1y ago

Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games - Linux 17% faster on Average

video.hardlimit.com Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games - Linux 17% faster on Average

Linux @lemmy.ml

video.hardlimit.com /w/uZGK12oU5FeSsy8CDLP4hD

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241 comments

I'm just going to go ahead and say this now, do not expect most windows games to run better on Linux than windows. Typically the case is when you find a well optimized game that is CPU bound, or is natively vulkan. Anything else, expect comparable framerates.
- I will disagree and that's why I made this video. Been benchmarking games for 3 years now, mostly on AMD systems. It went from about same performance, to slightly better, to this. 17% average improvement is nothing to laugh at. It's the difference between a 4090 and a 7900XTX on Windows. So people can literally save $1000 just by using Linux.
  What you say, does mostly apply to Nvidia users though.
  
  Not enough people running nvidia realize just how much nvidia does to make sure you stick to their proprietary software. That you can close most of the performance gap with FOSS on AMD is an amazing finding.
  Unfortunately it won't convince many who haven't already seen the benefits of a more open system.
  
  Man look, I've been using Linux as a daily driver for 18 years, people have been saying exactly what you're saying since before performance was even comparable.
  You're not going to get 17% better performance on the GPU just because you're using another operating system, it's not going to happen unless you're running a Linux native version of the game. Often times, that is not even the case.
  Performance can be a little bit better if the game is natively opengl or vulkan, but if it is directx (the vast majority of windows games) then it is going to be comparable at best in GPU-bound scenarios, I.E. most of the games people are playing on PC.
  You can't just magically put more transistors in a GPU just because you are running a different OS. CPU bound games run better on Linux because of the god-tier scheduler, but a GPU is essentially a computer in itself, all drivers do is tell the GPU to take this information and translate it into something you see on a screen.
  By the way, the Nvidia thing has been false for quite some time now. I primarily use AMD on Linux, but the only place you will run into issues with Nvidia is wayland, otherwise it works perfectly fine everywhere else.
  
  17% average improvement is nothing to laugh at. It’s the difference between a 4090 and a 7900XTX on Windows.
  Just fyi, that isn't true, the difference is 20-30% on average, in most benchmarks at least
- It's comparable more often than not, but honestly even if it was 17% worse on average I would still stick to Linux and just build a better computer. Which is what I did before proton.
  
  No doubt and I'm the same way, I'm just trying to say that one shouldn't try to sell Linux solely based on "gaming performance" when it is definitely not the case most of the time.
  Linux is not used like windows or macos at all, and new users will definitely be frustrated enough just learning to use the operating system. Believe me, I think it is awesome that we are finally getting another gaming revolution in the community (Linux gaming actually used to be pretty good before around 2010), but keep in mind that these efforts are for the community and steam deck users. Anyone who wants to have it too will ultimately have to join the community and learn the ropes.
- Honestly, if you use Proton-GE's FSR feature for games that don't offer built-in FSR/DLSS + GameMode, you can def beat Windows performance in some Windows-only games. I know it's kinda cheating, but it does net you higher FPS on the same graphics settings.
  
  That's not really even cheating, there's windows utilities that attempt to do the same thing.
  Gamemode puts the game at an extremely low niceness value, among other things, which will make the system allocate more resources toward it.

Is it linux is faster, or is it dxvk/vulkan is faster?
- Could be both. Who knows. For high performance computing Linux is the de facto standard because it has better performances than windows, and Linux distros are usually better, stabler OSes overall when one needs raw performances. In this case, who knows, someone should investigate further
  
  I think it has more to do with Linux being easier to tweak, not some inherent performance difference. You can tweak the scheduler, page sizes, and all manner of other things to get a bit more performance if you know what your workload looks like. So it being open source and ubiquitous is a bigger contributor imo than anything inherent to the design of the kernel.
  Regular users aren't going to go through that level of tweaking, so the difference should be a lot smaller and will benefit more from general code-level optimizations than system tweaks. General purpose, high performance computing works just fine on Windows, it's just easier to tweak Linux for production compute use cases.
- Combination, and it depends on the game. Dxvk will add latency, but depending on the renderer and how the game runs the reduction in CPU overhead by using dxvk instead of native can provide performance gains, especially on certain CPU's.
  On games with a native vulkan renderer, Linux will most often just be faster since you have less system overhead burden. This has been fascinating to see though.
  First the games started to become playable, but framerates weren't so great.
  Framerates started to improve
  Framerates started to become a wash between Windows vs Linux
  We are progressing into this step: it either runs comparably or better.
  The results are mixed right now, and it's going to be real hard to nail down predictability as far as performance goes. More often than not, so long as DRM isn't involved, games run really well on day one. Older games are starting to see a performance uplift and reliability improvements through proton/dxvk/vkd3d.
  I'm very happy though that what we're talking about is comparable performance metrics. We use to be content if the shit ran at all.
  
  One comment to add to your post, Linux is better on performances not just because of the less overhead, but because manages resources much effectively. You could have a bloated linux, it still would perform better because resources are properly managed
- Proton (DXVK/VKD3D) is faster. The lightness of the system also helps.
- I think it's mostly DXVK/Vulkan
- cpu bound tasks on linux are usually completed much faster due to just how ridiculously overoptimised linux cpu schedulers are
  and dxvk can be faster than dx11 and older, but that's a pretty unusual case

This should get cited every time there's a "I'm waiting to switch until Linux 'gets there' for gaming" post.
- They are only sampling ten paaticular games. If they included all games or even just games that run poorly then it would be far behind. I use Linux on my desktop but will still boot into windows rather than fussing with it.
  
  When was the last time you tried "fussing with it"? I've been gaming on Linux for over a year now, and it's been incredibly seamless. The only game that gave me any trouble at all was Assetto Corsa (the first).
  Edit: and I did get it running. I won't lie, it was a PITA. And it ran, and I played it for maybe 30 mins. :)
- I don't even check protondb anymore. If it's a single player game with no anticheats involved, I know it'll work.
  The only reason I still have a windows Partition, is due to the lack of HDR support on Linux.
  
  Is HDR just so amazing that it's worth the hassle of using windows though? Games get shinier all the time, it's not really exciting to me anymore. Give it a year and it'll be in anyway, and people will be on to the next randomnhotness that they can't possibly live without that somehow they were fine without the year previous.
  
  I occasionally do, but mostly if I'm intending to play it on my Steam Deck and it's marked as unsupported or untested. That's still pretty rare though.
- With proton and all the work value (and others) put into it, we're at the point where it's weird if something doesn't work on Linux.
  
  Valve*
  
  That... is what I've been trying to say all afternoon but never quite got there. Thanks.
- 10 game benchmarks hardly are an argument when only 1 in 7 games on Steam are Linux compatible.
  
  10 game benchmarks hardly are an argument when only 1 in 7 games on Steam are Linux compatible.
  Proton runs the Windows version of games on Linux, including games using DX12. They don't have to be marked Linux compatible. That just means those can run without Proton (Linux native binaries).
  Those shown in the video are using Proton (e.g. there is no Linux build of RDR2).
- Waiting for a native port of playnite.
  
  Is the dev even considering supporting Linux?

Something to note: if you're VRAM limited, Linux will perform worse and it's an actual issue.
- Especially on laptops, where VRAM is halved in comparison to desktop models for whatever reason.

go AMD + Linux, this is the way
- I prefer Intel GPU + Linux because they don't have mandatory microcode, but AMD works too
  
  Do you prefer MACRO code? Micro too bite sized for you?
  😏
- Any specific graphic card to recommend from your own experience or article with tests ? I don't have same vision from reading forums, as some games seems to not work properly with amd... But I'm no expert & I try to take care about comments on internet. I'm a protondb user with nvidia gtx 1650 (laptop version).
  
  There's a long history of AMD GPU working better than nvidia on Linux.
- I bought an AMD GPU before and the experience was so horrible that it's deterred me from ever buying one again.
  I never knew how good I had it with Nvidia until I tried AMD. The main issue? Drivers. AMDs drivers were abysmally shit. I never had to 'choose' specific versions of Nvidia drivers to get them to work. I did with AMD, and some features would work while others would break depending on the version.
  Ended up returning it because it was that bad.
  
  On Linux all the drivers are included with the kernel. No software to manage either, it just works. Nvidia drivers need to be installed separately on Linux and are generally very low quality with performance and technical issues.
  Idk about Windows though, never used an AMD GPU on it personally. My Nvidia GPU has always worked perfectly on Windows.
  So I guess it's just your OS choice really.
  
  When I was due for an upgrade, I chose low to mid-range AMD card supported by new open source drivers on Linux. Literally 0 issues and nothing to install. Pure plug and play. Am not sure about performance gain or loss since I haven't touched Windows for a while.
  With nVidia it was annoying and occasionally painful experience. Annoying because you had to install drivers and sometimes nVidia stops supporting your card, so you have to chase older drivers which might not be supported on your OS now, etc. On occasion those drivers would break after update and my system simply won't start and I would have to revert to Nouveau to get any work done. Didn't happen often, but enough to be annoying and the fact they chose the worst moment to break made it painful.
  One thing I really liked about AMD cards that makes me happy I have one right now is output ports. AMD seems to be pushing more modern connectors than nVidia. In same generation I had nVidia with HDMI and VGA, while AMD pushed for HDMI and DVI, which can push analog but is at the same time digital. Since I like having two displays AMD's choice was better. These days I use fiber optic HDMI cable for TV and having card with 3 digital connectors is very nice. Pushing 3 displays with nVidia card at the time was problematic if impossible. My solution was usually to have built-in Intel card push TV HDMI and other two displays were on nVidia, but since nVidia likes stepping over open GL libraries there was no hardware acceleration for Intel.
  Granted this is all thing of a past but I don't think I'll switch from AMD anytime soon as they seem set on providing good quality open source drivers.
  
  @superguy windows or linux?
  
  oh no

Everyone called me mad when I told them that I get more FPS in linux through wine/proton than on windows native with my AMD card, look who's laughing now
- People just wanna hate. I stick on windows because some of the anti-cheats in the games I play aren't supported on Linux.
- sacrificeing 15 frames to maintain to aesthetics of win11 is worth it imo
  
  Wrooong neighborhood, motherfucker.
  Get'em boys!!
  
  17% average is scalable. It's not static 15 fps across the board. Some games may see +40fps; more demanding games maybe +4.

See? This is way less ragebait than the last one.
- Hahaha, I will admit the previous title was somewhat in people's faces. I just went with a factual title this time. XD
  
  Thank you.

People criticizing the ability of Linux to play games reminds me kind of like when people criticized solar power back in the early 90's. They would say how it's too expensive or it will never be able to produce the amount of electricity we need. Well, here we are.
- Criticism of gaming on Linux some years back was very well deserved.
  Barely any native games, and subpar drivers compared to windows didnt make it a good platform at all. And of course for basically almost every game the only choice was WINE, and more often than not it was impossible to make it work, or had game breaking issues.
  Then came the Proton days and things started to change, and with the steam deck, it's really incredible how far we've come.
- Its literally too expensive to install solar on my house to produce the energy I need.
  
  Have you looked into diy? Over 60% of the installation cost from an installer can just be labor which is ridiculous because it's actually quite easy to do. Safely and without a ton of specialized tooling. They have inverters now that's basically everything you could possibly need in a single box which makes the install trivial

The games I want to play with Linux have 0 framerate aka wont even start.
- Sounds like a problem with the game
  
  No.
- Reword the title: The very few games that actually work on Linux work better.
  
  what does "few" mean in this context? With proton the number of games (developed for Windows) now simply work. And without a bloated OS full of spyware they seem to run actually faster.
  Have you ever tried it out yourself?
  
  Have you seen protondb? A pretty impressive number of games just work. Really we are at the point now where games that don't run are more the exception, and usually it is due to Anti-cheat incompatibility or some very specific issue.
  
  Most of the games I tried worked flawlessly. Some worked better including older games. I only had one game I couldn't get to run out of like 150+.
  
  Someone's salty.

Awesome! I can’t wait to generalize the average of 10 cherry-picked games with tons of Linux work against the 2k+ in my library! I bet I can pick up CS2 with this knowledge and get 10%+ better performance!
The video is pretty neat. I’m just not sure what we gain from it.
- How are these cherry picked games? Did you maybe want me to benchmark the 2k games in your library? XD
  Also CS2 is slower on Linux.
  
  I really like that you are benchmarking. I feel like there should also be something actionable here. What do I, as a Linux gaming consumer, need to look for? What are the things that will tell me a game will run better or worse?

I just tested DayZ Standalone and can confirm for this title. Not only do I no longer have visual artifacts but it runs smoother

I find it rather ironic that I can't watch it because of the error of
Error
Too many requests, please try again later.
on a domain named hardlimit.com lol
- Yes, 2 viewers at once is the hard limit.
  
  YouTube is dead, right, guys?

It has less overhead so it should

Well in my case I get intermittent audio issues in games like the classic Alan Wake. Audio will disappear for like 4 seconds straight then work as usual for 30 seconds only to repeat again. Can be very infuriating if it's in the middle of an important dialog.

I installed Linux on my old laptop recently because it was impossible to install the drivers for the graphics card in windows. It just kept blue screening. Linux worked out of the box. From 13 fps to 120+

Didn't expect a follow up this quick. Anyway, a few random observations:
I would've tested Assasins Creed Mirage without adaptive quality, as it might smudge the results. Shouldn't make too much of a difference though, at least at these framerates.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider compares HBAO+ vs inferior BTAO, so not really that useful.
The frame graph for Watchdogs: Legion on Windows looks... weird, to say the least. Even though it ultimately comes out on top it might be worth investigating into, as it might have an effect on the other games as well.
I completely forgot how useless the benchmarks in Final Fantasy games are. At least there's the overlay.
- Yeah Adaptive quality aims for 60 FPS. In this particular situation it shouldn't matter at all.
  Still the difference is quite high to even get close to Linux. I didn't even notice that sorry.
  The aim of this video is to show fresh installs. What a user would do. You install OpenSUSE on an AMD system and fire up the games. You install Windows, run the updates, install the drivers and fire up the games. That's whta most people would do and I think they care about. Both installations are fresh out of the oven and I just ran the game son them. This is the result.
  Yeah without an overlay FF Benchmarks are pretty bad. XD Great series though!

IME it's the older games which are easier to install and have better performance on linux.
- Elden Ring was better on Linux when it came out
- I play Apex Legends, and I get way better performance in Linux. My regular squad mates were having graphical lag issues last weekend. Me on Linux, no issues. 120+fps
  
  Apex anticheat works on Linux?!? I may have to switch over. I always thought it wasn't compatible and never really checked back.

If nothing else, ths is a good example of why youtube should continue to exist. At least it plays a video in full when I click on it, instead of playing 30 seconds or so, then pauses for eternal loading. I suppose having funding to improve infrastructure does have some practical value.
- The video is just being transcoded, if you check in some hours it should be fine and you can always download it.
  
  Still a issue with the platform, if a video isn’t ready for playback, it should clearly indicate as such.

Nvidia or AMD?
- AMD, he's using a 7900X and a 7900 XTX (that naming scheme is wild lmao)

That explains part of why Steam Deck is so good.

Sigh, guess I have to get serious about gaming on Linux then. I wonder if the nVidia drivers still locks up my boot sequence.
- Don't switch to Linux for better performance. It varies a lot by game, and there's no guarantee that the games you play will run any better.
  Switch to Linux because you prefer it. Performance is good enough that you shouldn't notice a huge difference either way.
  
  Prefer it?
  Damn Microsoft creeped me out with all that spyware so they drove me off, I was perfectly happy on Windows up until the telemetry updates in 7. I've gotten used to Linux simply because that's the only viable alternative for personal computing. Gaming doesn't reveal that much personal information as compared to day-to-day personal use.
  I don't prefer either Linux or Windows for gaming, I prefer the one that gives me the most FPS. (Perhaps outdated) experience is that it's Windows systems by a large margin. And they also have support for a wider ranger of peripherals.
- If you have an Nvidia GPU don't switch to Linux, especialy if it's a pre-Turing model. If you have a Turing+ GPU though wait for a year until NVK is actually usable, then look into it imo.
  
  Or take a different plunge when you're ready for a GPU upgrade: get more bang for buck with an AMD card and do the switch to Linux at the same time.

Is BattleEye supported on linux? Id like to switch but remember people saying support for BE is not that great, and im mostly arma and dayz player...
- https://areweanticheatyet.com/
  DayZ and ARMA 3 both work. ARMA 2 does not though.
- the ones I've tried yes, it depends on the developers, for example Fortnite is not supported on Linux because they deliberately made it incompatible.
  
  Doesn't Fortnite use EAC instead?
- https://areweanticheatyet.com/
  
  Should be arewemalwaredyet
- Check your game on protondb.com to see if it runs well on linux

There was one game (ECHO) where I had weird performance issue on Windows but not on Garuda. The game is not CPU bound i think. If someone has an explanation as to why this is happening, don't hesitate to tell me : https://piped.video/watch?v=ODL-jpZgy_M
- i also get better performance in fallout 4 and skyrim on linux also skyrim being really quiet is also fixed on linux

Let me know when I can play Destiny 2 on Linux and I'll head on over.

I don't mind Windows.

For the games which run. For everything else, Windows is 100% faster than 0%.
- Protondb.com is very helpful when a game doesnt run. I forget where I found info but like a good 10% of steam games dont run using Proton, no matter what you try. And a good 70+% of games work out of the box or with easy, common tweaks. We have some other tools available like Winetricks, Lutris, and if all else fails VM with GPU Passthru.
  windows can have a similar troubleshooting workflow, dependent on Compatibility Mode for older games, and using GOG.com repacks to make things easier.
  
  Linux has gotten a lot better with playing windows games. My issue is that I have one peice of software I want to use: Serato DJ Pro - and due to how that software works with hardware and real-time audio, I haven’t ever been able to get it to run on Linux. Mixxx is a thing, but it doesn’t have the features I use in Serato.
  Would really love to drop windows for the one software I need it for.

93A1A71EABD6B6CD658458CC1F4

Right then.
But is it easy to use?
Probably not.
- You mean Linux? It's 10 times easier and better than Windows lol.
  
  As someone who's been using Linux for 3 years, the amount of bullshit I have to go through to make some of the games/modding tools work properly or having to look up launch commands for almost every game so it runs well enough definitely makes gaming harder compared to Windows "works out of the box" experience.
  Linux desktop too isn't that much better than Windows except in privacy and security. In terms of ease of use, it's sometimes on-par with Windows but seeing how you need to troubleshoot stuff when setting up and potentially at update time, it's insane to call Linux 10 times easier.
  
  Maybe for someone who knows how to use Linux, but you have to remember not everyone knows what you do. Relevant xkcd

I bet they used a base Windows system without optimizing it. I respect Linux but when it comes to gaming it will never overtake Windows.
- I just installed the systems and followed the normal procedure of what any normal user would do. If you can't deal with the facts that's your problem.
  
  Did you do the same with the Linux machine?
  Because I doubt many normal users will be able to prepare a Linux machine to play games unless it is something like a Steam deck.
  
  I know this is fabricated because if I optimize any Windows system for gaming it will score 2x performance than an optimized Linux system.
- How do you "optimize" a windows system for gaming?
  Linux is faster because even emulating games on vulkan is faster than running native on directx
  
  Emulation will never be faster than native.

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