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Posted by _JamesA_ 6/25/2025

Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds(arstechnica.com)
445 points | 277 commentspage 4
lincon127 6/27/2025|
Ok, but what about indie games,m? Does every game just work on SteamOS now? Or is that game dependent?
scriu 6/27/2025||
I did some tests a while ago on w8 vs w11 for bootup time and w8 was faster. This doesnt surprise me.
Thaxll 6/26/2025||
Those benchmark don't show anything interesting, where is the 2k, 4k, raytracing etc.. show us modern UE5 games, Ubisoft / EA games ect ...

From my personal experience overall games run much much better on Windows ( 10 or 11 ).

Edit: ok I just noticed the title is missleading, it's for handled device not pc.

jitl 6/26/2025|
It doesn't make sense to benchmark a handheld gaming device w/ a native screen resolution of 1920x1200 at 2k or 4k. Likewise setting any graphics settings "extreme" like raytracing - it will run at slideshow speeds no matter what operating system. Besides, DOOM: The Dark Ages is a top tier graphics title released a month and a half ago; I think the selection of titles is decent for capability of the device.
dankwizard 6/26/2025||
This just in, Games on a Gaming OS developed by a Gaming Business perform better than an OS not explicitly for that.

More news at 11.

ghushn3 6/26/2025|
You recognize, of course, that the conventional wisdom up until today (and even still in most people's minds) was that Windows was the OS to install if you want to play games. There's genuinely a movement right now that's saying, "Linux might actually be the all around better desktop OS if you are a gamer".

That's absolutely noteworthy.

jimbob45 6/25/2025||
Borderlands 3? Homeworld 3? Who chose these games? Why not just use the current top 10 on Steam atm?
dabber21 6/25/2025||
"To test the performance impact of this operating system choice, we started with the SteamOS version of the Legion Go S (provided by Lenovo) and tested five high-end 3D games released in the last five years using built-in benchmarking tools..."

those games come with benchmark tools

jimbob45 6/25/2025||
Borderlands 3 was 2019. Homeworld 3 has a 38% on Steam and sold poorly. I highly doubt it ever received patches or optimizations. Again, these feel unbelievably arbitrary, as if someone just wanted to push a narrative.
energywut 6/25/2025|||
Steam favorability percentages are famously vulnerable to review bombing. HW3 got swept up in culture war nonsense around LGBTQ representation.

I'm a hardcore Homeworld fan. I've run campaigns of their TTRPG, modeled their ships, played the old games to death. I found my own experience with 3 to be "mixed", it's hardly the best entry in the series, but the reviews absolutely are artificially low due to brigading.

Aside, an unoptimized game is actually one I'd want included in my benchmark. Games that have the teams and budgets to really polish will likely perform well no matter what. But how does OS level changes affect those other games, games where the developers didn't put in the care? Does one OS make those games worse? Or does it help with the shortcomings? It's valuable to have entries like that in your dataset.

spartanatreyu 6/25/2025|||
Homeworld 3 received a terrible rating because its story and delivery was a massive departure to what users wanted, not because of it's gameplay or tech.

It would have been chosen for the same reason ashes of the singularity was chosen as a benchmark for so long: because it looks good, it comes with a benchmark, and it's really good at stressing out a particular part of the computer (for AoS: async rendenring, for HW3: CPU).

ghushn3 6/26/2025|||
Counter Strike 2 (lol, steam says 2012), DOTA 2 (2013), PUBG (2017), Bongo Cat, Elden Ring: Nightreign (2025), Peak (2025), Rainbow Six Siege (2015), Dune Awakening (2025), Marvel Rivals (2024), aaaaaand Wallpaper Engine.

Now, maybe you cut out Bongo Cat and Wallpaper Engine, those aren't games. Next on the list we'd have Apex Legends (2020) and Warframe (2013).

Few of these games tell you much about performance. And I don't think many of them have ways to get a consistent, quick performance measurement. I think the article authors made a pretty good set of choices, tbh.

smallstepforman 6/26/2025|
Every simple code base / API is faster than mature API’s due to the fact they do less. A simple string handling library which isnt biderectional, doesnt cater to people with accessibility, doesnt take locale formatting into account, doesnt cover 100% unicode spec will always be faster than complex code that does.

Code and kernels that target known hardware doesn’t need dynamic conditional code to handle unpredictable hardware. This will be faster.

General purpose operating systems handle printing events, background updates, periodic online checks, network discovery, maintenance jobs etc, all these operations consume resources and time.

Yes, Steam deck on Linux will run faster than equivalent games on Windows. But Steam deck on a smaller OS like Haiku will run even faster than Linux.

Engineering is a compromise. A F1 car can corner faster than a passanger car. But it probably sucks to reverse park. Also, I cannot imagine using a sports car for grocery shopping and hauling furniture from Ikea.