SteamOS vs. Windows on dedicated GPUs: It’s complicated, but Windows has an edge
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It might not always be faster to run Linux instead of Windows, but it's always morally better.
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I just snagged a very similar Minisforum machine to run SteamOS (or more likely Bazzite) on the great room TV. If you don't try to run ultra/rt/CRANKED settings I'm sure the 780m is more than capable given it's several times faster than what comes in the Steam Deck.
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I know quite a few individuals who have or are in the process of switching from Windows to Linux as of a few Windows updates ago.
The chosen Linux distro varies, but the reason for the change has been the same: “I want nothing to do with AI on my OS and I resent the heavy-handed manner in which it is being rolled out.”
For such people, I do not reply with “I told you so”. I simply welcome them into the fold.
The chosen Linux distro varies, but the reason for the change has been the same: “I want nothing to do with AI on my OS and I resent the heavy-handed manner in which it is being rolled out.”
For such people, I do not reply with “I told you so”. I simply welcome them into the fold.
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I don't know exactly what the precipitating event was but a matter of a month or two ago I just snapped and said "fuck it, let's go" and selected Bazzite for my first ever home linux install with a GUI (I do use it at work for some things, so I'm not a COMPLETE noob to it, but far from an expert) and that night I had everything except star citizen and DCS working. The next night of effort, I had star citizen working, including head tracking. The night after that, DCS was up and running. I still technically have a windows partition but it's only for calibrating my Virpil flight controllers since trying to do that under Linux doesn't seem worth the squeeze.
Is it PERFECT IN EVERY WAY? Nah. I had to do some building from source for the head tracking stuff and there are a couple of hiccups and annoyances here and there, but they piss me off less than dealing with Windows does.
Am I going to even try and get my Reverb G2 headset working? Probably not. I decided to finally be honest with myself and note that I almost always fly DCS in flat mode anyway so why stress?
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And that's a sentence that can be interpreted in a startlingly wide number of ways, considering it's just three words long.
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I don't disagree that there are people who just want things to work the first time, and maybe this says more about me, but with PC gaming in general that's just not going to be the case.
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That's kind of the opposite that I experienced. I've been dual booting off of a little mini PC with a 780m GPU and on the handful of games I've tried on both, it seems like the Linux side has been getting a few more fps. Nothing that my eyes can notice, but by the computers own measurements. And with Microsoft's continued insistence that they should get to shove whatever AI crap they want down my throat and turning on stuff that I turned off with updates, I am strongly considering moving to something like SteamOS on my main PC as a permanent solution.
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Any chance Ars can revisit this with something other than just average FPS numbers?
The 1% / .1% lows are what are the most interesting in this comparison I think - not just the averages.
On my desktop things are immensely smoother in Bazzite vs Windows 11.
The 1% / .1% lows are what are the most interesting in this comparison I think - not just the averages.
On my desktop things are immensely smoother in Bazzite vs Windows 11.
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Agreed. Having switched to Ubuntu and Steam on my gaming laptop I’ve had no more issues than I would have had on Windows. I’ve also just received a Steam Deck and it’s even easier on there as Valve has done most of the work for me.
There’s still some bugs to work out (and Nvidias drivers) but I’m pretty much set on this path and happier for it.
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Those people need to buy a console. Windows and Linux are both their own ever-shifting minefields that prevent it from just working the first time.
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Actually if you want it to work the first time you just … buy the steam box.
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No, SteamOS is meant for the SteamDeck and the new SteamBox which is x86 (amd64 specifically) and Valve is pushing it on ARM for the new VR headset thingie.
If you want to run Linux and Steam (the app) and make use of Proton (the compat layer doing the Windows system call translation to Linux system calls) on your own hardware just use one of any number of Linux distros. Some cater more to "living room gaming / console out-of-the-box" and some more towards full workstation OSes.
You "can", technically, try to make SteamOS (the OS) work on your random hardware, but it's a hack job because Valve has built it heavily for their own hardware only. They're not stopping you from doing whatever with it, but they're not making it easy for you either especially if you have a nVidia card.
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Probably just SteamOS, but someone would have to do a lot of installing and testing to see how various distros perform.
Anecdotally and subjectively speaking, Bazzite on a late-gen Ryzen CPU and RX GPU doesn't show any deficits when gaming vs Windows. Which is to say it performs well enough.
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Don't virtually all AMD motherboards allow you to disable cores and set performance profiles to those of lower-tier SKUs? I think that while one might argue the difference isn't major when GPUs are being compared, there's no reason not to do this and pull one stick of RAM since single versus dual channel is usually much closer in performance than doubling the amount. The case had to be open for hardware switches at least five times anyway... Not that this is meant to be a super accurate representation of the potential performance of the Steam Machine.
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Cyberpunk 2077 runs in Proton on SteamOS, as does every game tested in this article. They're all emulated.
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There is no emulation here. It's x86 all the way up and down. Proton on linux is just an alternate application runtime to the Windows stack.
The Steam Frame on the other hand runs on ARM and adds emulation to the mix.
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All the games profiled are Windows-only games, as far as I can tell. Cyberpunk 2077 actually works quite well in Proton, as do most games.
I'd like to point out, too, that in the grand scheme if Linux wins, Windows doesn't necessarily have to lose. There's room for both, and it's great if both perform well.
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I have shepherded two people to Linux this year alone for their gaming PCs. It begins.
If my dog bites my hand and drags out a robot hand to crush me with, I'll be upset, but I think I can't really protest.
I mean, he's making his own, better hand.
If my dog bites my hand and drags out a robot hand to crush me with, I'll be upset, but I think I can't really protest.
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The issue REALLY isn't this, though.
It's do you want the control, privacy and good performance that Linux offers? Or is "peak game" SO fucking important that the baggage Windows has, and the power Microsoft has over YOUR DATA AND MACHINE, pales in importance by comparison?
Those are the questions people should be asking. And if they asked them and went with whatever choice they made, at least they considered the options. And they will live with the consequences of their choices.
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Based on the fantastic experience I've had with the Steam Deck over the last few years, I'm about 90% certain I'm going to go with SteamOS or Bazzite for my next gaming PC. I may maintain a Windows partition as a backup, but it's unlikely that I'll need it very often. I've only ever used Windows on my gaming PCs, so this will be a first for me. I just use my PC as a glorified console, but all the junk they add and enable in Windows 11 out of the box has reached a point of absurdity and I've been so happy with the Steam Deck that I think a switch will work well for me.
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Yes, yes, WINE being the self referential acronym that it is...fine.
They're all translated when running in SteamOS / Proton.
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Maybe for old stuff or 2D games you could get away with the 780m at 4K. I sure wouldn't want to play any of the games tested here with it.
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I have an analysis point to make from these charts, which is that Borderlands 3 aside, when you're running these games with settings appropriate to the grade of hardware, all of the frame rates are fine. It would be quite an achievement for a game running through a translation layer to run faster than the game's native environment, yet in at least a couple cases it does just that. Which is nuts. And suggests a hidden factor.
Now, this testing in this write-up is designed to be more or less GPU-limited. How do things go with a more CPU-limited system? I have a notion that Windows has enough overhead CPU burden that the results could shed some interesting light on the topic. How about it?
Now, this testing in this write-up is designed to be more or less GPU-limited. How do things go with a more CPU-limited system? I have a notion that Windows has enough overhead CPU burden that the results could shed some interesting light on the topic. How about it?
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Cool.
I don't mind turning down a few settings to make things run smoothly because fun games are fun. They don't need everything maxed out to be fun.
If they do? They probably aren't very good games to begin with.
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This is not true, and I don't understand why you felt the need to attack him.
A loooooong time ago, like 30 years(!), Gabe worked at Microsoft and made a small fortune.
Gabe took that money, founded Valve, made Half-Life, and probably made another small fortune. In the ensuing decades, he's made himself filthy rich (think $100M+, probably $1B+).
He isn't "biting the hand that feeds." I don't even know what point you're trying to make. He made his money, and now he's using it to build what he wants, which is a better environment for consumers and developers while making a pile of money in the process.
What part of that is an issue for you? Microsoft didn't owe him loyalty; they bribed him for writing good code (presumably). Similarly, he owes them nothing because he provided them with good code, as was requested as part of his employment.
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I'd like to see some newer more demanding games tested. These are all games that run pretty well on the PS5 or Series X. How about Space Marine 2, which is strongly CPU limited on consoles, or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which struggles with bad image quality in performance mode on PS5? I'd be interested to see if newer games work as well in comparison to Windows, or if these older games have been optimized over time.
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Space Marine 2 runs acceptably on the Steam Deck and so does FFVII.
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I switched purely because I could now that Proton has made gaming relatively painless, a few FPS doesn't bother me so much as not having ads and upsells integrated into core system utilities (and I also suspect those results differ on something like CachyOS).
I also know people that switched because Windows 10 was being forced out of support, and separately most EU nations are trying to pry themselves away from Microsoft as part of the digital sovereignty initiative...
If I were a Microsoft exec right now I would be sweating bullets. It's really not a brilliant confluence of events and stuff like this has a tendency to be more of a phase change than a slow transition, with absolutely no way to predict the tipping point.
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I was actually coming in to specifically request CachyOS tests since that has some significant optimizations compared to SteamOS; you might see a 10-20% performance increase there.
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You got your facts wrong. Steam on Linux exists because when MS announced the future release of Windows 10 (I think ; maybe it was W8, I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to check right now) they also announced the death of OpenGL and various restrictions on softwares that were not installed through the Windows Store. That would have killed Steam, so Valve decided to literraly create a new gaming platform that was not controlled by MS. The outcry of the game industry pushed MS to review their position but Valve decided to future-proof themselves and to continue on their choosen path. And I believe they did well
(Sorry for any spelling or grammar error; I'm typing this on a phone with a French autocorrect, so...)
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