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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

#151

Post by mslansn »

graynk wrote: post #141
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.

It's getting there though. I own a high-end PC with nvidia GPU and I play VR on my Linux setup via ALVR (I own Quest 3) It's not straightforward and full of workarounds I have to do, but once you're in the game it works great

By the time it gets there there will be tons of other new features that Linux won't support.

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

#152

Post by graynk »

mslansn wrote: post #151
graynk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's getting there though. I own a high-end PC with nvidia GPU and I play VR on my Linux setup via ALVR (I own Quest 3) It's not straightforward and full of workarounds I have to do, but once you're in the game it works great

By the time it gets there there will be tons of other new features that Linux won't support.

Doubtful but ok.

It's not lacking features for me, it's lacking polish

Feature-wise the main missing feature is kernel level anticheat which I personally don't care about

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

#153

Post by viraptor »

zrobotics wrote: post #119
flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #92

Quote: Today, though, Ars testing on the Lenovo Legion Go S finds recent games generally run at higher frame rates on SteamOS 3.7 than on Windows 11 That's not just a buried lede, this title is straight up wrong (or at least, not backed up by data) With SteamOS coming to arbitrary hardware, that is a very bold claim to make. And not one that ars has data to back up, apparently. It's also an embarrassment of an articl…

The choice of games is also super strange. Why include borderlands 3? A 2019 cel-shaded release that isn't super demanding seems odd. Homeworld and returnal also seem odd, they're a little more modern but I don't typically see them used as graphical benchmarks. The only game on their list that I typically see for benchmarking is cyberpunk 2077, the rest of the list honestly looks like they did some cherry picking wit…

> cel-shaded

Borderlands is not cel-shaded. People keep making that mistake for quite a while though.

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

#154

Post by viraptor »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #60
sitkack wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to test on both of course. I am arguing that one should target the fast happy-path on Proton as Proton is a subset of the Windows APIs that runs faster than Windows.

Proton isn't a subset of the Windows APIs though. It's very likely that you could end up depending on behaviors which only exist in Proton.

That's very much not what I expected. Do you mind pointing out something Proton implements that windows doesn't?

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

#155

Post by dottjt »

easyThrowaway wrote: post #149
dottjt wrote: post #111

The main pain point I have with SteamOS is game compatibility, in particular with older games (90s/2000s). Maybe 60% of games work and it's such a headache trying to get it working, if it can be fixed at all. Modern games however tend to work really well.

Can't say that Windows 11 compatibility on this regard is any way better. Anything pre Dx-9 is somewhat broken one way or another. I've recently found about Dreamm[1] by AAron Giles (a well known emulator developer) which is basically a very lightweight os-indipendent reimplementation of some windows and directx calls specifically for some Lucasarts games written during that time period, It would be nice to see a sim…

I would have to disagree. Those same games that didn't work on SteamOS worked flawlessly on Windows 11.

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

#156

Post by jcgl »

chillfox wrote: post #81
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…

Been a Linux gamer for years now and I think you are correct on your frame rate observations in general. If you use ZFS (single nvme) then you can beat windows load times by a fairly large margin. My husband and I have identical hardware for our gaming computers (he uses Windows and I run Linux), it's not uncommon for my computer to load games 10 seconds faster than his.

Why do you think ZFS helps? I’m guessing you have compression turned on? IME, ZFS is rarely better in terms of raw performance, compared to e.g. XFS.

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

#157

Post by chithanh »

fooqux wrote: post #40
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

Anti-cheat today is a stop-gap measure at best. For various reasons such as improved OS security and security concerns with this software, ring zero anti-cheat won't be around forever. Besides, it's a cat and mouse game where the vendor is the mouse. We already have the technology now to do it better. A combination of only sending what info a client should have, and server-side checks. As soon as something like UT sh…

> Anti-cheat today is a stop-gap measure at best. For various reasons such as improved OS security and security concerns with this software, ring zero anti-cheat won't be around forever.

I think that traditional kernel-level anticheat is going away. But the reason is more that when CrowdStrike caused mass outage, Microsoft stated that they want to provide standard interfaces for security sensors, and forbid kernel-level access otherwise (and anticheat can be considered a kind of security sensor too).

If these interfaces become standardized then Valve/Linux could in principle implement them too.

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

#158

Post by anthk »

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.

Wine/Proton it's just another Win32 implementation for Unix. Win32 it's a subsystem on top of Windows NT too.

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

#159

Post by andreldm »

Valve has done an amazing job turning Linux gaming a reality, I really admire their efforts. Unfortunately I had to switch back to Windows on my gaming rig due to a Steam bug which unnecessarily downloads the shader cache of several game every single day, disabling the cache hurts the performance. That’s been plaguing many users for years and surprisingly Valve hasn’t fixed it: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1028...

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

#160

Post by Sammi »

armada651 wrote: post #140
mmis1000 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are players who aren't on screen even in the client memory? The server shouldn't be sharing sensitive information.
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