Are Games Smoother / More Responsive on Linux?

[cybereality]

So I've been dual booting for a few years, and went full Linux on my latest AMD machine I built a few days ago.

On thing I have noticed, playing games on Proton (even with slightly less fps) seem to feel smoother or more responsive on Linux (Ubuntu) than Windows 10.

Not sure if it is placebo, but I definitely felt a difference on Rage 2. On Windows I can get around 130 fps, on Ubuntu it was more like 115, but the game felt better on Linux. Same with Doom Eternal.

I have FreeSync enabled in both cases, and the only thing that I was thinking was that maybe the Xbox controller latency was less on Linux. I don't think it is a video card thing, but I'm not sure.

Anyone else notice this or am I tripping out?

 

[Nobu]

Could be, likely game dependant.

Besides the drivers not necessarily supporting the same features between windows and Linux, the memory and process handling is different, so games will behave differently as a matter of course.

Whether it's better or worse will depend on whether the way Linux handles memory and processes is better suited to the game, and what and how certain driver features are implemented. For instance, a missing feature could have either a negative or positive effect, depending on how many more (or less) gpu resources it uses. If a feature is implemented, but uses the CPU instead, it could have a positive or (more often) negative effect, depending on whether the CPU is heavily utilized and how well suited it is to being run on the CPU, etc.

 

[FrgMstr]

Run some games that you can record frametimes in if you want data on what you are seeing/feeling.

 

[Deadjasper]

Hella lot more going on in the background with Windows

 

[cybereality]

I've installed Windows 10 on this machine, and discovered the they are about the same, or maybe Windows is better.

However, out of box it did seem like there was a difference, I guess it comes down to settings.

I've made some tweaks to the AMD driver in Windows and now things are very nice.

Some of what I did was enable FreeSync, did an auto-overclock, disable V-Sync in game, put Radeon Chill to 102 - 158 (my refresh is 160Hz), and enable SAM.

Now I am getting nice performance and things seem very smooth and responsive in Windows.

 

[DogsofJune]

Depends on the game. Some things do well enough under Linux, and some things seem easier under Windows. My 2400G box went from Pop OS to Win 10 and some of the games I play were smoother under Win 10. Could be drivers, Vulkan support, could be lots of variables.
So far, I am not discouraged with gaming on a Linux box.
Pro's and con's

 

[B00nie]

I've installed Windows 10 on this machine, and discovered the they are about the same, or maybe Windows is better.

However, out of box it did seem like there was a difference, I guess it comes down to settings.

I've made some tweaks to the AMD driver in Windows and now things are very nice.

Some of what I did was enable FreeSync, did an auto-overclock, disable V-Sync in game, put Radeon Chill to 102 - 158 (my refresh is 160Hz), and enable SAM.

Now I am getting nice performance and things seem very smooth and responsive in Windows.

Windows is never better. You taint your computer lol.
Ok ok, I use Windows10 for gaming also - but I don't trust that machine for anything else than Steam / Origin games. I don't browse the internet or God forbid, do banking with it.

 

[SmokeRngs]

As others stated it's different on a game by game basis. I've played Lord of the Rings Online off and on for years and the difference between running that on Windows and through Proton on Steam is like night and day. I can't say that framerates are better under Linux but it does feel smoother overall despite not being able to run Freesync due to having dual monitors. The game and engine it's running on is really, really old and is still mostly single core limited so framerates can vary wildly depending on where you're at in the game world. That said, it definitely feels like it runs smoother under Proton and Linux and the nasty memory leak the game has had for years doesn't show up under Proton/Linux. As an example, under Windows I would have to restart the client after a couple of hours or maybe sooner depending on how much I would swap between high level characters and what areas of the world I was in. Performance would begin to tank otherwise. Swapping between high level characters would slow down to a crawl when logging out of a character and logging into a new one as well as sitting at the character selection screen under Windows whereas Proton/Linux I could sit there and do it all day without a single issue or slowdown.

I don't have many games installed under both Linux and Windows so my ability to compare is very limited.

There are definitely some issues with games under Linux, though. I recently played through Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on Linux. Performance in the game is great even set at Ultra at 1920x1080 except when going to the main menu. If the main menu is brought up performance plummets and feels like a slideshow requiring a restart of the game. I have a really slow internet connection so I won't be installing this game under Windows to test how it runs there.

I also remember back in the day running Wolftenstein: Enemy Territory under both Linux and Windows. Sure, it was a Quake3 engine based game so it didn't require much in the way of resources but I still noticed what seemed like smoother gameplay under native Linux. There was a popular server mod that for quite a while had some serious performance issues for people running Windows but didn't affect Linux users. My clan had to swap that mod with another one on at least one of our servers because of that issue.

I have no proof but I've always suspected the reason for better or smoother performance under Linux was due to under the hood differences between the OSes. Whether it's CPU efficiency between the kernels, memory management or filesystem differences or a combination I could say.