The YouTube channel “Maximum Fury” conducted a technical test of the new Cyberpunk add-on called “Phantom Liberty” on an older AMD hardware system, testing it separately on Linux and Windows 11. The Linux system, specifically the Fedora distribution called Nobara, performed significantly better, delivering 31% more frames compared to Windows 11.

The hardware used for testing included an Asrock B550 motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU and an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU from the first RDNA generation, along with 16 GB of DDR4 RAM. The CPU, RAM, and GPU were overclocked, and the system utilized undervolting to save energy costs.

When testing the game at 1080p resolution with high textures, the Linux system achieved an average of 63.72 frames per second (fps), while Windows 11 managed only 48.55 fps. This suggests that the game should run noticeably smoother on the Linux system.

169 points

A 30% increase in performance just might get gamers to switch over to the new operating system.

Hell that is the difference between a better graphics card for some people. It’s like getting a free overclock, just for going outside your comfort zone.

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121 points

This is a rare and extreme case, which is probably caused by some sort of fluke in the testing method or due to a bug in the game that Linux is handling better. Usually gaming on Linux is like ~5-10% slower for GPU-bound games.

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44 points
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This is likely going to change as software support for gaming on Linux improves.

If you consider real high performance computing, with well optimized libraries that can properly use the hardware (including GPUs), 50 % difference between windows and Linux is not really surprising. This is the reason 100% of real high performance computing is done on Linux. It is a better OS for raw performances than windows. For some tasks we are easily talking over twice the performances. It is not always the case, but not surprising at all.

The differences clearly depend on the actual low level implementation of the code. But in general the current situation in gaming, with windows that competes with Linux on raw performances, is only due to lack of software support for gaming on Linux. As this is changing over time, we’ll see games performances greatly improve in Linux. Hopefully until the physiological surpass of windows performances.

Currently most of gaming support on Linux is done via some kind of translation layer, that has itself an overhead. It means that the real linux performance would be even better than in all these benchmarks, if it was really possible to compare 1:1 Windows and Linux with native, well optimized code.

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32 points

This is probably more common than you’d think, at least in my anecdotal experience. Converting directx commands to vulkan commands, especially for AMD GPUs, can result in better and more consistent performance on Linux.

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13 points
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Do you have any numbers or examples of games? I know that it’s generally the case that DX9 games often have greater performance through DXVK, but DX11 and DX12 should usually be a little bit slower. Also, CPU-bound games are often faster on Linux in my experience, but it’s rare for games to be CPU-bound (MMOs etc).

Additionally, OpenGL and Vulkan should be faster on Linux (Native or WINE+OpenGL/Vulkan), but I don’t have as much experience with them.

Edit: I found this video which has a few standout games where Linux pulls ahead even on DX11/DX12. Hopefully that’s a sign of future trends.

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10 points

Sometimes there are also unimplemented/broken features on Linux which people don’t notice and save frames. Legit performance improvements over Windows do happen (especially on memory and cpu-limited systems) but I’d be skeptical of any particularly huge ones.

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10 points

Yeah.

I’m personally lucky that my fav titles are CPU hogs, like ARMA 3 and X4: Foundations. Both run better under Linux.

Cyberpunk runs great too, I’m sure once we eventually get the updated drivers for NVIDIA we’ll get Ray Recon too.

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1 point

X4: Foundations

Can relate 🤓

Only thing I’m missing is “real” head tracking. There is simply none in the Linux version and while I can map a virtual joystick driven by OpenTrack to each camera corner it’s just not the same. Sadly this is not exposed via LUA or I’d have wired up a UDP connection by now. So this feature sadly works only via Proton. Still sticking with the native Linux version though. It’s faster.

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10 points

Usually gaming on Linux is like ~5-10% slower for GPU-bound games.

Or faster. Depends heavily on the game. Some things wine + dxvk does better.

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9 points

It’s not rare for games to be a few % faster, as long as they’re using features that are well supported in Linux. If the bottleneck is something that needs heavier emulation because the native implementation isn’t available or good enough then yeah you’ll see slowdowns.

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4 points

I kind of expect a patch for Windows that addresses the reason it is slower there now that they know there is a difference.

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3 points
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On Nobara OS, I haven’t noticed any performance dip coming from windows.

Linux Experiment on youtube found it performs ~5% better overall in games than Fedora, so that’s probably why.

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26 points

This is just one game with one particular graphics card, this might not be the same for example with nvidia cards.

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8 points

I’d be surprised if it is.

I can’t see anything but something hinky with driver overhead mattering this much.

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1 point

Cyberpunk 2077 runs faster on pop os on my Nvidia card compared to on windows 10

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7 points

30 percent of real improvement is one hell of an overclock…

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5 points
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Yeah but it still upsets me that “Fedora” exists lol. The name, that is.

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4 points

Is there a Linux distro specifically optimized for gaming?

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5 points

SteamOS technically, but you probably don’t want it on a regular computer.

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2 points

SteamOS is perfect on the deck. Honestly it’s probably fine on a PC if all you do is game and browse Firefox. Obviously some games won’t run in Linux.

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4 points
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Nobara is great, based on fedora so very stable and fairly up to date with many built in gaming features and no after install setup required to get gaming. https://nobaraproject.org/

Running it for over a year now on my gaming rig and very happy

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3 points

Nobara and Pop!_OS do well in this regard.

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-2 points

Lol

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-15 points

linux users still coping

nobody likes linux yall are chatting in an echo chamber. lemmy feels like a comp sci major college party lol

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And yet, Steam hardware survey shows Linux growing almost every month. By little, yes, but still growing almost every month, with Valve and Steam themselves betting more on Linux than on Windows and the Steam Deck being a thing.

If Lemmy feels like a computer science party, tell ya what: feel free to join us, everyone’s welcome. Just don’t claim “cope and seethe” when there’s actual growth here

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-4 points

it grew from 1% to 1.5% as a result of steam deck release? or what growth.

ive been to enough compsci parties im not abouta indulge in pseudocode on a whiteboard thank you very much.

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3 points
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Plenty of people like Linux, the real echo chamber would be some place you don’t have to hear how much better alternatives there are to garbage-ass windows.

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63 points
Deleted by creator
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17 points

Wait, DLSS doesn’t work on Linux at all? That’s a pretty big thing to gloss over whenever someone is talking about linux gaming and how comparable it is to windows nowadays. I doubt I’d be able to get anything remotely close to a stable framerate on cyberpunk2077 without it, and same goes for other newer games like dying light 2 or starfield!

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49 points

DLSS works. It took a while longer than Windows, but Nvidia themselves actually provide Wine-compatible DLL files. Also, there’s a native way to implement DLSS for Linux which, I kid you not, zero games so far are using. The Windows version works fine though.

But DLSS Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction do not work, and there are zero workarounds.

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16 points

Oh, so he’s just talking about DLSS3 features, gotchya. I thought DLSS 1 performance improvements are also frame generation but I see now thats different

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2 points
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Aren’t frame generation and ray reconstruction new? I’m sure they’ll work one day, although I’m not a big Linux head I only use steamos on the deck I just see a lot of Linux posts on Lemmy so here I am lol.

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12 points

Plain DLSS definitely works, I’m guessing they mean that specific reconstruction feature. I’m sure it’ll be implemented eventually if it’s possible at all though.
Side note, a kind of related feature that is missing for sure from the Linux drivers is DLDSR, and plain DSR for that matter. As a heavy user of both, it’s a bit of a personal deal breaker.

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6 points

DLSS works fine on Linux, but I don’t know about frame generation and ray reconstruction specifically. It could be those two don’t work yet.

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6 points

DLSS is a matter of Nvidia’s sub-par driver support. FSR2 (and soon FSR3, which does frame gen.) works, ironically even on Nvidia GPUs :P

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2 points
Deleted by creator
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1 point

I only took FSR3 for reference because it’ll support one of the things you outlined xP

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2 points

DLSS ray reconstruction works in Linux. You just need to launch with DXVK_NVAPI_DRIVER_VERSION=53799 VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr11 %command%.

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1 point
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I was (happily!) wrong. See reply below.

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3 points
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No, it’s definitely working. Here’s proof (open the images in a new tab and zoom in on the reflections to see the difference in clarity):

With reconstruction:

Without reconstruction:

With reconstruction:

Without reconstruction:

With DXVK_NVAPI_DRIVER_VERSION=53799 and ray reconstruction enabled, reflections are much clearer and also resolve way faster during motion.

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-5 points

Also no HDR, either (not supported by the OS). You’re not getting the full Cyberpunk experience without HDR and Ray Reconstruction. But I suppose that people with an older PC and monitor would benefit by switching to Linux.

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26 points

Gamescope allows the usage of HDR

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6 points

I recently tried but can’t get the tone mapping right in gamescope, any tips?

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3 points

HDR on Linux is definitely a thing, KDE supports it

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-12 points

I already got the full cyberpunk experience 3 years ago, and it was terrible. Making the game prettier doesn’t make it any less of a joke.

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5 points

I used to say things like this too, but then I played 2.0.

Surprisingly it’s a proper game now. They turned the game into GTA in the future, and that’s a good thing. Also the perk system was completely overhauled, and weapons rebalanced so that you actually have to do more than just grab whatever has the highest DPS.

The story’s the same, but everything else is completely different. Give it another chance.

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58 points

5600

“Older”

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28 points

Ha that hit hard. This is basically the system I just upgraded to. Well at least it’ll run the game well.

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10 points

It’s the exact same system I upgraded to a couple months ago except I got 5700 x3d. This system slaps bro I love it.

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11 points

There isn’t a single piece of software that I use that makes me think I should upgrade my 5600. Not a single game fully utilizes it (on 1440p res)

Older hardware is fine.

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14 points

Me with my i7 2600 playing with oblivion level graphics: yeah, older hw is just fine

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2 points

I mean… is that what you want ?

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6 points

cries in .blend

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3 points

I was thinking “Let it be Vega. I might give that shitty game a second chance.”

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3 points

Don’t mind me and my ThinkPad X220.

Modern computers cost too damn much

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39 points

What are the chances that it’s just not rendering something due to the DX12 to Vulkan translation?

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12 points

Possible, but looking through the footage it seems everything is being rendered as expected.

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11 points

It won’t just not render something. DXVK is already a finished thing in that regard. Complete enough that Intel uses it for legacy DirectX support in their ARC GPUs even.

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9 points

It’s entirely possible that the translation layer will alter timing to expose a race condition such that something doesn’t render.

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7 points

DXVK doesn’t support DX12 and wouldn’t be used here.

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4 points
*

For that Theres VKD3D :P

Also, I specifically said legacy DirectX because the support DX11 and DX12 natively.

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36 points

Thanks Stadia. No wonder it performed so well.

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7 points

I miss it :'(

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6 points

Me too…

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