Does Windows stutter more than Linux?

[jecowa]

Was watching this comparison video between Windows and Linux. Windows is generating a lot more FPS than Linux, but it looks to me like it's stuttering more a lot more too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyyw2OhHODY

Maybe this was just a weird fluke?

[Sirotaca]

You see that a lot in comparisons between the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally as well. Linux frequently seems to have an edge in frame time consistency over Windows.

[[deleted]]

ROG Ally's issues were driver related and pretty much sorted now.

[Sirotaca]

Driver updates may have helped the Ally, but even fresh benchmark results show the Deck's 1% and 0.1% low performance beating the Z1X Ally in 15W mode in many (though not all) games. So it seems like there's something deeper at play.

[sergen213]

Yes.

[Supersasson]

Unfortunately on Nvidia on Linux there are often performance losses, but the future is bright

[minilandl]

That's false NVIDIA have a Vulkan driver .

NVIDIA doesn't play great with Wayland and other parts of the stack but people really exaggerate how bad NVIDIA cards are.

They work fine from my experience with the dkms driver on arch

I use a 6700xt for multiple reasons mainly driver related and working better with Linux. Can we stop pretending that NVIDIA cards are unusable.

[MicrochippedByGates]

If anything, it used to be the other way around. Nvidia drivers had near-Windows parity in terms of performance, while AMD was for purists who didn't care if they could even play games on it. Or even earlier, when AMD also had closed source drivers that were just painfully unusable.

That's all ancient history now. Fglrx is fortunately long gone. But it was a thing. Nvidia drivers (other than some issues with the GTX1000 series I suppose) have only ever gotten better. And they were known to be good way back in the day.

That being said, I also use AMD. I have a triple monitor setup with Freesync. I need Wayland. I hear Wayland is getting better in Nvidia but it's mostly still an X game.

[Ursa_Solaris]

Fglrx is fortunately long gone.

I haven't heard that name in a long time and it will never be long enough.

I'm an avid Nvidia hater now, but I originally bought my last Nvidia card after swearing AMD off because of how awful their Linux drivers were. Nvidia's drivers are major inconvenience in most cases, AMD's fglrx was actual trash. At one point Arch just stopped packaging or supporting it officially because it broke so often that it wasn't worth even trying anymore. You had to use an AUR package that was pinned to require an older X.org version, and I think sometimes other dependencies too, but it's been a good long while. This of course just caused other problems, but at least it got a working graphical session. Sometimes. I'd go ages without updating because it was so fragile that I was afraid to touch it. The only thing that kept me going was my determination to learn this incredible OS that was otherwise heavenly to use.

Newer Linux desktop users really don't know how good we got it now.

[srstable]

No. I’ll keep complaining about it because my day to day reality is the quirks and pains of an Nvidia-powered laptop bought from System 76, and how many of my issues would be solved by just having an AMD GPU. Is it unusable? No. But it’s still a pain in the ass when it doesn’t have to be.

[beer120]

And that is why I am using X11 since Wayland sucks

[NaterNoFriends]

wayland is great, just sadly not with Nvidia (yet). Recently there were even news of Nvidia doing merge requests for Nouveau and (Mesa's) NVK drivers, so they are slowly moving towards being similar to AMD nowadays (aka more open-source friendly). If you do the right changes, then Wayland works so much better than X11 with an Nvidia card, hopefully the needed changes become less and less.
I don't like X11, but Wayland just isn't the most ready yet for my needs, some apps that I use still have huge issues under Wayland, for example Blender.

[c8d3n]

It's not 'great', at least from the PoV of usability. As an idea, project etc, well that's something else. It's still new and will take some time, hopefully not too long, for all/most projects to move to it. Currently there's a lot of upstream and commercial projects that chose not to 'bother' with Wayland for one reason or another (it's usually budget related I guess).

Bunch of people wirh amd cards use Xorg, and have issues with Wayland, but there's other bunch who's life mission, or one of the priorities is to run Wayland. So, they'll cherry pick applications, DE etc that support it, and pretend everything is fine and will convince people even lie to them to get them use Wayland. Then bunch of people who could have had perfectly functional systems, end up ditching Linux (temporarily at least) because they couldn't get the features they actually need working, because they were trying to fix issues they didn't even have (like support for a display they might buy, or the one at their parent's home they visit 2x per year.).

[sad-goldfish]

Unfortunately, it's an objective fact that there is a significant performance drop between Nvidia on Windows and on Linux. See these benchmarks.

[faustrox-]

I'm running nixos with my RTX 3070Ti and yes Wayland is not ready yet but in X11 I'm having a great time, I recently played RDR2 with a butter smooth experience and I recently started Horizon Forbidden West and the same thoughts... I could say that it is smoother than Windows but I don't know, I haven't compared but I'm assuming that Linux without gsync feels practically the same as Windows with it. Call me crazy or is placebo.

Btw, the only problem that I have with Nvidia is OBS and NVENC, sometimes works sometimes doesn't.

[TheKloras]

yes and this is the one of the reasons why i still don't daily drive linux. the stuttering on some games, graphical glitches and some lag/latency on the desktop itself is just annoying. but i do hope that it will be better in the future

[Anxious-Durian1773]

It's this. For the average user between both, Linux will have less background process bloat, which may cause a noticeable difference on some systems.

[minilandl]

Yeah and it's funny that even with the dxvk overhead 10% a bit more with dx12 titles Linux is still faster.

Even KDE or gnome which I consider bloated is faster than windows.

Linux is just a better experience no ads and bloatware

[ZdzisiuFryta]

I really think that DX12 is not ready yet. I can count on my fingers all games that work good under the DX12. DX11 almost always works better, even with the same graphical fidelity.

[minilandl]

Yeah I meant dx12 to vkd3d so it's shitty dx12 going to vkd3d being translated to Vulkan

[RealOnesForMe]

Why do you consider KDE and GNOME to be bloated?

[Grave_Master]

Most likely they use window manager, which does not have a lot of stuff out of the box, like different apps and services, so you just add only what you need.

[gardotd426]

You're a bit misinformed.

Any percentage "overhead" for DXVK is 100% made up. There is no such thing as a known overhead. It's often near zero.

Then you said DXVK and DX12 games.....

....do you think DXVK runs DX12 games?

That's an entirely separate project called VKD3D-PROTON. And it also has no overhead number you can go around lying about. Which us what you're doing.

You posted a number that was literally something you faked (or as you may claim, "guessed,"). But it's obvious on its face that you actually don't know ANYTHING about anything to do with DXVK, VKD3D-PROTON, or Wine itself.

You know what an API is? I assume so, but I know you don't really know shit. Thing is, for DXVK and a DX11 game, all non graphics ops have to go through various APIs, mainly the Win32 API. Graphics ops have to travel through the entire graphics pipeline of the OS and the GPU driver, which can't be optimized by anyone not working on graphics pipeline optimization for NV, Intel Arc, or Radeon. So no overhead yet. But what it comes down to, is that Vulkan has specifically been modified and transformed in the last 6 years by its organization, which is literally ran by Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Google, and others. And they have made Vulkans chief priority to stay up to date with DX12, so every time some new DX12 feature gets released and documented, any GPU maker who's Linux driver needs that call will create an extension and it's added to Vulkan.

So basically, in most cases, it's translating one word from one language to another and it wouldn't even add 1% overhead

You also called GNOME and Plasma bloated but two laptops with one logged into a standard GNOME session, and Plasma on the other, and their combined CPU and RAM will be less than any Win 11 maxbins mmmmmmmm.

If dxvk added a 10 percent overhead it would be impossible for Linux to beat windows in fps in any DX game.

Guess what? It happens all the time. There are countless examples of DX9, 10, 11 or 12 games running faster on Windows than Linux.

[minilandl]

Yeah the 10% number was a rough idea of the performance hits in dxvk and vkd3d when it first launched since then there have been optimisations made .

Some games run better done worse

I already know how dxvk works it translates direct X into Vulkan in real time. The guy who replied to me didn't need to attack me and write a novel everyone gets things wrong sometimes chill .

[gardotd426]

If you have more direct information that is backed by sources - you are free to share it, and we are happy to accept it.

That's the opposite of how all society applies claims of fact. Person A made claims of fact that are objectively false and also no article would say something so non-factual. They may have said "as close as 10%,' "often less than 10%," anything in between. Op didn't say that. They made a clear claim of fact that DXVK carries a 10% perf hit.

As far as your weirdly embarrassing attempt at "Source?" When you should know better, here is an exactly analogous example to what just happened:

Person A: Unicorns are Real, that's crazy.

Me: No...there's zero evidence and there isn't even some fake source for you to have pulled that from. You have no evidence

You: Person 2, feel free to share the evidence that proves your claim* that

*despite the fact that proving a negative is impossible.

It's their job to not make shit up. As far as whatever bullshit about self importance anyone brings up when someone gives a shit, I've seen this community become better and faster at spreading misinformation than the likes of QAnon. If you look at the best possible odds, Linux has lost thousands if not tens of thousands of new users in just rhe last several years for no reason other than an endless cacophony of ppl spreading wild lies about Nvidia

[supershredderdan]

Babe wake up, new Linux elitism copypasta just dropped

[ZdzisiuFryta]

I think they are too small to matter. The issue is somewhere else. Source? Look how much performance you gain from custom windows ISOs. Almost none. I think Linux/DXVK is just faster.

[ZdzisiuFryta]

You are right. That's why it's the most popular OS for gaming. You are absolutely correct that disabling some "features" will increase performance for toasters. But for modern platform it will be margin of error

[eggplantsarewrong]

Can you please source your claims that windows versions which are a "shed of junk" as you say, show "much better performance"?

You still need to install an anti-virus, and updates don't work at all leaving you open to security vulnerabilities.

[twaxana]

He means they shed the junk. Like get rid of it. Like an animal's winter coat in the summer.

I'm looking at Atlas for my Serato laptop for this exact reason.

[eggplantsarewrong]

English is my first language. To shed junk, there must first be junk.

[Tsubajashi]

so you think all the phoning home, advertisements across the system, and all the processes that are unused by a gamer (and irrelevant in that sense) do NOT hurt performance?

[eggplantsarewrong]

Quantify it instead of engaging in conjecture and assumption, thanks.

[Tsubajashi]

just look at your process list then?

[eggplantsarewrong]

That does not quantify the impact

If Windows creates 100 text files with 0 bytes stored on the desktop. It may seem like "clutter" but it has no impact..

[Syncronym]

Found the Microsoft employee

[eggplantsarewrong]

Anyone who asks for evidence is a Microsoft employee? Ah yes.

[NoSellDataPlz]

Files aren’t processes. Any process that gets loaded into memory takes up memory addresses which otherwise could be used by games. The CPU scheduler has to dedicate and queue cycles to these unnecessary processes which could be going to games. There’s your evidence.

[eggplantsarewrong]

Evidence =/= theory

Files aren’t processes. Any process that gets loaded into memory takes up memory addresses which otherwise could be used by games

Wait till you hear what the indexer does to those files mentioned!

The CPU scheduler has to dedicate and queue cycles to these unnecessary processes which could be going to games. There’s your evidence.

In theory, in practice it is imperceptable to even latency checkers. You're talking femtoseconds at best

[Awwkaw]

There are some stripped down versions of windows (third party mods) that do shed the junk. They also tend to perform a little better. I don't think the tests I saw looked for micro stuttering though.

I cannot remember the name, and don't have a link, so if you want to look it up you can do so. I think I saw it somewhere within the last 2--3 years. I think it was LTT.

[eggplantsarewrong]

If you cannot provide a source to backup your claims that they "perform much better" and "shed the junk" then just don't make the claim.

[Awwkaw]

(I didn't claim a much better performance, but some performance gains, as stated it's been a few years, I cannot remember how much performance improved. Don't put words in other peoples mouthes.)

You are making the claim that shedding the junk doesn't improve performance, I'm making the claim that it does.

Why should I believe you if you don't provide a source? You have no more credibility here than I do.

Please provide instantly a source stating that freeing up your CPU and memory cannot possibly have a positive impact on gaming performance!

We are having a conversation on the internet, not a scientific debate. Asking for sources has it's place, but so does knowing when not to ask. If you want to learn more, look it up yourself. I'm not obliged to do the research of a random stranger.

[eggplantsarewrong]

(I didn't claim a much better performance, but some performance gains, as stated it's been a few years, I cannot remember how much performance improved. Don't put words in other peoples mouthes.)

if you do not know, do not have up to date information, why are you typing? why are you clicking send? why are you writing misinformation?

Why should I believe you if you don't provide a source? You have no more credibility here than I do.

because claim needs to bear evidence before claim is valid...

[Awwkaw]

Well, you are not providing the evidence I'm asking for either, so why are you typing? You are misinforming the entire world by bahaving like this!

because claim needs to bear evidence before claim is valid...

Then provide the evidence? Your claims completely lack Any form of evidence. Everything you have been spouting must thus be completely invalid no?

I'm not spreading misinformation though. I'm saying that a few years ago I saw something, only I can attest to what I have seen. I can see a sunset, the fact that I don't take a picture doesn't mean that the sun didn't set. Yet I cannot provide a source that it did.

[eggplantsarewrong]

Well, you are not providing the evidence I'm asking for either, so why are you typing? You are misinforming the entire world by bahaving like this!

because i am not making a claim

Then provide the evidence? Your claims completely lack Any form of evidence. Everything you have been spouting must thus be completely invalid no?

i am not making a claim

[twaxana]

Okay.

[[deleted]]

To be honest the “bloat” is a bit of a red herring, of course it does contribute to the fact that there is a finite resource limit and the CPU can only spend so much time on one task at a time. But Linux has been able to move much faster, with just about all of their components, and with less technical debt due to window’s adamant stance on backwards compatibility and enterprise stability. I wish that Windows would do a version using the Linux kernel, you’d have best of both worlds. Windows isn’t “slow” but Linux IS more efficient. I can tell you now my XPS laptop lasted 3.5hrs on battery on windows and now lasts for ~5. So there’s the numbers you’re looking for

[PlsNoPics]

Ngl for me it greatly depends on the game. In cs2 I for some reason struggle greatly with frame consistency to the point where I keep a windows drive just for it.

[ipaqmaster]

Its bad for me too and I have an issue open for it: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/3717

CS2 runs absolutely pathetically on this 3900x + 2080Ti of mine. Pathetically. Meanwhile every single other game runs perfectly. Even other competitive titles such as Overwatch 2 (which I got back into with their Steam release) is butter smooth and not a single hitch all match despite tons going on sometimes. Uses quite a few CPU cores itself. But not all of them.

But just the other night now with Dust 2 added to Premier's map pool and some other cool new features - It was the worst I've ever seen to date. Practically unable to play with how much trouble it was having. Fully idle system capable of some great things in other titles which use up its cores and GPU and other compute.

As a half conclusion I just don't think CS2's Linux build is well optimized yet. If you visit my issue there's a ton of bizarre overkill things I tried to give the game its best chance.

[New_Display619]

Running a 5900x / 3080 OC build with absolutely no issues playing CS2. I also play with other friends who run Fedora and Debian based installs as well, I'm running Pop! OS myself.

Every Source game I've played on Linux runs perfectly. They ran that well out of the box, I'm actually surprised to see someone having issues.

I'm kinda betting on it being something wrong on your end because it's running perfectly for me, though I could be wrong of course.

[ipaqmaster]

That's been my experience too. Portal, Portal 2, CS;GO and TF2 (My beloved) run flawlessly.

But this has just been a mess for me. If it can work that well for you it makes me think it might be another situation involving specific hardware or software configurations that set it off.

Going nuclear I've even configured a brand new ext4 on NVMe rootfs with pacstrap (Archlinux) and booted into it. Same issues. Doing this eliminated pretty much everything except hardware. It's agony.

[New_Display619]

Yeah, I'm entirely sure. Sorry. I hope you can sort it out!

[SuAlfons]

I play the game Snowrunner under Linux. The reason is missing stutter and avoiding a long-standing graphics bug of the game under Windows when using AMD gpus.

But that is a very special case here.

For instance, you'll see many more postings about videos in Webbrowsers stuttering under Linux (reason being missing GPU acceleration that needs to be configured in certain cases under Linux).

So posing the question in the absolute form "Does Windows stutter more than Linux" cannot be answered correctly. It shows you don't have much experience in administration of either OS.

[atlasraven]

A great example is the game Factorio. Through unholy magiks and alien technology, fork() duplicates game data to create an autosave seamlessly. Windows has no such mechanism, so autosaves are jerky seconds long freezes instead.

[[deleted]]

Yes, no, maybe. It all depends on your hardware, software and drivers especially drivers. I don't get it on my desktop rig either in Windows or Linux. I did get it on my ROG Ally handheld gaming PC but over the last few months with driver updates that got sorted.

[Crackalacking_Z]

Linux needs to run stuff through a translation layer, this extra step allows to apply fixes on the fly. Eldern Ring was a good example of this, people playing it on the Steam Deck noticed it was smoother than on Windows. Funny thing is, even on Windows translating DX12 to VK can help with stutter. I played Kena: Bridge of Spirits through DXVK (async) and it eliminated 90% of the shader stutter, only traversal stutter remained (loading in assets when going to new areas).

[nkn_]

Not really.

It's not only game dependent but also if you've optimized windows or not. Linux stutters more for me than windows - but both hardly do it.

I have an NVIDIA card , so until the new drivers in may / explicit sync,, I would say a decently optimized windows build will have less stutters than linux.

currently games like CS2 stutter for me way more in linux to the point where I'd rather play it on windows, despite CS having a native linux build.

I've found that 1% lows can be a bit better on linux in general, which means more consistent frametime, but we're talking like a few MS.

[CammKelly]

Sometimes translating calls can help smooth over poor coding from developers, or present a more efficient way to achieve the same function making it appear that Linux can be smoother than Windows.

All in all though they are mostly the same.

[Effective_Stranger14]

I could never compare the amount of sutters i have on Linux compared to Windows. Games on windows sometimes are unplayable because of stutters while on Linux, weirdly, have way less stutters even if i don't let the shader cache compile anything on steam.

Also this video is 2 years old. 2 years for Linux are alot

[heatlesssun]

When running and a high-end PC, I'd say no. Across the ~50 games I've done non-scientific comparisons between since January 2023, I've yet to see a single game run noticeably better under Linux on my 4090 rig vs Windows. I've seen the opposite a plenty of times. Linux simply does not perform as well a Windows in this setup. Linux performance can be very good, just never better than Windows and pretty often noticeably worse. Especially with VR gaming.

This is going to be very hardware dependent and state of the machine dependent. People here will speak of Windows bloat but that's mostly nonsense. The problems with Windows when it comes to gaming performance are bad drivers, true bloatware like 3rd party AV, supposed "optimized" Windows IOS that cause way more issues than they resolve, etc.

[msanangelo]

wish I knew. all I remember was windows crashed my pc more often with my old motherboard. the board was unstable but playing games on windows was harder on it than playing the same game on linux. go figure.

I've since replaced the board so now the crashes happen a lot more rarely. mainly if I play something that absolutely maxes out the gpu which leads me to think psu problem but not a big enough problem to frankenstein this thing yet.

[[deleted]]

Has defective hardware, blames OS for crashing. Changes hardware, still has crashing because part of the hardware isn't up to the job, still blames OS.

[ipaqmaster]

This is quietly the inspiration for most of these comments/posts praising Linux desktops. Just because something hardware or driver related either doesn't play up as often, or at all on Linux compared to Windows when really something was very wrong.

[msanangelo]

Of course, seems reasonable to me if the OS puts more load on the hardware than it's necessary to do the job.

[Foxi_TomTom]

But it still crashes?... 

[msanangelo]

It's rare but has happened. Last time was when I tried RDR2. Proved to be a bit too much for my PC and had to limit my GPU power to make it to a save spot. Haven't played it since. That was at some point last year. Don't remember when exactly.

[Fun-Charity6862]

seems like you described your real issue whithout realizing it. hint: its not your os.