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Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

arstechnica.com

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Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#131

Post by flohofwoe »

Tbf, this mainly seems to compare shitty/outdated 3rd-party Windows drivers against a vertically integrated system where Valve has complete control over both the hardware and software.

E.g. the difference between the Lenovo and Asus Win11 drivers is sometimes bigger than the difference of the faster Windows driver to Linux.

It's also not all that surprising though, there's a lot of very smart people working on Proton while the general quality level in the Windows ecosystem is slowly but steadily declining.

I also wouldn't be all that surprised if running a D3D11 or D3D12 game on a Proton-layer on Windows would be faster than running that same game without Proton. Sometimes Proton might have workarounds for 'API abuse' problems of specific games which the native D3D implementation or driver doesn't have.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#133

Post by cassianoleal »

preisschild wrote: post #126
umbra07 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, just my anecdotal experience. Those with dedicated gaming rigs will be more than fine with Linux, but those of us on underpowered hardware still seem better off with Windows, unfortunately. On the other hand, Linux (or more accurately, the Linux desktop ecosystem) doesn't support a lot of high-end PC gaming features well: HDR, Nvidia GPUs, VR, etc.

> On the other hand, Linux (or more accurately, the Linux desktop ecosystem) doesn't support a lot of high-end PC gaming features well: HDR, Nvidia GPUs, VR, etc. > HDR Already supported > Nvidia GPUs You have it the wrong way around. NVIDIA had issues supporting Linux, not Linux supporting NVIDIA. AMD drivers work fine, so its not a linux specific issue. > VR SteamVR works though?

> > HDR > Already supported

Is it though? I confess I haven’t tried in a few weeks but until last time I did, to get HDR in games you had to start a session with `gamescope` rather than a DE, and still had to set a bunch of flags - and in some ways have a very subpar experience with problems with mouse movements and other issues I can’t recall.

I exclusively game on Linux and I find the experience far superior than doing anything on the other OS, but last I checked HDR was not actually supported.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#134

Post by fithisux »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Might be unfair to call Proton a "translation layer" because the Win32 API is not defined in terms of system calls but rather a set of functions exported from a DLL. Proton supplies a DLL that implements the Win32 API using Linux syscalls. Windows supplies a DLL that implements that Win32 API using Windows syscalls that you're not really supposed to use directly.

There is also NanoX. Not fully Win32 replacement, but I think it is a good start.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#135

Post by baobun »

thewebguyd wrote: post #14
haswell wrote: post #13

In my purely anecdotal experience over the last few years, performance ranking is as follows: 1. Steam on Linux via Proton + Wayland (Niri) 2. Steam on Linux via Proton + X11 (Xfce) 3. Steam on Windows 4. Games on Linux launched via other means (it's possible I was missing out on certain flags/optimizations, but this is just about the average experience) The biggest thing I noticed when switching to Linux was an impr…

Interestingly enough, I've had games that had both a native Linux port and Windows version, and the Windows version through Proton ran better than the native Linux version. This ended up being true for Civ5, Civ6 and Cities Skylines (1). With those admittedly limited examples though, I don't experience the same ranking in performance, but I attribute that to my non-gaming hardware vs. any problem with Linux or Proton…

I wonder of this might be due to your Linux nvidia driver (nouveau?) pinning the card on baseclock by default while the Windows one will allow it to scale up? Something I heard somewhere that seems applicable here.

In that case it might not be anything the game devs or Steam can do anything about but something you'd have to fiddle with on your system.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#136

Post by baobun »

komali2 wrote: post #55
dcl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't support NVIDIA GPU's!? Is this a display or gaming specific thing? All the ML people are using NVIDIA GPU's on Linux.

Nvidia support across the desktop ecosystem is poor, for example practically nonfunctional in Sway. And just buggy in other Wayland based desktop environments (kde seems to be the best in my experience).

I'm doing PCI passthrough of a 1080 to an archaic tiling X11 window manager and so far it Just Works with noeveau. XFCE also worked fine before I decided I don't want a full DE. Rock stable. I will move dists before I move to Wayland by the looks of it.

i3 should be pretty easy switch from sway if you haven't tried.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#137

Post by ChocolateGod »

weiliddat wrote: post #30
umbra07 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, just my anecdotal experience. Those with dedicated gaming rigs will be more than fine with Linux, but those of us on underpowered hardware still seem better off with Windows, unfortunately. On the other hand, Linux (or more accurately, the Linux desktop ecosystem) doesn't support a lot of high-end PC gaming features well: HDR, Nvidia GPUs, VR, etc.

AFAICT HDR is supported, like on the Steam Deck

HDR on Nvidia with Linux is still very glitchy, I've had the driver crash a few times trying to use it.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#138

Post by ChocolateGod »

0x38B wrote: post #69
haswell wrote: post #13

In my purely anecdotal experience over the last few years, performance ranking is as follows: 1. Steam on Linux via Proton + Wayland (Niri) 2. Steam on Linux via Proton + X11 (Xfce) 3. Steam on Windows 4. Games on Linux launched via other means (it's possible I was missing out on certain flags/optimizations, but this is just about the average experience) The biggest thing I noticed when switching to Linux was an impr…

Side note, Niri is a fantastic WM. When I saw the Phoronix article on HN talking about the addition of overview mode and more, I finally took the plunge and spent an afternoon converting over from Sway.¹ Anecdotally, I've seen less hangups on Niri around fullscreen games and floating windows, perhaps thanks to X11 running in xwayland-satellite. 1: the hardest part was finding a bar that supported i3status-rs; not a f…

> X11 running in xwayland-satellite

I wish more Wayland compositors took this option, seems like a cleaner method of keeping X compatibility and not allowing Xwayland to bring down the entire compositor.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#139

Post by The_SamminAter »

ryukoposting wrote: post #115
jekwoooooe wrote: post #39

The last missing piece for full Linux gaming is anticheat. Last I looked into it, the major vendors don’t want to support it due to lack of kernel security and the ones that do, game devs refuse to allow it (destiny for example) One we can play AAA games I am literally ditching windows forever. Steamos is the best thing that has happened to gaming

Don't forget the ancillary applications that gamers want. If you follow Discord's website, you're gonna end up installing a DEB file manually. Then, every couple weeks, Discord won't launch until you go download another DEB file and install that. Oh, and good luck getting Discord screen sharing working on Wayland. I tried for hours, gave up, and switched to X11. So, just in Discord, we've already run into two hideous…

Discord is shipped in a number of package managers (I don’t know the status for mainline apt repos).

I know that this isn’t an easy solution/doesn’t go against your argument, because it isn’t download-and-run simple, but discord’s version can be modified with no consequences in a build_info.json file. I used to do it manually, back when they updated it every once-in-a-while, but due to their current tendency to push updates every few days or so, I’ve made a few-line bash script to fetch the latest version (thank you httptap) and patch the file for me. For screen sharing, I use whatever current discord client on GitHub supports it for Wayland, which usually has the added benefit of not limiting quality and framerate options.

But yes, you do have a point, it’s not just ‘as simple’ as it is under Windows - when Windows works properly.

Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

#140

Post by armada651 »

mmis1000 wrote: post #105
armada651 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, it's a cat and mouse game where the vendor is the mouse. The goal of anti-cheat isn't to stop the world's most advanced cheaters. Those are already unstoppable because they now use Direct Memory Access over the PCI-E bus, so the cheats don't even run on the same computer anymore. However since those cheaters are few and far in-between they can be handled through player reports. The goal is to stop the medi…

With the emergence of AI cheating, cheats don't even need access to memory anymore. The cheat can entirely run on mouse and screen peripherals and the computer will have totally no idea what's going on. The best you can do is behavior analysis. But it always comes with chance of misreports.

Direct Memory Access cheats will always perform better as they can reveal the location of an opponent before they're even visible on the screen.
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