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

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

#211

Post by WorldMaker »

Sammi wrote: post #162
homarp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.winehq.org/ calls it a compatibility layer that translates calls on the fly. so 'translation layer' is not that unfair.

Clearly they don't want to come out and say that Wine is an "implementation of windows apis", because that would invite legal issues. But clearly this is what Wine really is for a large part. Some stuff are just shallow shims to Linux apis, while other stuff they need to make more of their own implementation of.

"WINE Is Not an Emulator" has always said something exactly like that. It hasn't exactly been a "secret" that Wine is an implementation of Windows APIs (and not an emulator/translator).

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

#212

Post by WorldMaker »

anthk wrote: post #158
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.

Also, most games are still 32-bit EXEs, so on most PCs today they are running not just in the Win32 subsystem, but the WOW64 subsystem (Windows-on-Windows 64) the compatibility layer of running 32-bit Windows applications on top of 64-bit Windows and its Win32 subsystem (it's still called Win32 on 64-bit, an unfortunate naming bug from massive compatibility break differences between Win16 and Win32 that didn't exist in the 64-bit transition, 64-bit didn't get a new API subsystem, it just upgraded the existing one, mostly).

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

#213

Post by runako »

lotharcable wrote: post #203
runako wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, if the VM could do that caching, why wouldn't Windows be able to do the same level of caching on bare metal?

Sorta. The devil in the details here. Depending on the VM technology they use they offer a variety of different caching mode and configurations, but the basic three approaches that most everybody offers are going to be something like; "writeback" means that when the guest's storage data ends up in the host's cache it is reported back to the guest as 'written'. This means that from the guest's perspective the disk is…

So if I understand correctly, you're suggesting that in essence the VM lied to Windows to improve performance? It's been many years, but I don't imagine I would have chosen an option like that. I am very surprised VMWare would default to such behavior.

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

#214

Post by WorldMaker »

hinkley wrote: post #118
schmorptron wrote: post #114

i wonder how much of that is simply due to how incredible dxvk is. I think intel even uses it as part of their windows drivers to translate some older dx version games to vulkan because it performs so much better on their cards.

I’m hearing that Microsoft has done a shitty job of tuning windows for the Lenovo device. Someone last week cited commentary that Microsoft has been working on it and they think they can reduce the Windows overhead by TWO GIGABYTES. Why is the fucking operating system using 2 gigabytes of memory in the first place, let alone enough more than that to be able to reduce memory usage by 2 GB.

Compatibility is a big answer.

Windows 8 tried to divorce more of the compatibility layers (start them up only as needed) of "The Old Desktop" to a lot of flak from the development community (and some user confusion), but if you were paying attention and used almost exclusively Windows 8 "Store" apps at the time you could get some serious memory usage wins.

Windows 8.1 walked so much of that back and made the Desktop/Explorer and all of its compatibility layers boot first again, but there was a small period where Windows 8 shined.

Presumably this sort of stuff is what the new Windows Xbox efforts are doing again, but the "boots to a full screen experience without 'a Desktop'" expectations of games and game-focused hardware makes it easier to boot the Desktop only if needed in a way that makes sense to game players that didn't make sense to general Windows users with a long tail of ancient applications that they didn't or couldn't "just" upgrade to new ones.

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

#215

Post by p_ing »

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.

Has he tried DevDrive in async mode or with filters disabled entirely?

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

#216

Post by diggan »

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…

> It does feel like games take longer to launch on average, but this makes sense given the fact that it's launching via Proton/Wine.

Also anecdotal, but I feel like Steam games on Linux compile shaders on the CPU, and maybe not super optimized, compared to Windows where they either ship with precompiled shaders, or it might use the GPU?

Still, the very same games runs better on Wayland+Linux too for me, than on Windows, way less stutters in particular as you mention.

But I'm not sure if it's because of OS differences, or that it's so much easier to end up bloating a Windows install. I can't say I treat them the same, as one is mostly a work environment and the other one purely entertainment and creative usage.

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

#217

Post by p_ing »

windward wrote: post #209
p_ing wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has NTFS and ReFS. Both are quite sane and performant.

I know. Neither are either. git is noticeably slower, the locking is untenable, the case-insensitivity is a source of bugs.

Both file systems support case sensitivity.

Use DevDrive in a virtual disk or secondary volume, there are significant performance gains for things like git, nodejs modules, etc.

It helps to know the system. The perf would be an issue with any file system on Windows due to the file system filter architecture.

Locking is a function of the NT executive and not of the file system. It was a design decision. I’ll see if I can dig up the reasoning later.

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

#219

Post by kjkjadksj »

baobun wrote: post #135
thewebguyd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Happens with whisky and macos in my experience. It is like as soon as a game is installed and you do something like chuck a grenade, no explosion the first time ever you do that.

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

#220

Post by kjkjadksj »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #58
Cloudef wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiplayer games without dedicated servers is dead end anyways. I dont need a "anti-cheat" daemon hooking into kernel scanning files and other memory while playing a game. Communities in dedicated servers are much more efficient at moderating the player base than centralized match making ever will be.

This is where I'm at with gaming. Even outside of cheating, it's not fun to me to be dumped in a game with screaming children/manchildren. If I'm playing a game I want it to be with my actual friends. And then I don't have to worry about them running cheats because I trust them. Once you get to match making, global ranks, etc it's just getting too sweaty and ruined by cheating/low trust/etc.

At least in TF2 the sweats are all on the community servers. I can get like 3 kills a round on skial servers. I’m trash there. When I use the valve matchmaking servers I dominate the lobby about half the time.
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