Windows vs Linux - GAMING PERFORMANCE COMPARISON

[@Luinux-Tech]

I used Alma Linux here because it is my main system (including for gaming), but as you asked I redid the tests adding Arch Linux to the comparison, here is the most accurate video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHKWl2CChtuJoNk

[@HeitorEduardo1]

Try to use Liquorix Kernel, and test. Probably the performance on linux will be better

[@IceKrabik]

man, you are testing games on the distro for servers with outdated packages with stock kernel, wayland and enabled composition, these tests are about as relevant and useful as DVDs in 2024

[@Luinux-Tech]

My bad. I tested it on this distro because it's the one I use on a daily basis, including for games. But I just installed Arch Linux with i3-wm, kernel-zen, configured the CPU and GPU to performance mode, and made a few other tweaks, and I will redo the comparison.

[@Maitreya3001]

That may be true, but I've also seen Debian12 stock kernel 6.1 perform better than cachyos in some games with the newest packages. Though I can't explain it

[@thewindowcleaner5365]

Ha

[@DetectiveSquarepants]

@@Luinux-Tech You should probably state in the title or desc that it's outdated then

[@chrisdupuy7749]

CachyOs kinda sucks if you do anything but game, same with Garuda. The issue I have with them is I don’t want to compile everything like samba xrdp, minion (for wow and eso addons) compile the jdk and javafx etc. I spend 3 hours just getting that ditto to a usable state. Same with Garuda (especially if you don’t want the crazy styling). Kubuntu is ok, but older plasma and kernel, opensuse is ok but plan an hour getting nvidia drivers working correctly..on windows I just install driver from nvidia, enable rdp, enable file sharing, in less than 20 mins I am ready to go from zero

[@glajskor90]

I don't have a low-end pc and I'm already a linux user for those last few weeks BUT this was a lovely video - you showed and said what you wanted without being biased or cluttering the whole material with useless tmi sure, it's not a revolution but I just wanted to say good job for doing a simple thing well

[@Luinux-Tech]

Thank you very much.

[@jokerphoenix3788]

@@Luinux-Tech Hi, could you test on Ubuntu?

[@martinligabue]

true, yet on linux there are far more options to improve performance by a lot, just gamescope alone has a ton of features for that, so while tinkering in windows is almost useless, on linux it can improve fps by a ton

[@Luinux-Tech]

Yes, some people have said that it is better to test on X11 and without composition. At the moment, I am installing Arch Linux with i3 to test and see if there is any improvement.

[@sebtroop23]

Thank you for this video! Every youtuber that tries to tell people about how good is gaming on Linux seems to forget that not everyone is running a 3080 on their systems, I know they probably don't do it intentionally but it is misleading either way. I'm not trying to say that gaming on linux is bad, is really fantastic for being linux, but on lower ends systems the difference between windows and linux is THERE, maybe not a lot, maybe 10fps, but when those 10 fps mean playing at 30fps or playing at 20fps, that difference may be a deal breaker.

[@wonderfullife5665]

Does windows even run on a lower end system. Doesn't win 11 had requirements to install

[@NotMienai]

is this while using wayland or x11, cus the performance between the two are NOT the same

[@yetanotherlinuxuser3185]

Especially X11 without any compositor, the perf gains are insane

[@Luinux-Tech]

Alma Linux 9 KDE 5.27 Wayland

[@taxevader86]

@@Luinux-Tech wayland is not ready for gaming stick to the x11

[@minion3806]

@@taxevader86 it works fine on my PC. what hardware/linux distro/DE are you using? I use Arch with kde plasma

[@taxevader86]

@@minion3806 hmmm thats weird i was got a rtx 3060 with beta drivers and im using a hyprland de with arch and beam ng refused to working but in x11 kde it worked pretty well what kind of kernel did you use ??

[@linuxnext]

i would like to see a newer distro as alma 9 is not made for playing games, it uses kernel 5 and probs a super old mesa version which is very important for amd gpus as these have patches for improving gaming performance, something like fedora, pop os, arch based distros or something like bazzite all have a way newer kernel and mesa that will greatly improve performance

[@Luinux-Tech]

Yes, some people told me this. I tested it on this system because it is the one I personally use and it has a relatively recent Mesa driver, version 23.3.3. As a comparison, Fedora 40 is on version 24.0.5. However, I am already redoing the tests on Arch. They told me to use a window manager without composition. I'm going to try to tune it as much as I can and then compare the results.

[@aku2dimensional]

I've been trying to explore gaming on Linux, so far New Vegas runs the same. I haven't had any luck with using Vortex to mod my games though, the file directory Vortex uses to add games will not show any Linux files where my games are stored. I also tried using MO2 but it didn't work.

[@Luinux-Tech]

Did you try this: github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App/releases Try the .appimage version

[@aku2dimensional]

@@Luinux-Tech No, I haven't. I'll see if it works out.

[@rajdipdutta3463]

The results for minecraft are very interesting. What am I missing here?

[@Luinux-Tech]

Linux uses the CPU more efficiently, has better memory management, and has fewer services running in the background. As I tested on low-end hardware, these advantages are very evident; however, I believe this difference decreases on more powerful hardware, especially on CPUs with the better single-core performance.

[@karobein27]

I can be wrong, but maybe is the fact that most games in the video are running with Proton, and Minecraft is native (i actually don't know if anyone of these were native, but minecraft is)

[@ritesh_joshi]

​@@karobein27 Tomb raider was also native

[@Luinux-Tech]

True, in Minecraft, both run natively in OpenGL without any translation layer.

[@Luinux-Tech]

The steam games that have a native version (Tomb Raider and Slime Rancher), I tested the native version and the Windows version running with Proton. In Tomb Raider, the Windows version with Proton showed greater performance, so I used its results. In Slime Rancher, it was very similar, but I also used the Windows version as it had less stuttering.

[@kalobite]

I tried gaming on linux with csgo and it had input lag, so im back to windows. I'll still use linux in the future when I have more disk space :)

[@Maitreya3001]

I think distros like CachyOS are working on responsiveness, maybe worth a try sometime in the future when you're ready to try again

[@GoonyMclinux]

I've never had input lag on any game on linux ever in 20 years.

[@heinzowski]

input lag??? which distro did you choose?

[@kalobite]

@@heinzowski No im wrong its not input lag, its actual lag. It feels like when i dont enable raw input but worse. And the fps isnt right ~200 feels like 30

[@Maitreya3001]

@@kalobite ah I just wrote a comment that you may be just more sensitive to input lag lol Those probably were bad frame timings and those can happen for multiple reasons. I would check if your cpu was running at a power saving state and if you had the right gpu drivers installed. Or if you had an older distribution and you have NVIDIA, maybe you were on Wayland with an older driver that doesn’t have explicit sync. There’s tons of reasons, usually fixable

[@wards7499]

I've tried this benchmark before with an Old Intel GPU. Yes Linux has downsides when running Windows games the performance is noticeably worse in Linux than it did on Windows. But in terms of emulation Linux is the best.

[@sledgex9]

You should also investigate these terms "gpu passthrough", "VFIO, QEMU, KVM" and "looking glass". Summary: Essentially you run a Windows VM from linux and allowing the VM to directly use your GPU resulting in (mostly) native performance. Caveat: You need a second GPU (or an integrated in addition to the gaming gpu). You can achieve it with a single GPU but it isn't for the average user.

[@Luinux-Tech]

Thank you, I am familiar with these methods. I have a VM with Windows and single GPU passthrough in case I need to do something that doesn't work on Linux

[@yetanotherlinuxuser3185]

Please try it on X11 without any compositor and i swear it'll surpass windows performance 🙏

[@Luinux-Tech]

Okay, I'll try it. Thanks for the suggestion.

[@whydoyouaskdude]

@@Luinux-Tech Also consider things like custom kernels (i noticed extremely good frametimes when combinging linux-lqx kernel + gamemode + CoreCtl + X11 without compositing, setting the AMD GPU in CoreCtl to Advanced, max clocks on everything and afterwards set it to"Do not control". For some reason this combination drops Power consumption by ~ 20-30 % while fully stabilizing frametimes (i run a RX 6750 XT)

[@rinart73]

For me Minecraft did run better on Linux. But it also crashed a lot more with modpacks due to "stack smashing" which never happened on Windows :(

[@Error8x8]

Your conclusions make no sense. Why would you tell people to dual boot when they're only going to gain 5-10fps in some games while losing +100fps in Minecraft?

[@Luinux-Tech]

If a user wants to get the best possible performance and that is the only criterion for him, Windows is still the best choice for him overall.

[@Tailslol]

This is what happen when Linux treat windows emulation better than its own native code.

[@Luinux-Tech]

Yeah, but at the end of the day, the decision to port the software is up to the companies. If it weren't for Wine/Proton, we probably wouldn't be able to play these games at all.

[@Tailslol]

@@Luinux-Tech we probably wouldn't be able to play these games at all... well no.there is windows. or emulation like dosbox. or virtual machines like vmware. apple is doing it now as well with roseta instead of proton. but they use molten vk as well.

[@Luinux-Tech]

Sorry, I meant to say that we wouldn't have ways to play natively anyway. I don't think companies would start making ports to Linux, but who knows.

[@Tailslol]

@@Luinux-Tech big companies already tried but i guess it was not worth it. After all outside valve there is official port of tomb raider and bioshock infinite.

[@Error8x8]

​@@Tailslol Your post makes no sense. Native Linux games don't run worse than emulated Windows games

[@quantumangel]

I wouldn't call a system with a discrete gpu "low end".

[@IceKrabik]

i have discrete gpu that is far worse than modern integrated gpus, furthermore there are discrete gpus that are still in production while being even worse than what i have, your statement is fundamentally wrong gpu in the video also isnt new by any means

[@Munkhbayarkhavtgai]

Linux have more stable fps even it's lower

[@fico1557]

if you have a new amd cpu linux might be a more performant option XD

[@Mr.T-v4y]

Music just gave me ear cancer

[@Luinux-Tech]

Heheheh, sorry. Do you want some lo-fi next time?

[@PalturBR]

test repeat on open suse trumbleweed, linux will win, trusty

[@Luinux-Tech]

I heard good things about the performance of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I'm making a video comparing the performance of games on several distros. I'll add Tumbleweed to the comparison. Thanks for the tip.