So, I am doing some GPU comparisons between various GPUs and I am having problems on Arc to the point where I feel like I am doing something wrong. Modern games either don’t run at all or with performance that is 25-50% of the same hardware on Windows.
Anyone with experience have some pointers for me?
Full disclosure I am currently testing on Bazzite as I didn’t want to configure 3 different GPU stacks myself initially.
OK, so I tried again on an Arch-based distro and the results were the same.
I am not sure if it is just the B580 or all Arc GPUs on Linux but the results were disappointing for sure. I would still like to believe I am doing something wrong but after a bunch of testing with different GPUs, I am not sure what that could be.
Having run a A750 for three years I happily clocked hundreds of hours of gaming on that card, but it’s clearly not a “gaming first”-card. The situation is also somewhat different on the B cards, but overall also yes, performance and game-support is certainly worse than on Windows. Of course details depend (game, settings, …).
PS: One important difference on the performance side: The whole dedicated XESS hardware (e.g. upscaling) which is supported on Windows does not work on Linux. It takes the lower performance “generic GPU path” that supports all GPU vendors. It’s still good, but it leaves performance on the table.
Thanks for the feedback.
I tested a handful of games for performance and this was the result I ended up with:
| Game | Linux perf compared to Win |
|---|---|
| AC: Shadows - High/Diffuse | 79%* |
| Borderlands 2 | Fail |
| Starfield | Fail |
| Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor | Fail |
| Batman Arkham Knight | 94% |
| Cyberpunk 2077 - Ultra | 71% |
| Cyberpunk 2077 - Ultra RT | 32% |
3 of 7 games simply would not run in the configuration I was testing in and the others showed deeply varied performance results.
Interestingly, I also did some compatibility tests on older games since I believed this to be an issue with Arc. Interestingly, the compatibility was different. All the broken games in Windows were working in Linux but also the opposite was true.
| 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’m pretty sure it’s a lot worse on recent AAA games. Keeping an eye on anv mesa commits there were still important game fixes dropping in late 2025 for the Xe2+ hardware. :shrug:
This is roughly my list of played games on the A750. Granted mostly older/ancient and/or less demanding titles. But gaming is a sideshow on my PC, so that’s the bias.
| Title | No Issues | Issues | Unplayable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arcade Paradise | x | ||
| Beneath A Steel Ksy | x | ||
| City Skylines | x | ||
| Deliver us Mars | x | ||
| Encased | x | ||
| Greed Fall | x | ||
| The Pillars of the Earth | x | ||
| Lego Lord of the Rings | x | ||
| The Long Dark | x | ||
| Mutant Year Zero | x | ||
| Never Alone | x | ||
| The Outer World | x | ||
| Pathfinder Kingmaker | x | ||
| Tomb Raider 1 | x | ||
| Tomb Raider 2 | x | ||
| Tomb Raider 3 | x | ||
| Sable | x | ||
| Shadow Tactics | x | ||
| Tropico 5 | x | ||
| The Vanishing of Ethan Carter | x | ||
| Gwent | x | ||
| Dragon Age Inquisition | x | ||
| Mass Effect Andromeda | x | ||
| Mass Effect 3 | x | ||
| Read String Club | x | ||
| State of Mind | x | ||
| Dragon Age Origins | x | ||
| Silence | x | ||
| The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante | x | ||
| Rue Valley | x | ||
| Cloudpunk | x | ||
| Disco Elysium | x | ||
| Forgotten Anne | x | ||
| Blackwell Convergence | x | ||
| Shadowrun Dragonfall | x | ||
| Star Wars Racer | x | ||
| Xcom | x | ||
| The Expanse | x | ||
| Skyrim | x | ||
| Devinity Original Sin 2 | x | ||
| Ori and Blind Forest | x | ||
| Abzu | x | ||
| Game of Thrones | x | ||
| Horizon Zero Dawn | x | ||
| Lara Croft Temple of Osiris | x | ||
| Tales form The Borderlands | x | ||
| The Wolf Among Us | x | ||
| Syberia | x | ||
| Dragon Age 2 | x | ||
| Deliver Us The Moon | x | ||
| Dishonored | x | ||
| Civ V | x | ||
| Beyond Good & Evil | x | ||
| Primodia | x | ||
| Broken Sowrds 5 | x | ||
| Batman Enemy Wihtin | x | ||
| Journey | x | ||
| Live is Strange | x | ||
| The Cave | x | ||
| Batman Telltale Series | x | ||
| Shardlight | x | ||
| Dragon Age Veilguard | x | ||
| Detroit Become Human | x | ||
| Witcher 3 | x |
Performance wise I never did comparison except for Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn. Witcher 3 was passable with some Raytraycing on Windows but a no go on Linux. Horizon was good performance on 1440p while Linux had to dial down to 1080p.
Unrelated but great game selection there. 
Strange, it should work. Did you install the mesa drivers ? I have an internel arc gpu, it’s not comparable at all but i am running some games perfectly fine on it.
Users with your model don’t report any issues at all
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntelArc/comments/1mstbdg/how_is_your_current_experience_with_the_arc_b580/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntelArc/comments/1n5kc86/does_the_intel_arc_b580_play_nice_with_linux/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntelArc/comments/1p8ask2/any_one_has_any_experience_with_linuxarc_b580/
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntelArc/comments/1ponwec/please_tell_me_the_current_status_of_b570_and/
Of course.
Yes, it isn’t like all games don’t work. Some ran fine. It is mostly newer AAA games that aren’t working.
Can those games enable XeSS ?
It’s nice to see these tests being shared. At least they help us get an idea.
Some of the games support XeSS. I didn’t test that way though. I don’t think that would impact compatibility though.
Keep in mind, just because performance is less than Windows doesn’t mean it is unplayable(or playable). I tested with a fixed config to get like to like numbers but if I was actually playing the game I would tweak the settings to make it playable. AC: Shadows, Cyberpunk 2077 and Batman Arkham Knight could all be playable at 1440p on the B580. Cyberpunk 2077 was never going to playable at native 1440p at Ultra RT settings though. To be fair, that was probably not reasonable to begin with, I just wanted to see the numbers because part of what I was doing was comparing the Intel, AMD and NVIDIA to see how their drivers scaled across Linux and Windows.
Compatibility no, improvement(s) yes.
What I am showing here is relative numbers between Windows and Linux. If I enabled XeSS on both and re-ran the tests I wouldn’t expect the numbers to change significantly.
The only distro that somehow managed to improve the FPS and give me more playable games was CachyOS. I say somehow because I still don’t know how they did it.
I even tried other distros with their custom Proton on Steam, also tried their kernel on Arch and Fedora, but nothing improved as much as when I ran the OS directly. Distros that say are “gaming-focused“, such as Bazzite and Nobara, also kept the same level of performance as other regular distros.
Still, there is a 20 FPS difference minimum between CachyOS and Windows (and the difference is way bigger comparing other distros vs Windows). I tested the games at 1680x1050 with low to medium settings. The games I tested were Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Bioshock 2 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
I have an ARC 140V, which is an iGPU with the 258V Lunar Lake processor. Also tried to enable XESS or FSR on games that supported it, but either I didn’t see any difference (on Linux) or it actually ran worse.
I was actually surprised to see such a huge gap in performance, I honestly thought games would run better on Linux because of a less bloated system.
And your using the intel graphics card for gaming ?
Yep, it is a laptop so I do not have a lot of choice (and the OP is also running games with an Intel card).
But their new iGPU is much much better than their past integrated graphics. I can run Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Assassins Creed Syndicate with low settings at ~60 FPS without any frame generation tool. If I enable XESS, it gets even better 
First, welcome to the forum!
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I tested this one on the B580 as well. At 1440p max settings, I got 52fps on Windows and 44fps on Linux. That is about a 15% difference. Sounds like on integrated graphics, you are seeing a worse drop than that.
I’ve tried a couple Intel Arc cards and in my experience, the drivers we have just aren’t good at this point. I don’t even try to do any gaming with them.
It seems that Intel is really dropping the ball on this
At least on the Linux side, it seems that way, yes.