Lower FPS in certain games on Linux vs. Windows

General system Gaming, sound and video
1

Hello,

I’m relatively new to EndeavourOS and I really like it. However, when I was recently reinstalling Windows to use Adobe, I also decided to test a few games to compare them. I unfortunately noticed that in some games, such as Quake Champions, I get 60-100fps more on Windows than on Linux. I don’t know why there is such a difference in performance between the two OSs when there shouldn’t be. I also thought I’d mention I’m using GNOME.

I also know that it’s not my thermals because they’re all good so I’m guessing it’s a driver issue or something I’ve done.

I’m not sure if this is the case for any other games that I have as I haven’t tested them yet.

My system specs:
Ryzen 5 3600
Noctual Air Cooler
16gb DDR4-3600 RAM
250GB Samsung SSD (Where Windows is installed)
1TB NVME (Where EndeavourOS is installed)
MSI GTX 1070

Any help is greatly appreciated!

  • Thanks
2

I think this is a comprehensive wiki you may want to have a look at and prepared by @keybreak. I only recently started gaming on Linux but there are a couple of gamers in the forum.

Edit: also welcome to the forum :grin: you get the fastest help if you can properly give infos on your system. Here is a starter. Would be good to see which driver was installed.

https://discovery.endeavouros.com/forum-log-tool-options/how-to-include-systemlogs-in-your-post/2021/03/

1 Like
3

Thanks for the quick reply!

I had a look at the wiki post, and I’ve reinstalled the DXVK stuff.

Here’s the system logs you said would help diagnose the issue.

https://clbin.com/zMDcG

https://clbin.com/t11ge

  • Thanks
1 Like
4

I have found, in my limited cross-platform gaming experience, that the games I’ve played that have native builds in Windows and Linux - Baldur’s Gate I/II EE, Icewind Dale EE, Lux Delux, to name a few - run better on Linux. This was also true with Worms Armageddon (Windows only).

On the other side, my Battle.net games are running better under Windows, although not by much. A 60-100 FPS difference is way too much to enjoy under Linux, so I hope that @Zircon34’s post can help.

1 Like
5

At least from the Nvidia driver side seems that all is loaded.

Just wondering are you logged in Wayland or xorg? I see xwayland in your log. Here is a pic showing how you can switch at login between xorg and Wayland. (Example from fedora but should be similar on gnome).

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/configuring-xorg-as-default-gnome-session/

Historically, wayland was not well supported on Nvidia but that may have changed and I think there are also workarounds to make the system login Wayland with Nvidia. But I would try xorg if not already logged in that session to rule that out as a slow down.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/wayland#XWayland

6

I checked my settings and it said that my windowing system is X11.

Just to make sure, I edited the config file mentioned in the Fedora tutorial and restarted.

I’ll do a bit more testing of Quake Champions to see if anything has improved and get back.

Thanks for the help! =)

7

Just finished a match and the issue is still happening.

I’m going to reinstall QC tomorrow and continue testing other games.

Thanks for all your help! Appreciated

8

Not sure, given the fact it’s a competitive online game and it’s rating is silver - maybe it’s just one of those few games which have problems on Linux.

Try with GloriousEggroll + those options and see if it helps.

Also as i’ve mentioned in my guide - if you’ll find specific version of wine / dxvk which works great for given game - keep using it in separate portable non-system wine prefix, otherwise things could change or regress in time.

Also Gnome’s compositor is not great for gaming, as i’ve heard.

1 Like
9

Here an older benchmark gnome vs KDE and xorg vs Wayland but on Radeon:

Conclusion was

" Across all the games tested both native and titles via Steam Play (Proton + DXVK), the GNOME Wayland session most often was showing the best performance and across the wide range of tests carried out came to about 4% better performance than the GNOME X.Org session. The KDE Plasma Wayland session tended to perform slightly in front of its X.Org session as well for these Linux gaming tests but there were a few games still running into problems with the KDE Wayland session."

And here a review on Nvidia, Wayland vs xorg:

Would be good to check these benchmarks for arch and newest drivers.

1 Like
10

Indeed, it also depends on kwin’s latency / tearing performance settings i suppose

11

I never tried KDE for gaming, until now gnome or xfce, except on steam deck but had a graphical glitch/tearing on desktop mode attached to wide screen. Maybe unrelated.

Steam deck uses KDE that may mean something in terms of performance perhaps, I mean they want optimized settings for proton.

or maybe only user interface related and on screen keyboard support.

It’s possible to download Phoronix benchmark suite to test on arch I think.

12

I take it one of these is not Starcraft II? Because when I tried it, I had to turn everything down to low otherwise I’d be getting a stutter every second.

I was thinking they chose KDE to make things easier for people used to Windows in desktop mode.

13

No, mostly Diablo II with the occasional Diablo III.

14

Thanks for your response!

I’ll make sure to get around to trying your suggestions.

As for its compositor, I though it was automatically disabled when a fullscreen application is in use?

1 Like
15

Not sure about Gnome, perhaps it does that, on KDE i know there’s a setting which allows to block it for games:

image

16

A bit late but thanks everyone for the help.

I don’t think that low fps is an issue with my system but just a game problem because like @keybreak mentioned, its only rated silver on protondb.

I appreciate all the responses and solutions I never would’ve though to do.

Thanks!

1 Like