A few gaming benchmarks across GPU vendors

Lounge
1

I built a machine for Linux testing and decided to use it to create some benchmarks. My goal was to understand two things for my own reference. How bad was compatibility of Intel Arc cards in both Windows and Linux and how much falloff was there between Linux and Windows in each driver stack.

The test cards were an Intel Arc B580, an Radeon RX 6700 XT and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti. The benchmarks floating around led to me to believe that the AMD and NVIDIA cards should be ~10% faster than the B580.

I installed Windows 11 and Bazzite each on there own nvme PCIe Gen 4 SSD. The CPU was a Ryzen 5600 XT and the machine had 32 GB of DDR4.

All benchmarks were taken in 1440p native.

Here is a chart of relative performance of all the scenarios using the B580 on WIndows as the baseline.

Game Windows
Arc B580		 Windows
Radeon 6700 XT		 Windows
RTX 3060 Ti		 Linux
Arc B580		 Linux
Radeon 6700 XT		 Linux
RTX 3060 Ti		 Comments
AC: Shadows - High/Diffuse 100% 112% 103% Partial Fail 109% 94% B580: Wouldn’t enable Diffuse
Borderlands 2 100% 143% 138% Fail 152% 122% B580: Benchmark failed to run
Starfield 100% 98% 100% Fail 98% 67% B580: Crashes during load
Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor 100% 102% 98% Fail 103% 90% B580: Failed to launch
Batman Arkham Knight 100% 115% 124% 94% 119% 120%
Cyberpunk 2077 - Ultra 100% 82% 86% 71% 86% 77%
Cyberpunk 2077 - Ultra RT 100% 64% 100% 32% 48% 84%

Here is a chart of relative performance WIndows to Linux.

Game Arc B580 Radeon 6700 XT RTX 3060 Ti
AC: Shadows - High/Diffuse Fail 97% 91%
Borderlands 2 Fail 107% 88%
Starfield Fail 100% 67%
Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor Fail 101% 91%
Batman Arkham Knight 94% 103% 97%
Cyberpunk 2077 - Ultra 71% 106% 89%
Cyberpunk 2077 - Ultra RT 32% 75% 84%

I also tested the B580 in a few more older titles only for compatibility purposes.

Game Windows Linux Notes
KOTOR Pass Pass
KOTOR II Issues Pass Windows: Missing UI elements
Portal 2 Pass Pass
GTA: Vice City Pass Issues Linux: Numerous timing related issues
AC: Black Flag Issues Pass Windows: MSAA not working
AC: Syndicate Pass Pass
AC: Unity Pass Fail Linux: Won’t launch
Return to Castle Wolfenstein Fail Pass Windows: Won’t launch

I learned a few things in this exercise:

  • How to take benchmarks on both Windows and Linux
  • How Bazzite works, more info on that in separate post
  • The B580 is probably not for everyone. It was generally fine on Windows in newer games but struggled in a couple of older games I tested. On Linux it was a complete mess.
  • The Radeon GPU had performance very close to Windows in the games I tested, except heavy RT
  • Linux has performance issues with RT across the board

Overall, it was a fun project.

2

How did you do the benchmarking itself? Steam overlay? Is avg framerate the benchmark?

3

I used presentmon on Windows and mangohud on Linux. They both provide an overlay and do capture so you can get more detailed statistics.

The above is all based on average FPS, yes. I also tracked 1% lows, not presented here.

4

have you try cachyos ?

5

Yes, I loaded CachyOS and did sanity checks on some of the B580 and 3060 Ti benchmarks. The goal was to make sure that I was getting representative benchmarks from Bazzite.

I didn’t see any material differences. There were a couple of benchmarks that we were 1-2 fps faster in CachyOS but other than that everything matched performance wise.

6

and for the B580 , is it working ?

7

It works the same as on Bazzite. The same games work and fail on CachyOS.

8

These is a goldmine of data, and useful to see more benchmarks in Linux. (Looking forward to the day that HUB does more in Linux or comparitive to Windows). I’m absolutely sticking with the 9070XT (and not the 7090XT Mince Pie edition) for as many years as I can, this thing is an absolute beast on Linux. My old 6700XT is absolutely going to go into another low-focus rig at some point. We’re in a great position with Linux drivers, especially with Intel and AMD.

9

You should consider upgrading to the 9070 XT. I think you would like it. :rofl:

As a side note, I threw some 7900 XTX vs 9070 XT benchmarks in that other topic if anyone is curious.

10

Wayyy too many mince pies have fried my brain :laughing: