Gaming performance variability install to install

Hi, am I the only one experiencing performance variability in games from install to install?

I periodically install other distros to see if the green is grassier on the other side and I decided to do a cleanup, migrate to lvm for my arch install while I'm at it.

I have gone through 5-6 installs in the last 3 weeks, several iterations of arch as well. I always play the same 3-4 games and I know how they should perform already and I am experiencing some weird performance variability, what do I mean by this?

• Some installs have lower fps but stable 1% lows
• Sometimes if feels stuttery, even though the frametimes are stable
• Other times its just perfect

I am not doing anything out of the ordinary, archinstall with my setup, install steam, start my games.

• All AMD system
• single NVME
• Plasma with wayland

I'm stumped, I feel like an idiot looking at this issue because it makes no sense whatsoever. I finally nailed the setup after figuring out how to get LVM running, got everything going and now, it's a stuttery mess.

Edit: Things eliminated or fixed:

• stutters removed by lowering mouse polling rate to 1000hz
• wayland as a possible overhead by launching my games from the tty with gamescope