this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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169
Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds (arstechnica.com)
submitted 11 hours ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Not in niche games. Rimworld and Stellaris (for instance) are dramatically faster on Windows, hence I keep a partition around. I'm talking 40%ish better simulation speeds vs Linux native (and still a hit with Proton, though much less).

Minecraft and Starsector, on the other hand, freaking love Linux. They’re dramatically faster.

These are kinda extreme scenarios, but the point is AAA benchmarks don’t necessarily apply to the spectrum of games across hardware, especially once you start looking at simulation heavy ones.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Minecraft and Starsector, on the other hand, freaking love Linux. They’re dramatically faster.

Vanilla Minecraft, maybe, but vanilla Minecraft can run on two potatoes and a rusty spoon.

Running with shaders, there's a noticeable performance hit on Linux - I drop 20-30 FPS in Mint with the latest Nvidia drivers. Going from ~80 FPS to ~50 is noticeable.

In vanilla Minecraft, going from 300 FPS to 350 FPS is kinda moot.

[–] accideath@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

Maybe a bit of a nvidia on linux being kinda meh thing. On my AMD card, mods n shaders run terribly in Windows but the same mods n settings in Linux are perfectly smooth.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

I was testing heavily modded Minecraft, specifically Enigmatica, which chugs even on beefy PCs.

Out of curiosity, what mod are you running for shaders, specifically? That may have an effect.

[–] IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 11 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

This has been the case for a while now. Few care.

It's the usability issues. For the love of God, valve might just fix Linux desktop.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

I find neon pretty usable these days

[–] neshura@bookwyr.me 19 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

What surprises me is that when windows is faster the difference isn't that significant but that when Linux is faster it's by a lot.
For example 59.1 vs 59.8 FPS in Borderlands isn't that significant of a difference but 52.4 vs 44.6 FPS in Cyberpunk certainly is.

Really makes you wonder just how badly Microsoft fucked up Windows for things to end up like this.

[–] Hubi@feddit.org 13 points 8 hours ago

Half of Windows 11 is probably coded by Copilot at this point.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

FPS is not that meaningful of a metric if you get worse graphics or flitches due to wine not implementing something. It might be something that you can't see of course.

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Is this an actual concern or a theoretical one? I think I heard that some nvidia specific features don't work out of the box in some games but never heard issues due to wine 'not implementing something'. I feel like that would just cause a crash, no?

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 7 points 6 hours ago

Actual concern, had these subtle issues with wine games multiple times. Often they aren't game breaking just annoying.

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 6 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Not if you have a slightly older Nvidia GPU. I am seeing 10%-15% lower frame rates in many of the games I tested.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

If you have an nvididia GPU you aren't using SteamOS.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

That's been my experience on a 3070 as well. Especially in games that are just meeting whatever Steam considers the most basic 'playable' level for Steam Deck certification. Those that score higher may have a slightly smaller performance gap.

[–] ObstreperousCanadian@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

What is slightly older? I'm using a 3070 and my frame rates are the same or better in Linux.

[–] Draconic_NEO@sh.itjust.works 9 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Linux has many performance benefits over Windows on the count of there being much less bloat and unnecessary garbage included but also SteamOS has the extra benefit of running games and apps independently in gaming mode with little to no background processes, kind of like how games run on a Console. Background apps and the Desktop do chew up resources which won't be used by the games.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 7 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Nah, more like, Linux has better process scheduling, better CPU scheduling and better I/O scheduling.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Don't forget the difference in legacy software support. The answer to legacy support on Linux when an update breaks something largely being, "just don't update then, and maybe they'll fix it". Meanwhile Windows will run just about any 32-bit application designed for Windows all the way back to the 90s that you throw at it.

The Linux community at large swings wildly between being extremely welcoming and helpful with figuring out how to fix a problem you run into as a new user, or completely useless and actively hostile with a superiority complex only rivaled by rich narcissists.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Talk about whataboutism.

Backwards-compatibility was until Windows 8.1 a selling point. Now, old games run better in Wine on Linux than on Windows compatibility mode.

And on Linux, that's what Appinage and Flatpack are for. Or in worst case a VM, but that's for both sides.

[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 12 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'm sure the lack of constantly running ai spyware has a little to do with it.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

That too.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 7 hours ago

Yep, the Windows compositor is actually a pretty big resource hog all things considered. Plus it fucks with frame pacing

[–] profgrumpypants@midwest.social 27 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

My partner runs Windows, I run two separate distros not by choice but by driver support. I was messing around on her computer the other day, had to pull something up. I was startled by just how sluggish the entire experience was. Mind you, one of the distros I run is a destroyer of ram. I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was hanging out on a computer with fifty viruses and the pop-ups were coming for me.

[–] maltasoron@sopuli.xyz 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I run Windows 10 on my own laptop and Windows 11 on my work laptop. Sluggish is the right word for W11: every action seems to take more clicks, more time and more effort. I suspect it's partly because the animations are slower because it needs to load more bullshit.

[–] EisFrei@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago

Parts of the 11 start menu are actually a react native app.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 27 points 10 hours ago

Linux/SteamOS: a better Windows than Windows :D

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 20 points 10 hours ago

You know you are doing something wrong when even Mainstream Media wanks off about windows being shit

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world -1 points 5 hours ago

A lighter weight OS designed for this specific use case is more efficient than a general purpose OS. This isn't surprising.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I have no doubt that "bare metal" games' performance is better under Linux but what about things like cpu scheduling for multicore or directstorage?

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 hours ago

The few games I've played that had a native linux version either were too light to make a difference (FTL) or actually ran worse (paradox games), which is a shame.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 4 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I've never heard about directstorage before, and by the description it's an xbox api, does windows even support it?

The goal is to enable handling of up to 50,000 requests per second while using at most 10% of a single CPU core

That's not really impressive, you get 100k iops without any tweaking at all and cpu shouldn't even blink at it.

[–] claymore@pawb.social 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yes it runs on windows, if I recall it's to pass data from storage to the GPU directly without passing through the CPU. Which lowers CPU usage and speeds up things like game loading or texture streaming for example. You probably found references to Xbox because it was implemented there first with the launch of the current gen consoles.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 1 points 7 hours ago

Interesting, there is no support of direct io from wine, and it's a different to what linux does (50k iops is still laughable tbh) altogether.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yeah it's a Windows (11?) feature. AFAIK it's only supported explicitly by a handful of games, but it does appear to make a major difference for those games if the hardware used is up to the task.

It might just be a feature in the same category as "Nvidia hairFX" or w/e as a marketing gimmick though.

[–] DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

And linux has io_uring which can handle millions of syscalls from a single thread without breaking a sweat. In my experience, I/O on Windows is just really slow, every file operation takes 10s to 100s of times longer than on any Unix-like kernel (1000s if windows defender is enabled)

[–] xep@fedia.io 4 points 9 hours ago

DirectStorage is not good on Linux, at least for Monster Hunter Wilds.