Gaming on ZEN 4 to ZEN 5: Windows vs Linux

[@deephazarika2259]

the fact that we are talking about gaming performance comparison between Windows and Linux instead of whether or not games work on Linux itself is amazing

[@Level1Techs]

tested over 35 games! the ones we looked at here are both the best and worst behaved :D

[@mondodimotori]

I hope we reach a point where we can even talk about production softwares in the same way.

[@Kyle496]

​@@mondodimotori It's just a matter of time, once Linux starts taking over for gamers you'll have those same gamers demanding for their hobby projects be able to worked on in Linux too. If they don't give the future Linux gamers what they want you'll get a new company who'll offer those services, either way win/win

[@resltessmindtwr]

i somewhat agree because of the past, but still the standard now in gaming is windows unfortunately. So i don't want to glorify Linux just yet, we need to reach and surpass windows's greedy asses.

[@homermorisson9135]

Since you brought it up, good sir, I'd love for you to do a deep dive into the state of gaming on Linux in 2024, ideally between a couple of beginner-friendly distros, pros/cons, something like that would be really cool and more importantly really helpful. =)

[@ea_gaming]

I second this!

[@harleye1235]

I would enjoy this too.

[@peterjansen4826]

The harsh truth about beginner-friendly distros, those don't really exist. It is not as much about beginner vs experienced users for distros (though to some extend that is at play), it is about finding the type of distro which fits with your computing needs. Generally speaking there are 2 types of distro's as far as beginning Linux-users should matters: stable and rolling. Both have advantages and downsides. If you use new hardware then on a stable distro you will have more work and a rolling distro makes it easier. If on the other hand some software which you use has a bad update then the stable distro is easier. It just depends on your computing needs (what software you use, what hardware you have, what priorities you have) which works better. Here hopefully helpful advice to pick a distro. First and foremost, don't pick a distro out of a list of hundreds of distro's, it will only confuse you. Instead pick a rootdistro, there are only a few rootdistro's which >95% of the distro's use: those rootdistros are Debian/Ubuntu (Ubuntu uses Debian), Red Hat (Fedora), Arch, OpenSUSE and Gentoo. Obviously Gentoo is not a good choice for most beginning users so there are only 4 rootdistro's left. Then you pick a desktop-environment (or windowmanager) and finally you pick a distro based on those needs. You can go with some gaming-oriented distro or some distro which uses your preferred desktop environment out of the box or whatever or just install the root distro and set it up yourself, which probably is better because you will get more independent quicker. If you like Arch but don't want to set it up then you can try your luck with EndeavourOS. If you like Debian-based then you should probably consider Mint of popOS.

[@Amerikanskis]

I also would like to see his take on this

[@SpentAmbitionDrain]

I would love that as well. Maybe setup Steam and Heroic Game launcher (gog and Epic gaming?), that Proton updater app and how to use it.

[@Tuhar]

"Linux's headaches are haphazard, Win11 headaches are... deliberately adversarial" - This is why I'm really looking at linux instead of moving to Win11. I feel like I'd rather dig in and learn something in troubleshooting Linux headaches, versus just soul crushing annoyance with Win11.

[@krykry606]

It's pretty good decision. It takes a week or two to adjust, and then you will forget about Windows.

[@MMBaconslice]

YEP

[@Mediiiicc]

Linux is a pain in the ass, I've tried switching several times. Got tired of having to fix so many things.

[@andljoy]

Honestly as somone who has been at this for a long time linux gaming is not that much of a pain in the arse, sure sometimes there is anti cheat issues or an update breaks a setting and you have to have a little play ( this happens on windows too by the way), but other than that most of the time you just install the game and play it.

[@peterjansen4826]

I have been gaming exclusively on Linux in the last 4 years, before that 1 year almost exclusively. It really is getting there. In most cases it literally doesn't matter for your game-playing experience whether you use Windows or Linux, but there are a few tricky things. You know the ramble about kernel-level anticheat so I won't mention any more on that. Other than that I noticed two problems. Problem 1 is Epic Games Store: in most cases the game just works as it should (currently I am playing Super Crazy Rhythm Castle on Epic which was for free in the previous week) but Epic does something weird with shadercaching on Linux and it is not flawless, in Borderlands3 I noticed that after some time of playing I got bad stutter: most of the framerendertimes were normal but I would regularly get 1 frame which took around 100 ms rendertime. That is clearly a problem with shadercompiling. The 2nd problem: sometimes the launcher breaks so don't depend on your games always working when the publisher forces another launcher on you. The last 1-2 years this happened with EA, Ubisoft (by far the worst of the publishers for Linux) and 2k, in the case of 2k this happened because they decided to all of the sudden add an extra launcher to advertise, Windows-gamers complained a lot about ti too. I know that for EA and 2k it is fixed now, I don't play Ubisoft games so I can't tell anything about Uplay on Linux. Outside those things there can be occasional problems but those depend on which distro you use and how often you update software, I use a rolling distro so for me it mostly is cutting edge and sometimes bleeding edge software. The worst problem I had for gaming with my distro was when AMD introduced a bug in the kernel, an error with > vs >=, the developer used the wrong sign and he did not discover the bug because of Resizeable bar, it had to do with the CPU not seeing most of the graphics memory, many games wouldn't even start. Another issue which I had was that glibc got compiled in the wrong way by a packagemanager of the distro which I use (Arch), the developers from Apex used the out of date (less efficient) hashing method for glibc and glibc was compiled without support for that becaues the packager misinterpreted a statement from a Valve employee who stated that that problem should be solved while it wasn't. Long story short: gaming on Linux is fine as long as you don't mind skipping on some kernel-level anticheat using games and you are a bit flexible with not playing some games for a few days up to months (for 2k it took around half a year) when the launcher is broken. If you are like me and you are have a lot of games which you like to play then you will be fine. Mostly I recommend you to install both mesa and amdvlk and set mesa to be used by default for your games. Why? Some games demand amdvlk and refuse to run without it, for example Rise of the Tomb Raider. I think that those games could use mesa fine but the developer does a weird check which blocks the game from starting if amdvlk is not used. So you have to learn how to set an environment variable to set mesa as default (you can easily look that up) and how to set amdvlk in your launcher when it is required. Reddit and the Archwiki are great sources for this information.

[@rsb3609]

A very quaint way to put it......"deliberately adversarial'.Well done sir.

[@Bassalicious]

Yup. Might aswell be MS's unofficial slogan. Absolutely nailed it.

[@neuronic85]

"Starfield is a mess." Also a good review of the game itself.

[@FrenziedManbeast]

I've been a lifelong Windows user/gamer. I've used Linux precisely as much as I've had to for work and personal uses where it was warranted. But I'll be honest: I'm closer now to daily-ing Linux than ever before, and videos like these keep poking that part of my mind to make the switch the next time I image my drive.

[@peterjansen4826]

Awesome! Mister Merlin.

[@edding8400]

I switched about 2 months ago it is worth it

[@felixcosty]

Switched to Linux Mint, the OS gave me two minor problems that where my problem, because I like to mess around with some things, that the average gamer would not bother with. For gameing it works great, sometime you have to find the right version of Proton to work, but that is a minor problem. Do not have many games on Steam, most of my games are on Epic for free games on Thursday, and GOG where I purchase all my new games.

[@rajenwilliams]

I only use Windows for gaming for the past 5 or so years. No regrets daily- ing with Linux. If/when Windows games work just as well or better on Linux distros, I'll be on Linux 100%.

[@MikeDawson1]

I switched my home gaming desktop to linux at the beginning of the year, and I'm never looking back. I ran Kubuntu for a while and I still love it, but CachyOS is just better in every way

[@MarioCRO]

Great video, thanx for all the testing and data. Very interesting to see.

[@benjaminoechsli1941]

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Wendell and his fellow "janitors" have been a _godsend_ during this kerfuffle. I appreciate that he says Windows is still the superior gaming experience, but Linux is (likely) good enough. I'm dipping my toes into the penguin pool.

[@evilleader1991]

I have a pihole at home and its crazy how much chatter/information gets intercepted by my pihole when i boot into windows vs linux. Absolutely insane, even ran chris titus tool and it still tries to call back to base a lot...

[@WesSites]

Me running zen 3 with no plans to upgrade until AM6: “mhmm… interesting”

[@stanisawszczypua9076]

My point exactly - I was on Zen2, I looked at Zen5 benchmarks and.... ordered Ryzen 7 5700X3D 😅

[@bhume7535]

5800X3D is beastin still.

[@DavideDavini]

I went for a 5700X3D with the same goal. We’ll see if pans out.

[@brysonoakley1028]

I'm still rocking a 1700 with a bit of an overclock. I want to do a new build but I kinda want to wait for the new graphics cards....

[@DavideDavini]

@@brysonoakley1028 I was rocking a 2700X with SMT off. It was doing okay with my 2060 Super. But Sinckclose hastened my need to upgrade. Now the CPU is mostly twiddling its thumbs. But I plan to get a 4070 Super this Black Friday.

[@willfancher9775]

Really loving this back and forth of Hardware Unboxed doing unbelievable amounts of testing and Wendell improving the methodology and the overall understanding of the story.

[@nezbrun872]

... and just where is LTT in all this, with their 7 figure lab, boasting automated testing, and populated with more operatives than you can shake a stick at? This should be right up their street, shouldn't it? Or is the LTT lab nothing more that a movie set?

[@kevinerbs2778]

​@@nezbrun872LTT is like the Mr Beast of pc and pc gaming.

[@blazewardog]

​@@nezbrun872They have started rolling out their power supply reviews so that process is "done" being made. From what I remember their automated benchmark software has some bugs which led to complaints the last time they used it? So it's likely being reworked. Also for their goal (have data on every part), this sort of investigation doesn't really fit with their automation. They are testing everything at stock (minus auto over locking) on a standard windows install as they are trying to be helpful to the average buyer. Anyway, my point is there isn't a reason to throw shade. The different things different reviewers focus on give move overall value to the space. It's one of the reasons I enjoy L1Techs with their more server/Linux focus compared to say Gamers Nexus with their scientific testing of gaming/creative performance

[@WayStedYou]

@@nezbrun872 finding their next sponsor or startups cooler to auction off after misrepresenting it despite being sent the GPU it was designed around alongside the one off part.

[@24wherath36]

@@nezbrun872 LTTLABS only posts to their website, with them sometimes doing small test and benchmarks that are referenced in videos (mostly on Shortcircuit). Currently they do not have any CPU reviews. They only have GPU, PSU, Mice and Keyboard reviews posted. I'm guessing the reason they do not have CPU reviews yet is because they haven't set up a good way to automate benchmarking CPUs or something. The CPU page just says 'coming soon' right now.

[@TwistedD85]

After checking my most taxing Windows games on my Linux install I finally gave in and just started using Proton and Wine, it's been flawless. And I say that after it was very much not flawless for the longest time. Steam's work with Linux has been a godsend.

[@systemBuilder]

A voice of reason in contrast to the hysteria of HWUB ...

[@intermarer9145]

It can a bit of a hit n miss, but overall Proton is a godsend. It's what made it possible for me to switch over to Linux fulltime.

[@dot_boi]

I still love how Ashes of the Benchmark still has its nickname. Back in the days when an RX480 was new

[@BrophyMichael]

Wendell, I suspect you're thinking of Tomb Raider (2013) That is about a decade old. However, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is only 1 year older than Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018 & 2019 respectively)

[@kevinerbs2778]

Can't that game use two gpus in mGPU? Cherynolite got updated to use dual gpus for rtx 4000 series. Its posted on techpowerup forms in graphic cards.

[@damianabregba7476]

I suspect it was more of a exaggeration of how much that game was used as a benchmark

[@Kris-od3sj]

​@@damianabregba7476 And the same could be said about Cyberpunk or Borderlands. SotTR is a great pick for a cross-OS benchmark, because it has a competently made Linux native version, as opposed to e.g. RotTR or TR2013.

[@kevinerbs2778]

​@@Kris-od3sjbut its vulkan though vs dx12 isn't it?

[@JoelZBub]

I really appreciated this video. Thank you

[@EhNothing]

Thanks Wendell! It's great to see a more nuanced and complete explanation than a certain other outlet keeps posting half baked clickbait video after video about. Appreciate your perspective and objectivity.

[@eram424]

Im not a Linux user, but I can easily tell Windows is getting to a point that people would rather deal with the shortcomings of Linux if they haven't gotten there already instead of sticking with Windows.

[@linuxdragon57]

Windows 10 pushed me over that edge before I ever started using it. I've been daily driving Linux since 2016, and gaming on Linux since 2018

[@AmericaWhatsup]

You’re a Linux user…… don’t lie…..

[@sMv-Afjal]

Pirated game difficultto run.

[@alen2937]

@@sMv-Afjal If you really wanted to do that you can, just as you can use Wine with any other windows program, pr even Steam proton by adding the program as external game)

[@krazyolie]

For the type of people that watch this channel, yes. For average users, no. Most people do not want to run command lines and compile their downloads.

[@Waldoe16]

What I like about linux is the windowing system, it is more elegant. When a game crashes in full screen you can easily alt+tab and close, vs in Windows, you have to open task manager and still it won't let you see anything and I have to log off.

[@cedric5947]

AMD has just released an AGESA to resolve the memory latency issue. I'd love to see the same tests with emulators, especially RPCS3 that uses AVX.

[@andersjjensen]

As far as I can tell AGESA 1.2.0.2 only fixes the inter-CCD latency issue and has nothing regarding the memory QoS tuning.

[@julioprado7676]

That's a comparison I wanted to see!

[@spuchoa]

Great video Wendell!

[@RedSntDK]

There's so many proton versions and GE spinoffs of those proton versions, and other combinations of runners that you can get wildly different experiences. And DXVK still has a lot of room for improvement, so it can honestly only get better.

[@Kneedragon1962]

Thank you, Wendel.

[@ramanmono]

Linux has game mode. That works better than windows game mode as well. Learning new things every time.

[@Vitis-n2v]

It works quite a bit differently though. Windows gamemode tunes the game process tunables while linux gameode mostly tunes systemwide options but reverts them back to the original values on exit

[@ramanmono]

@@Vitis-n2v What are game process tunables? I'm sure windows game mode doesn't mess with in game settings.

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

​@@ramanmononah Windows basically does the same as feral gamemode where it applies a different scheduler with different priorities to the affected executable. Basically most OSes use a fairly relaxed process and GPU scheduler because most systems are insanely powerful which means they can make use of the low end low thermal power they also have, "game modes" pin the given process high in the priority list and use aggressive schedulers to keep the CPU/GPU clock high or pin at max

[@andljoy]

Linux has bugs , windows has intentionally hostile design...... and bugs. Honest , i have played games on and off on linux for almost 20 years, its way better now and honestly less of a pain than windows. All my games are in a nice little launcher that has no stupid adds or bloat or what not and i can just play them. When i want to update the system it just updates and just works and when i want to install an application i just install it and it works i don't have to go though the windows bullshit.

[@mabonhunts]

There is no "windows bullshit" when it comes to installing stuff. There is however Linux bullshit when it comes to installing stuff, until Linux starts letting you side load stuff the way windows does it will NEVER be as popular. If I have to go to the command prompt every time I want to install something that doesn't come from your repository its a pain in the ass I don't give a shit about security this and security that, that's what Avast is for. It needs to be easy for brain dead people to do or it just not going to be popular. You want everyone to ditch windows and jump onto the Linux bandwagon then Linux has to change in ways that they refuse to change right now.

[@NKG416]

@@mabonhunts have you tried linux mint?

[@genderender]

@@mabonhuntsbro i’ve played games on windows for years that would randomly stop working and then have *no* idea what to do because there is no troubleshooting on linux i can try many options and usually end up with a working game also these days i almost never even care to look at linux compatibility. shit usually just works also also, you don’t want linux. you want windows that isn’t good. you have to change for linux, it’ll never change for you

[@mabonhunts]

@@genderender There is TONS of troubleshooting forums for almost every game on windows have you been living under a rock

[@genderender]

@@mabonhunts there are people who give you what to do. there are no tools to figure out what is going wrong. i’ve had games on windows with issues and everyone is like “weird it works for me” or gives me steps that don’t do anything if a game is broken in wine for linux it will complain and spew out info to figure out what you need to do

[@MikeDawson1]

out of curiosity, which kernel version, nvidia driver version, and compositor (x11 or wayland) were you running? Also keep in mind that DX12 on Nvidia on Linux has a huge performance hit compared to Windows

[@jaysonmueller5094]

Linux Mint with Lutris and Steam, the gaming is very good.

[@zerotactix5739]

Linux Mint default has noticeably higher input lag. You install same game on Windows and notice the huge difference. I've currently replaced Mint with Bazzite OS and it's better, but i can still feel the input lag more than the input lag that I can notice with LSFG on Windows, which is a great piece of software I can't live without now.

[@micahottaway8455]

Linux is sometimes unpredictable and a little tempermental, but Windows tracks you down and tries to kill you...

[@ChinchillaBONK]

Tsundere Vs Yandere. Got it 👌🏻

[@IRefuseToUseThisStupidFeature]

I actually find linux more predictable than windows, and with modern windows, when something goes wrong there's just nothing to he done.

[@Fals3Agent]

that's a bit hyperbolic don't you think

[@acters124]

Thing is, if you want to personalize your linux, I usually end my major changes for first install with either a script or declarative configs. Linux is powerful if you literally automate it, which is not really possible in windows most of the time without running into many more edge cases or unsupported or frowned upon functionality where the companies aim to have high "user engagement" metric. Unfortunately, it is not helpful how often the linux cli tools/options can change and have a non-standardized the experience. I think linux devs need to focus on stability of the cli interface/options.

[@livemadseason]

Windows was killing me with forced time consumig updates, removal of optimisations I did and even with installation of bloatware I have already removed. What a piece of crap.

[@MikeBob2023]

Bravo, Wendellman! Thank you! 🙏🏼👍🏼

[@nukedathlonman]

I know what you mean. I still like gaming on Linux though. :-)

[@rolandohiebert2144]

I hope valve makes all games work on linux and releases steam os for desktop.

[@Hugh_I]

valve has done a phenomenal job with proton already. These days almost every game runs flawlessly. Exceptions are generally only in few new titles for a short time after release, and with games that use AntiCheat that deliberately refuses to run the game when the Windows env it expect isn't there. The last one is really the last remaining bigger issue and that one is really out of the hands of valve and on game devs to fix.

[@rolandohiebert2144]

@Hugh_I Thing is about 50% of the games I play have some sort of anti cheat or drm that makes them unplayable on steam os. So what I really mean is that anticheat and drm need to be gone or work in linux.

[@DoNotFitInACivic]

Beat me to it!!

[@Marc.Google]

They are working towards it…

[@mikelay5360]

Only if the fanbase is significant enough and it makes financial sense for them.

[@Marc.Google]

Enlightening stuff, thanks for the top notch content as always, Wendell.

[@benbonney]

Gaming on Linux is so great just for the simplicity of gaming once setup. There is no junk on my gaming rig

[@mabonhunts]

So I assume you deleted all the bloatware that comes with EVERY Linux distro? There is stuff that comes with every linux distro that you will NEVER use and just sits there taking up space. Prove me wrong show me a usable by beginners Distro that doesn't have bloatware! BTW bloatware is ANYTHING that isn't needed for the OS to work.

[@genderender]

@@mabonhuntsa bloated distro is still only 20gb and doesn’t affect performance

[@alen2937]

@@mabonhunts very little space compared to windows. And such utilities can be easily uninstalled.

[@mabonhunts]

@@genderender nothing that come stock with window 11 affects proformance either unless your using a 10 year old CPU

[@genderender]

@@mabonhunts lmao, hilarious joke just switching to linux for my quad core i5 6 years ago improved every cpu limited game i played

[@robertmyers6488]

Do you have 1% low graphs as well? Thanks Wendell

[@MontyChimera]

"Ashes of the Benchmark" LOL

[@Bryan-T]

Some of these are showing huge gains for zen 5, way beyond what I thought.

[@SpentAmbitionDrain]

I think the release of Recall will do it for me. I'm done with Windows and their prying. Some sacrifices will have to be made I guess, but at least I will be rid of their BS.

[@HalGailey]

Hey Wendell, any interest in checking the windows to linux zen4/5 performance disparity with an AMD gpu instead of nvidia?

[@MoultrieGeek]

My own experience with AMD GPU Linux performance is...mixed. RX 6000 worked just fine and the bios made just about everything available for tweaking through corectrl or LACT. RX 7000 on the other hand is a unmitigated disaster. AMD has throttled performance by limiting power draw and severely restricting fan control. Without LACT (and kernel 6.8 or greater) my RX 7900 Hellhound is limited to 276w - 54w under stock Windows - and maxs out at 330w - 50w under Windows 380w max power draw. Plus driver bugs report bogus over temp conditions that throttle the card, even at idle. AMD has shown no interest in fixing this.

[@Hiryu666]

I'd like to hear more about what you're doing... I get substantially less performance in Linux with Starfield. I have an RTX 4090... Are you running it through Proton? Maybe you have better launch options? Starfield is a game I'm willing to give a chance... but I'm not willing to boot into Windows for it. 😆

[@pukalomaster3321]

​@MoultrieGeek so with a rolling release like arch with corectrl it should be fine right?

[@MoultrieGeek]

@@pukalomaster3321 Arch is fine, just make sure to add the amdgpu kernel parameter in grub to enable overclocking/undervolting. I find LACT does a better job with fan control than corectrl but YMMV. Neither of them allow you to disable fan stop at idle though, fan control only kicks in once a preset temp is hit ~50c.

[@mhelmreich1]

J Christina had some interesting results where found as much as a doubling of FPS using LinuxMint vs Nobara. Could you do a comparison?

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

Very informative. 🙂 Didn't know about game mode on Linux. Honestly, I haven't played much in the last few years (lack of time). Maybe now that I've got a new 12-core processor I'll find some more time. Thanks again for the great comparison.

[@RifterDask]

Ubuntu is my yardstick for when something is ready for prime time in Linux. It should be ready for most gamers by the next version. It’s ready today if you know how to add a PPA for drivers and switch VRR on. Yes, I know. Forgive me, it’s the one where all my accessories just work.

[@GottKrampf]

OS are tools I swap according to my requirements. This usually means that I use Mint for most games and everyday use, Arch if something closer to upstream is needed, Windows for modded games and stuff that isn't available on a better alternative.

[@freddyv.2756]

They apparently fixed the core-to-core latency with the latest AGESA update.

[@WayStedYou]

was ~120ns down to 70ns even more reason for this whole mess to have been delayed until the end of sept alongside the X870 launch instead of rushing it out against..... no competition

[@zakur0978]

it wasn't real latency, just miss reporting the letancy

[@user-dz3ph7dl4m]

would be interesting to see this done with a 7900xtx - but great info

[@alen2937]

I have one, no issues whatsoever on Debian 12 and Endeavour OS

[@lubossoltes321]

Since about 2022 or so, gaming on Linux is pretty straight forward (I have not had a consistent linux gaming rig before that). You have 2 main options: Steam and Lutris. In my limited selection of games, Steam + Proton just worked on any game I tried, even those where I had to force Proton via options. Lutris is a bit more involved and may be hostile to the casual user but when I remember the days of Wine + Diablo 2 back then, the experience is still amazing. It is still not up to par with Windows, but if you are using a reasonable recent distro and game via Steam, you will not notice the diffence 90% of the time.

[@john-paullavoie9496]

Once steamos gets a public release I'm probably going to be switching to it from my existing Linux distro.

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

What specifically about SteamOS Desktop Edition are you waiting for?

[@EhNothing]

@@ThePlayerOfGames I would assume it's gaming compatibility and greater functioning for games specifically, but I can't say for sure.

[@Kwazzaaap]

They cannot do anything until nvidia starts contributing to Linux. Having a latest gen nvidia card, as a gamer would like to, on your desktop running Linux is a recipe for becoming that guy that froths at the mention of Linux in a comment section.

[@100organicfreshmemes5]

​​@@KwazzaaapAMD graphics cards are perfectly good unless you care about raytracing a lot. There's no real gaming-related reasons to choose Nvidia over AMD unless you really want those shiny lighting effects, which are only in a relatively tiny amount of games. Of the games with raytracing a big chunk of them are shitty games anyways. See: Godfall, First Descendant, Forspoken, CoD & Battlefield, FNAF Security Breach, Halo Infinite, Saints Row (the new one), Skull & Bones, etc.

[@Kwazzaaap]

@@100organicfreshmemes5 I'm not talking about games, I'm talking about nvidia's driver not working with your desktop environment. I.E. all the graphical glitches people who try to use Linux report. I have a 1080Ti which is 7 years old at this point and nvidia still shipped an update that made my desktop segfault

[@middle_pickup]

I switched to Linux a month ago, and I agree with your description of Windows being adversarial. Making an OS is obviously a hard thing to do, and bugs happen. This is true for both Linux, and Windows. The difference is that Microsoft on top of its bugs beat you over the head with their user experience choices. That's the whole reason I moved to Linux.

[@-yttrium-1187]

I would have loved to see some benchmarks of factorio/statisfactory type games. These are usually the games that benefit the most from higher end CPU's and its really useful for people to see what kind of UPS improvements they can expect compared to their systems. There are tons of benchmaps you can use and they are usually very consistent.

[@livemadseason]

I am on Nobara for last 1 year, gaming, working etc. No issues in my flow. I even consider is a big improvement over windows.

[@wtfdoino605]

Hope the Linux devs start sandbagging in the game performance. Got to keep windows a viable bait for the hackers.

[@ShinDMitsuki]

Might be a lot of work so I understand not doing it, but would it be possible to redo the test with AMD graphics? I know it's a CPU focused test, but most of the CPU time in a game is spent in the driver anyway (or doing something related to a graphics workload), so it would be interesting to see if mesa vs AMD's windows driver is going to have a large delta.

[@kevinerbs2778]

Wouldn't that infinity farbic limit threadripper too though or does have the higher bandwidth of quad channel and octtochanel over come that?

[@Brommes]

this is more like what I love to see from you :) Im gaming on linux . This machine is a 5700G 48GB ram and a 1080ti it plays every game I have in my steam library like Rust ( non EAC ), valheim, V Rising, XCom 2 - chimera, World of tanks, Civ 6, Elite Dangerous, Baldurs gate, EverQuest 2, Guild Wars 2 and so on . I'm using Linux Mint 21.3 on this machine and have no issues what so ever . If you have some better hardware than mine you should be alot better off .. I have 60 - 100 fps in Rust 1440p on ultra .. Linux is Free, software on Linux is Free and most importantly NO Microsoft spyware and easy to install .. If you are looking at differences in FPS at 150fps + seriously ? to 90% of gamers it will have no impact on your game .

[@Thiccolo]

I have been looking for ways to debloat windows I realize I should consider Linux. Started using Linux VMs, distro hopping to see what I like. I ultimately settled on dual booting Ubuntu and fedora. Although, I did not know how game performance would be affected on a different OS entirely. Lo and behold you drop this video, at the time I needed it. Thank you

[@SB-mr2nk]

Yay Wendell made this video thank god

[@MrYossarianuk]

great benchmarking video

[@syncmonism]

I certainly wouldn't recommend buying a Zen 5 CPU for gaming, unless maybe you frequently play one of the few games which actually does run significantly better on Zen 5, especially if you are willing to do a little tuning or overclocking. While we should NOT just ASSUME that performance will improve significantly in games within a reasonable amount of time, we should also not write-off Zen 5 as being bad for gaming either. While Zen 5 definitely doesn't look like a good value for gaming right now, a lot of people are failing to realize that Zen 5's architecture has a lot of changes and new features vs. previous Ryzen generations, more significant changes to an AMD CPU architecture since arguably Zen 1. These changes may take a long time for software to be well optimized for. It is not unusual for it to take a LONG TIME before new architectural features become well optimized for in a wide range of games and other applications. Sure, AMD likes to be able to implement changes to an architecture which WON'T require software to become better optimized, but at some point they need to implement changes which WILL rely on much more labor intensive changes and optimizations to software in order to maximize performance progress over time.

[@syncmonism]

While the change to chiplets was a huge change for the cost and scalability of their designs, this mattered most for being able to make and sell excellent high-core count server and workstation CPUs, and, for the most part, did not require a lot of changes to software outside of leveraging better support for higher core-counts. I have heard actual experts talking about the changes to the Zen 5 architecture, and they seem to be really interested and fascinated with multiple major changes that have been made. One change I have heard of is that each core can fetch 8 instructions per clock cycle, which has never been done before, though I have heard that Qualcomm is also doing the same thing in some of their new upcoming chips. Another change is the way it does branch prediction, and another major change is that Zen 5 has NATIVE AVX-512 support. I have heard one seasoned game developer in an interview speculating that native AVX-512 support seems likely to eventually become very useful in games, but it might require native AVX-512 support to become standard in all X86 CPUs before that starts to happen in a wide range of games.

[@kevinerbs2778]

​@@syncmonismthe 8 wide is not active while running a single thread through the core of zen 5. It still uses 4 wide for speed, all while having a slightly longer pipeline which completely defeats its whole purpose. When using both threads in a core it becomes active. This is either a bug or a design choice.

[@NinjaQuick]

Apples to Apples in Star Citizen, I get substantially better performance in Linux than Windows counterparts.

[@HerbertSpringer]

subjectiv most games run on linux very well. Maybe the most compaires are done without active discord, chrome browser and some other stuff running beside gaming. For me counts, minim FPS to satisfy the monitor capability reached - how dies it feel und and how does the whole sysem response. To hunt the highest top performance in a consumer environment is a very expensive nonsens. What do you really get with 300 FPS more? - not more quests. -not more content -no better ai of encounters - no smarter dialog -no better soundtrack -no better story writing and telling. Whot you get: More heat and more noise. A significant more expensive rig, and sometimes fewer game time, because you have to work longer or harder or need even an additional job to be able to afford all thes stuff. This was written by my other twin the other me is thinkig about a new amd system.... But besides my rant, you did a very good job - as always.

[@the_beefy1986]

@Wendell when you test SotTR on Linux, are you running the Linux native or the Windows executable via Proton?

[@offline6974]

I work as a it-pro in a windows enterprise enviroment, some development & some device management. In a enterprise world windows, apple or google framework products make sense. If you deploy 20K devices you want an easy framework/policies to work with. At home none of this makes sense, you have 1 device so you can do whatever you want. linux gives you freedom do whatever you want, you might loose 10 frames vs windows but who cares. The mountain to climb is that you are in control and tbh most people rather have microsoft, apple or google decide what is best for you.

[@ericthedesigner]

the king of perfect timed micro stutter is strange brigade and the outer worlds is crazy stutter.

[@XanTheXanadul]

I'm wondering if you benchmarked in Wayland or x11. Because in wayland, games currently have to run in the xwayland compatibility layer. Afaik xwayland has some performance issues both in max fps and microstutter.

[@linuxnext]

what gpu was being used tho in these benchmarks? edit: ok its nvidia, makes sense that most games are loosing under linux, if you had benchmarked a amd gpu this would be a different story also you talk about gamemode, LAVD will be present soon in the kernel by default that will fix these issues with gaming that requires the user to try gamemode, distros like bazzite are already using it with the sched-ext which is what allows the kernel to do each operation differently, LAVD is just one for gaming while there are others for other tasks, pretty cool ngl

[@ViniRustAlves]

I'm feeling like setting up dual boot for next platform upgrade so I can play what runs well on Linux and what doesn't run well or at all I use Windows 11.

[@alen2937]

All AMD based hardware or Intel but Radeon GPU will work nicely.

[@ViniRustAlves]

@@alen2937 thanks for the feedback, I'd probably use Ryzen + Nvidia, would that work fine? Thought about going Intel, but the price to performance isn't good here in Brazil. Even Ryzen 9000 have better price to performance than 13th gen or even 12th gen

[@alen2937]

@@ViniRustAlves If you are going to use Nvidia, then I would recommend Endeavour OS, which directly has the option to use the Nvidia driver (I'm sure that there are other distros out there with that support, but for my 4790k and Titan X Maxwell, it worked wonders.)

[@J-Kimble]

I've been daily driving 2 computers for a couple of years now. 1 of them is more of a workstation and is running linux (manjaro in the past, pop os currently). The other is my gaming machine, I almost exclusively use it for gaming. I prefer linux in almost anything, especially recently. Windows manages to get in my way most of the time, with all the unwanted crap: the telemetry, the ads, the haphazard updates, the spying, the completely broken smb protocol which microsoft can't seem to figure out, the "security" features. And windows stopped offering me anything in return for these costs. Oh and speaking of costs, I had to pay for windows, while linux is free. The only thing keeping my windows install in place is the anti-cheat system of the multiplayer games I play. Some (like helldivers 2) I can even play on linux.

[@kasimirdenhertog3516]

Steam has pretty much unlocked gaming on Linux. There used to be a performance penalty of 10-20%. I never thought Linux would someday surpass Windows in some games, I thought there would always be a small penalty, because games aren’t really made for Linux. It’s great to see how far things have come 🙌

[@MrFatpenguin]

Thank you for gaming benchmarks on linux!

[@sheldonkupa9120]

A bold statement about Linux and gaming! And so true. Its all the addicts stating Linux is better. I use Linux since 1992 and use Arch btw😉😂 i tried it and with some love you get almost everything running. But fan control, undervolting gpus and temp optimising is a lot easier with Windows.

[@instaff215]

Most of the games from the test were created specifically for Windows, but in Linux they are launched through an “extra” layer in the form of Proton. Taking this into account and looking at the test results it becomes clear that Linux is really better from the engineering point of view, because with an extra mechanism in the chain it works no worse. Try to take a Toyota piston and use it in a BMW engine to realize the superiority of a system that successfully implements such manipulations.

[@sheldonkupa9120]

@@instaff215 Very good point. Its insane from the engineering point of view.

[@sitaroartworks]

7:40 - Red Dead Redemption 2 is pretty similar experience because it is also natively developed with Vulkan API on Windows side ;) That's why more and more game devs should go Vulkan. It is still hard to detach from Microsoft way of thinking nowadays but things are always in time to rapidly change :)

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

AGESA 1202 that has just come out in various (Beta) BIOS releases seems to have fixed the Zen 5 inter-core latency issues.

[@andersjjensen]

Only the inter-CCD issue which was obviously a bug. They went from 200ns to 75ns, which is about the same as Zen 4. The core-to-core latency within the CCD is still 18-20ns, which is also about the same as Zen 4.

[@domino2560]

There are people that play Forespoken?

[@noenken]

..................... no. 😁

[@WayStedYou]

No, and the studio isn't going to patch it either since they got shut down a year ago

[@bleack8701]

I like comparing the frametime graphs on mangohud vs capframex frametimes on windows. That said, I'm still learning about linux so I'd love more videos on the topic since I'm preparing to move once win 10 support ends

[@dexter2433]

i am 95% Linux gaming now and on my 7800x3d with 7900xtx Star citizen runs so much better on LinuxMINT than it dose on windows

[@hiru92]

is that native game 😮

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

​@@hiru92 someone did some great Wine shims for Star Citizen so it's running in a version of wine with additional tweaks. It's a pretty good way to run the game but it's still a trash "game".

[@nexxusty]

You have the same rig as I do, essentially. How is gaming in Linux? I literally only care about frametimes, lol. Is there less stutter running Linux?

[@andersjjensen]

@@nexxusty No. On average a little worse, especially when CPU bottlenecked. If you gank hard on the GPU that is of cause the great equalizer. But like on Windows it always works to adjust your settings down and then set a frame-cap. I have a 7950X3D and an XTX at 1440p165Hz (which is completely overkill for my gaming needs) and in single player games I target between 90 and 120FPS depending on how fast paced it is. So I adjust my settings until my 1% Lows are a little above my target, say 93, and set a frame-cap to 90. That results in a very smooth flat-at-11ms-frametime-graph. I did this on Windows too, but about a year ago the last game in my library started working satisfactory with Proton, so now I have finally obliterated my Windows partition after 25 years of dual booting.

[@owlmostdead9492]

That autofocus is going nuts, seems like the S5ii phase-detect AF still has some issues.

[@xgeko2]

Hey if you read this I was wondering if you wouldn't mind doing a video on properly optimizing linux for gaming. I think there are a lot of users out there that would benefit from that as operating system releases like popOS, Bazzite, SteamOS etc are helping to push linux gaming into higher levels of popularity. I realize the steamdeck was also a huge help for this. I also think there is a larger group of users that are getting sick of the windows privacy concerns that would benefit from this as well.

[@Terran.Marine.2]

Why is actual high speed ram support absent on both AMD and Intel? There is DDR5 8000M T/S available, but it appears nothing can actually utilize all that speed.

[@CVLova]

amd doesnt really scale after 6400. intel doesnt really scale after 7600. you will find 6400 be faster than 8000 on amd.

[@gusgyn]

@@CVLova This is not true, Zen 5 does scale at 8000, the problem is that it's hard to get 8000 stable on AMD, not all CPU / memory / mobo combo will do it. On Intel it's not much better, but it's better than AMD if you ignore other issues like not totally stable overclock and CPUs dying

[@CrazyPinkWomen]

@@gusgyn nope, Zen scales better with low latency than with higher MTs

[@gusgyn]

@@CrazyPinkWomen If you look at benchmarks, 8000 is faster than those lower, it's just not worth the gains on how much you'd have to pay more for it

[@kevinerbs2778]

​​@@gusgynthat would mean bandwidth is problem. Excrpt like Wendel said the infinity fabric is atill limiting zen 5. So unless qaud channel Threadrippers 9,000 end up faster with RDIMM's, which they shouldn't. The limit is still the infinity fabric and they need t6o adjust to use dual infinity links from the i/o die to improve it.

[@TankEnMate]

When ntsync finally get merged into the mainstream kernel and into wine staging we'll see some fantastic uplift in some games.

[@shaneeslick]

G'day Wendell, I am enjoying these Zen4 Vs Zen5 Performance videos, including the Linux Vs Windows sections. As someone who never has Linuxed but is interested in trying Linux Gaming 🤔which Linux Version would you recommend ???

[@WereCatStudio]

15:44 yes, people that use FSR/DLSS but those are most likely GPU bound anyways if they have to resort to upscaling in the first place

[@draakevil]

Did you perhabs run Shadow of the Tomb Raider natively? It uses Vulkan then. DXVK and VKD3D are great, but far from perfect. Especially for poorly optimized titles.

[@markushahnenkamm]

This video showed it quite good - if you have problems with windows you are at the sake of microsoft On Linux you or someone else can help

[@systemBuilder]

Were any games run with wine? I was surprised at the variety you were able to test ...

[@shieldtablet942]

The way to test this I think is games like Cyberpunk, which loads many threads at high utilization. Maybe AC Valhalla and Starfield, though that one seems to rely more on high ST performance on a few threads. I think that may show a better indication of what to expect in the future for games. Yet, what people seem to be missing is that RAM latency and throughput is key for gaming performance! So what did AMD do? They kept the same IO die... There were improvements that add up but without improving RAM clocks gen over gen, this is what we get. Furthermore, it has been explained recently that Zen5's dual scheduler works independently and benefits only SMT scenarios, otherwise going unused. This will mean less improvement on speculation/ST performance that would otherwise be possible.

[@matt-n2t]

still run the odd game at 1280x960 on my 19"crt when the mood strikes

[@Sommyie]

Ayy, free FPS. My 5900x is happy.

[@askeladden450]

You should also include 1% lows. Thats where in my experience Linux really shines. Extremely stable framerates, which is much more important than a few more average frames.

[@dkvello]

Would this be relevant for Virtual Windows VMs (W11 and WS2022/W2025) ? Considering datacenters running lot's of Windows 11 VM's (VDI workloads) or Windows Server VM's. Would moving all those W11 VDI VM's to 24H2 free up a lot of resources?

[@nicovolker86]

Fckin HDMI forum doesn't allow 4k 120hz on AMD in Linux

[@_sneer_]

use display port. AFAIK some HDMI-DP adapters work as well

[@ILoveTinfoilHats]

Who is using HDMI on a high end monitor? Use displayport like a normal person

[@eldritchtoilets210]

@@ILoveTinfoilHats Some of us are using TVs as gaming PC displays. I prefer DP by a mile too but it's sadly not an option on the LG C series for example.

[@GainingDespair]

I can get 2200mhz IF on my 7600 though benchmarks (like cinebench, cpuz, etc) have all had higher CPU scores at IF 2166? Maybe its 2167 but yeah there is a performance bump for sure. I get in the ball park of 2% which seems insignficant but its consistent.

[@rch5395]

Wouldn't it make more sense to test a rolling release distro to ensure the latest patches for new cpus (I'm not sure if nobara is, but typically, people mention only tumbleweed and arch)?

[@NSVS1410]

Hey, I noticed a typo on the slides that start around 4:24 In the Ashes of Singularity fps results for Linux, The text for 9700X has one extra 0 in the cpu name. It is "97000X"

[@BrandonMeyer1641]

I got a dual drive dual boot setup on my system. I use Linux to write cuda code and windows to play games. Life is good for me this way.

[@doxydoxdelamanca9902]

How much for that MSi Godlike Mobo box?

[@LtdJorge]

Is this with the latest AGESA? It’s looking pretty good in the inter-core latency with that BIOS.

[@awaiting-pancakes]

How come the 7700x win11 shows 209 fps for cyberpunk while the 9700x above it shows 205 and in the video a spread of 190 to 205 is mentioned. Is the value for 7700x on win11 erroneous? Also how are the charts sorted? Most graphs seem to be ordered by performance like in the red dead chart you see it go 9700x Linux to Windows then 7700x Linux then Windows seemingly sorted by performance but in the case of cyberpunk 2077 and with blackmyth wukong we see a higher performing zen 4 placed below zen 5. Is this some odd choice to always keep the zen5 above the zen4 but only when looking at the same operating system?

[@PuOop-j9l]

was this an nvidia card or amd? cause i can't see some of the differences you describe on the xtx with latest mesa and 6.11

[@catsspat]

I still like fine wine😉

[@Sunlight91]

Zen+ was also only a 5-10% improvement. However the low prices made them immediately better.

[@vogelimarc8795]

What Distros do you use for Gaming, Arch? I Wanna switch, and already tried it Multiple times, but my Favorite Games do not run on Linux because of the Anticheatsoftware.