out trying to get Google Drive to work properly. rclone is not behaving with Codium - I can’t reliably compile in the mounted drive like I could with Google Drive stream on Windows. Sometimes it compiles and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t know why it works sometimes and doesn’t work other times. I need this functionality for work so that’s a bummer.
Also wake from sleep does not work.
I’m not complaining per se, if you have any tips I’m desperate to hear some. But my experience with desktop Linux has been far from smooth and my non scientific experience so far is that performance is much much better on Windows.
But I will stick it out this time. I think this is my fourth time trying to daily drive Linux.
- Wayland is not totally ready nor is Nvidia driver. Most benchmark rely on amd based component for a reason. DS5 controllers are not as well supported as xbox ones. I can say for Google Drive because I dont use it. As most thing on Linux, this kind of things will be fix if enough people care about it. You can open issue, contribute, submit patch or sponsorize fixes.
- Try using yuzu-mainline-git from the aur and change your compile flags (edit makepkg.conf) to match=native mtune=native and O3. That gives a 15% boost in totk.
  Also use zram instead of zswap as that that causes terrible stuttering on yuzu if you are short of ram. The usual recommendation is to use zstd compression but I can tell you that lz4 performs better on yuzu.
  "sudo pacman -S zram generator" then "sudo nano /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf" and paste this:
  
  [zram0] zram-size = ram compression-algorithm = lz4 swap-priority = 100
  Also make sure you are running gamemode with yuzu. Same with steam games.
  
  Thanks! I will try all of these suggestions.
- Extreme stuttering in Yuzu. It reads 60fps but it is absolutely not. Using the AUR version, since the Flatpak can’t load my roms folder from my NAS. (Before you assume the network drive is the issue, know that it is over a 10g SFP+ on an NVMe on the NAS. No problems in Windows.)
  I don't have an Nvidia GPU but give the pineappleEA builds a try. It contains all the changes in the current early access build as well.
  As for running the Flatpak, you have to whitelist the folder your NAS folder is mounted on. Best way to do that is by installing Flatseal. Just search for yuzu, scroll down to Filesystem and add the folder where your games are contained in Other files.
  
  Thanks for the tip about Flatseal!
  I’ll try the EA builds, too.

I always thought that Linux is a better platform for games, the problem until now was not this, but the availability of games for Linux.

Similar to the overall results, the frame rate difference between each OS was very small, with most titles having an fps delta of less than eight between the fastest and slowest operating systems.
Not enough for me ditch Windows and face Linux adversities.
- I prefer to face linux adversities that teach me more about computer than facing Windows one who are about advertising, tracking and enshitiffication
  
  Good point, but learning requires excessive free time. I'm working or sleeping and on the days that I don't work I just want to play my games, eat ice cream and not have to re-learn how to use a computer
  
  What do you learn about computers when you can't play multiplayer games with your friends because you cant run the anticheat?

Very cool

There's a few things I wonder about with this. They tested an AMD GPU, which is great as it shows off how awesome ACO and the RADV projects are. The Mesa devs alongside the AMD folks contributing to the RADV driver, along with all of Valve's work, showcases how awesome FOSS can be at optimizing. I watched RADV go from underdog to top dog in performance, and it's no longer arguable that AMD hardware works better under Linux than Windows thanks to the stellar work done on those projects.
Meanwhile we have nVidia who clings selfishly to their proprietary blobs, and I can't help but wonder how great it could be if they opened that up and let the community in. Is it already hyper optimized to the point that the community wouldn't be able to improve on it? Idk, but from an infrastructure standpoint, nVidia users would benefit from it immensely, if not from performance.
I recall when vkd3d-proton performance was severely impacted under nVidia, to the tune of a 40% delta, and that's improved significantly, but I still wonder how this would look on an nVidia GPU to compare Windows vs Linux performance.
- we have nVidia who clings selfishly to their proprietary blobs, and I can’t help but wonder how great it could be if they opened that up and let the community in.
  Nvidia is doing that because they don't want people to deploy gaming GPUs in datacenters, and they can currently enforce that through their driver license. That license is what enables them to force most enterprise users to buy expensive A100/H100 datacenter GPUs and rack in really fat margins when a couple of RTX 4090 cards would actually be enough to do the job with good cost efficiency. The control that Nvidia has with that license is not something they're ready to give up and that's why they keep giving the middle finger to the FOSS community.
  (before anyone mentions vast.ai as a counter-example, those RTX 4090 compute sellers are indeed breaking Nvidia's EULA)
- I play Rocket League on Windows and Arch using Nvidia. Windows performance has been getting worse over the years. Used to have 500+ fps, now have issues getting up to steady 280. This is Psyonix's fault though.
  But still, the performance is in fact more reliable, stable, and higher overall on Linux for me. No sudden janks, no lag spikes, no nothing, as on Windows.

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