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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

#251

Post by chillfox »

jcgl wrote: post #156
chillfox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, compression is on and I think that's what does it considering how large games are these days.

I stay away from XFS, every time I have used it in the past my entire drive have ended up scrambled within a few months. It's by far the worst file system I have ever used, not even FAT32 was that unstable for me.

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

#252

Post by chillfox »

4oo4 wrote: post #188
jcgl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From experience having an L2ARC SSD, especially if it's nvme, can really help with zfs performance. I'm curious if they have that in their setup.

nope, but I use LZ4 compression and have plenty of ram.

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

#253

Post by p_ing »

chillfox wrote: post #251
jcgl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, compression is on and I think that's what does it considering how large games are these days. I stay away from XFS, every time I have used it in the past my entire drive have ended up scrambled within a few months. It's by far the worst file system I have ever used, not even FAT32 was that unstable for me.

Most large games are already compressed in cabinet files or similar so OS/file system level compression wouldn't gain you anything. While there are games that ship with loose files, like the Elder Scrolls series, other games like Diablo IV or CoD use archives.

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

#254

Post by p_ing »

literalAardvark wrote: post #225
zrobotics wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would consoles be any more immune to computer vision based cheating? Instead of feeding the output to a spoofed keyboard & mouse, you'd just be feeding it to a controller input. I'm not really seeing any difference in technical challenge here, and you wouldn't even need esoteric hardware since console controllers are USB devices anyways.

Since the hardware is better controlled and secured, and hardware attestation is a solved problem these days, it's not particularly difficult to enforce security to the point where you'd need to hardware hack a controller and connect it to a physical camera to bot. That's still gonna be annoying for players, but it'll greatly decrease incidence, and if reporting a player for botting requires buying and hacking a new…

Controller-based cheats have been around for awhile, like Cronus which allows scripted actions; reduced recoil in CoD, for example.

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

#255

Post by p_ing »

meibo wrote: post #240
p_ing wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only stable ABI on SteamOS is Win32. Targeting anything else is asking for it to break over time.

Valve actually ships "stable ABI" Linux runtimes that Linux games and Proton are built against, so that they don't have to rely on distribution packages, similarly to Flatpak. They renew them every few years but they stay stable so that games built against a specific runtime keep working. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

That's not an ABI.

The ABI lives below Steam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface

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

#256

Post by p_ing »

Melatonic wrote: post #19

Windows 11 is also bloated as hell by default. Curuios how they compare to a very optimized and debloated windows 11? Anybody know if Steam and games in general refuse to install in Windows LTSC? Its basically the stripped down ultimate lean version of windows. Boots insanely fast - no tracking bullshit - no windows store or candy crush. Battery life hugely improved. No big updates - security only - and for a longer…

Stupid default Apps or an extra Windows Service or few isn't going to make any difference in how the OS performs (or the out of date AMD drivers they used on their Windows install).

The foreground application gets a priority boost, it's threads are going to take a larger slice than any background thread, and with the number of cores available to the OS, they will likely run just fine concurrently.

This as some evidence of bloat equaling poor performance isn't justified. It's Ars' using 6 month old display drivers.

I'm not claiming newer drivers will solve the performance problems entirely or at all, but for the purposes of accurate testing, they should have updated them rather than stick with what the ODM is providing, which are always out of date.

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

#257

Post by p_ing »

nullify88 wrote: post #96
cma wrote: post #26

How about if installed on Microsoft Dev Drive instead of plain NTFS?

You can also achieve nearly the same level of performance by adding exclusions to Windows defender. I typically exclude the game process as I still would want folders scanned when updates / downloads are running. There's a noticable improvement to load times, streaming texture latency, and CPU utilisation. I don't believe ReFS is contributing so much to the performance improvements seen when using Dev Drives. Removin…

The file system filter is still queried using exclusions. Eliminating all file system filters yields a faster read/write.

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

#258

Post by cwillu »

dwattttt wrote: post #247
cwillu wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but he's specifically brought it up in the context of a computer's owner doing something that the software vendor (and also myself as another gamer harmed by cheating) would prefer he did not.

And if they want complete control, they can choose not to use a vendor and do it themself, for all the control they could want. Hooray, freedom!

I have no idea what you're trying to say

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

#259

Post by dwattttt »

cwillu wrote: post #258
dwattttt wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they want complete control, they can choose not to use a vendor and do it themself, for all the control they could want. Hooray, freedom!

I have no idea what you're trying to say

> unless you find it terrifying that owners of hardware have control over their hardware

I mean that the presence or absence of an IOMMU doesn't impact whether owners of hardware have control over their hardware.

It just means that the owner of the machine is able to limit what memory the devices in their system are able to access, in the same way that MMUs limited what memory every process on your system could access.

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

#260

Post by nullify88 »

p_ing wrote: post #257
nullify88 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also achieve nearly the same level of performance by adding exclusions to Windows defender. I typically exclude the game process as I still would want folders scanned when updates / downloads are running. There's a noticable improvement to load times, streaming texture latency, and CPU utilisation. I don't believe ReFS is contributing so much to the performance improvements seen when using Dev Drives. Removin…

The file system filter is still queried using exclusions. Eliminating all file system filters yields a faster read/write.

According to some benchmarking removing the storage filters offers a mild boost when compared to adding an exclusion and you don't have the benefit of some AV protection when other processes are accessing the volume like steam etc.

https://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2023/11/22/test-driving...

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