The BEST desktop environment for Gaming? KDE vs GNOME vs XFCE vs CINNAMON vs I3 vs Hyprland

In this video I share my results on the benchs I run on multiple desktop environment / windows manager. Enjoy!
GNOME vs KDE live stream: kzbin.info52ls9gHM3V0
XFCE vs Hyprland vs Cinnamon vs I3 live stream: kzbin.infowFgmjT9hzNM
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Software used:
►CachyOS (Arch BTW)
►GIMP
►DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.6
Settings and Equipment:
►Gaming PC: kit.co/A1RM4X/pc-gaming
►Streaming PC: kit.co/A1RM4X/pc-streaming
Please report any hate speech/spam comments.
Keywords: #LinuxGaming, #A1RM4X, #linux , #gaming
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:53 Methodology
5:51 List of DE
7:30 X11
12:38 Wayland
16:12 Final thoughts

[@A1RM4X]

Some viewers were not happy with the scale of some of the bench graph. So here is the graphs updated with percentage, I hope it helps. TombRaider -X11 - FPS MIN cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/318036262877659147/1222736922703823009/TombRaider-X11-FPSMIN-Percent-BIG.png?ex=66174d7f&is=6604d87f&hm=a83a5078752060909c84eb5b0df64d665647e8ff3656d30c6d62cde0d7a277c7& TombRaider -X11 - FPS AVG cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/318036262877659147/1222736979620528188/TombRaider-X11-FPSAVG-Percent-BIG.png?ex=66174d8d&is=6604d88d&hm=a4608b0c6f43739209e0d748ab36f05eab6d19037b2ab601b827a989d4565141&

[@tykers.]

This is such a great video. Thank you so much for putting the time into it!

[@KingNick4000]

thanks this really help

[@Petephoenix]

I did some research online and it appears that updates for explicit sync in Nvidia drivers is due some time around May? I didn't previously know much about it before you mentioned it but now a lot of my problems in Plamsa 6 Wayland make a lot of sense. Thanks for your work and the video!

[@TerminalzPain]

Been wondering lately what kind of performance I was leaving on the table by using Cinnamon....looks like not a lot which is pretty cool cos I quite like Cinnamon :) Thanks for the video! Hope 555 drivers come out soon!

[@chevek7022]

Your scale is misleading because it does not start at 0. Some differences seems huge when they are not. Please give us percentages instead, or always start the scale at 0.

[@NumbaWanKfcFan]

Moved to i3 after the stream! i3 really feels different despite having similar in Apex Legends. Maybe next video you can compare different kernel schedulers like BORE vs EEVDF vs Cachy default? Great videos as always 🔥🔥🔥

[@gerarderloper]

8:10 So the best way to represent this data is to make a yellow coloum for each desktop and have it overlay on top instead of drawing a line. This works for Min FPS and 99% Percentiles which all can sit on top of the average nicely.

[@Karti200]

Glad to still using Cinnamon - i mean.. average FPS is not the highest, but the minimal one is so kinda the most smooth experience (tho woudl be nice to see frametimes too)

[@TechStache]

Great video! Do you use multiple screens with different refresh rates? Because x11 does not work for my setup, I have a second monitor with slower hz and it ruins everything

[@A1RM4X]

Thanks! Yeah multi screens with X11 can be source of issues. All my screens are at 240Hz right now, including my capture card. Wayland will solve those issues, we just have to be patient...

[@Oczkins92]

Thx for this video.I had the same problem with perfomance in gnome de.Maybe its something wrong with nvidia drivers

[@Keizer_Soze]

great video. thanks airmax (my second favorite french canadian, because kephren *insists* he is my favorite 😆)

[@A1RM4X]

Second is better than none, thanks for watching dude.

[@Keizer_Soze]

@@A1RM4X, 😆👍

[@plutomixdelirium6538]

Excellente vidéo . Ton accent est juste parfait , j'ai n'ai pas besoin d'activé les sous-titres . Pour les vieilles machines , je me demande si hyperland ou sway ,ne serait pas mieux pour les performance brutes .

[@A1RM4X]

Pour les vieilles machines, je conseillerai plutot I3, surtout si vieille carte Nvidia...

[@shelley057]

using plasma 6 here myself and shes running really nice so far ...with cachyos efd

[@pitape1822]

Excellent benchmarks with right distro and right games. Which driver version did you use?

[@A1RM4X]

Thanks! I was using the Nvidia 550.67.

[@xzygy]

I’ve been struggling with crazy screen tearing/stutter in KDE Plasma all week, switched to Cinnamon, problems gone instantly. So happy.

[@limpa756]

just be warned cinnamon has the highest latency

[@Uchiha_Madara1224]

Hey A1RM4X can you also make a distro video on Clear Linux, saw a lot of Phoronix Benchmark where it outperforms all major distro Ubuntu,Fedora,Arch and CachyOs too

[@A1RM4X]

Hey! It is in my plans, I just can´t tell exactly when... Stay tuned.

[@ilficherrimolori]

just as a FYI X11 won't be getting any updates, it's slowly being abandoned by some distros even (for good reasons) and every major DE is moving to wayland

[@keibohow69]

I would not say it's down to the desktop enviroment but the distro. I think a better test would be. You choose three or four distro's but use the same desktop enviroment on all. A lot of work yes but would be intersting for the viewer. And share your experiance of insting and setting up.

[@juampiursic]

Why the hell did GNOME perform like that? I'm on a 6900XT and KDE Plasma 5, 6, GNOME 45 all of them both on X11 and Wayland, perform about the same, there's a difference of 1 to 2FPS. I tried Fedora, Nobara and Solus.

[@koceil9025]

Better wayland support for nvidia is coming around May in a beta driver which is exciting!

[@Djexxy]

Cette vidéo me rassure sur mon choix d'utiliser KDE Plasma 6 ^^ Sinon, j'ai cherché dans tes vidéos, mais j'ai pas trouvé si tu avait déjà parlé de ChimeraOS. Si ce n'est pas le cas, qu'est-ce que tu pense de cette distro ? Et qu'est-ce qu'elle vaut comparée à CachyOS ?

[@A1RM4X]

ChimeraOS est une distro immuable basée sur Arch il me semble. Le soucis c'est que je ne peux pas la tester parcequ'il faut un GPU AMD. Si je devais partir sur ce genre de distro (immuable optimisée gaming / console), je partirai plus sur Bazzite, testée ici: kzbin.infoXhbNxnjdcXQ

[@Djexxy]

@@A1RM4X Ah ok, je savais pas qu'il fallait un GPU AMD ^^' D'acc, merci pour ta réponse :)

[@ybcanal21]

When COSMIC gets released, it will be interesting to check the performance also.

[@SwapnanilChakraborty11]

Performance of cosmic Should be pretty similar to sway .

[@nichohells]

I wouldn't switch to anything different than Gnome even if the gaming experience was insufferable (It isn't)

[@DashieTM]

Small note, if you want max performance in Hyprland or KDE wayland, make sure you have tearing enabled. Ensures you are running truly max fps instead of capping it to the monitor refreshrate.

[@pcallycat9043]

Wouldn’t it make more sense to enable variable refresh rate and disable frame sync? I suppose maybe not for pure benchmarking.

[@Kemyo0]

When it comes to HDR in KDE are you able to get the same HDR in windows ? I am having issues to get nice hdr on KDE..

[@A1RM4X]

I did not really try to get HDR working right now because I am still using X11 on a daily basis. I will patiently wait for the drivers to be Wayland ready before trying to solve those issues.

[@ALAK5555]

what about lxqt and lxde ?

[@divyanshbhutra5071]

Can you please try Cutefish DE? I really like it's looks... It'd be better if it's CachyOS with Cutefish DE...

[@Zatsando]

How to disable the KDE plasma compositor?

[@baffwoah]

On KDE System Setting, under category 'Input & Output', select 'Display & Monitor' Untick 'Enable on startup' and tick 'Allow application to block compositing' This setting only visible on x11 session

[@m.m.3753]

Best is a clean Ghost Spectre W11!

[@techofebd]

i3 and Hyprland are not the DEs but the window manager.

[@A1RM4X]

True.

[@myyoutubecommentschannel8784]

"Tom Rider"

[@TheCgOrion]

How is Wayland for AMD GPUs?

[@A1RM4X]

It should be alright. Nvidia users will have full compatibility with Wayland in the coming months.

[@serqetry]

Awesome video. Makes me glad I'm on KDE6 even though the bugs in it are driving me insane. Wayland is the biggest mistake Linux has ever made. It's not too late to make X12...

[@erjigit17]

gnome come in the first place

[@cybernit3]

Ya, Gnome did well with wayland but not x11.... but the future is wayland.... but for now he says you get -10% fps compared to X11; hope this improves in the future.

[@fofanik]

Not for me, i don't care about nvidia.

[@ideuz_yt]

xcfe4 is surprise for me, never used it on the real hardware

[@fuckyouyotube]

Something should be wrong at 7:35, min fps can't be bigger than avg fps (min some percentile or just straight min doesn't matter, min

[@A1RM4X]

There is 2 different scales for each Y axis, so you need to refer to the Y axe on the right to read the data properly, kind of confusing when you are not used to this type of graph. I will make it simpler next time.

[@fuckyouyotube]

@@A1RM4X I see, yeah, that's a really confusing way to represent data in this case. Someone could even say that it's malicious to not start the graph at 0.

[@A1RM4X]

@@fuckyouyotube malicious for what purpose? Numbers are still there...

[@fuckyouyotube]

@@A1RM4X It's often used to deceive and make a perception of a huge difference where is not much happens. There seems to be a consensus among data visualization experts that a *bar* chart has to always start from zero. I've posted a reply with links previously, but it disappeared, so I'm retyping the comment without them, just google "bar charts axis from zero" and there are a lot of articles about that and examples of malicious bar charts with "numbers on them".

[@A1RM4X]

Well the intend was not malicious. There is 2 Y axis with 2 different scales for increasing the readability, nothing else. If you perceived it as malicious, that is on you.