Cyberpunk runs 30% faster on linux than on windows 11
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There was a tweet before the recent Cyberpunk update that essentially said "expect very high CPU utilization as we now use the whole CPU" which I thought just meant they dropped the ball somewhere.
I haven't done extensive testing on this as I'm just some dude. It's been a long time since I've had windows running on anything, but the three that I remember are:
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.
Or faster. Depends heavily on the game. Some things wine + dxvk does better.
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.
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.
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.
I kind of expect a patch for Windows that addresses the reason it is slower there now that they know there is a difference.
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.
This is just one game with one particular graphics card, this might not be the same for example with nvidia cards.
I'd be surprised if it is.
I can't see anything but something hinky with driver overhead mattering this much.
Cyberpunk 2077 runs faster on pop os on my Nvidia card compared to on windows 10
30 percent of real improvement is one hell of an overclock...
Yeah but it still upsets me that “Fedora” exists lol. The name, that is.
Is there a Linux distro specifically optimized for gaming?
SteamOS technically, but you probably don't want it on a regular computer.
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.
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
Lol
linux users still coping
nobody likes linux yall are chatting in an echo chamber. lemmy feels like a comp sci major college party lol
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
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.
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.
"Older"
Ha that hit hard. This is basically the system I just upgraded to. Well at least it'll run the game well.
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.
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.
Me with my i7 2600 playing with oblivion level graphics: yeah, older hw is just fine
I mean....... is that what you want ?
cries in
.blendDon't mind me and my ThinkPad X220.
Modern computers cost too damn much
I was thinking "Let it be Vega. I might give that shitty game a second chance."
What are the chances that it's just not rendering something due to the DX12 to Vulkan translation?
Possible, but looking through the footage it seems everything is being rendered as expected.
Thanks Stadia. No wonder it performed so well.
I miss it :'(
Me too...
That may be true, but that’s only because Linux is better than Windows.
Windows 11 is trash. Microsoft kept boasting it was "faster" than 10, but it is (unsurprisingly?) heavy in some weird areas, including a less snappy start menu, more telemetry, invasive integration with their software, you name it. Tried one machine in my collection to try it via an upgrade (a Microsoft Surface Pro 6), and the performance was so bad I ended up going back to Windows 10. Multi-second lag just to get to the program shortcuts is a really bad sign.
Strange, I've had the opposite experience. I remember early on 11 was really bad and buggy in general so I waited to move my main install, but it's been fantastic for me on laptop and desktop.
Granted, I'm very particular about my Windows installs and know how to clean everything up pretty well, so I have no idea how out of box experience compares, but at least with how I use it, 11 has been fantastic, performance has been much more consistent, I don't need to reboot as often, and it lasted way longer before I felt the need for a fresh install than any of my 10 installations.
I still have certain things I'm not able to entirely fix that bug me (still searching for a way to remove the stupid Office 365 ad from the settings homepage) that weren't in Windows 10, but the settings in 11 are overall SO much better, window snapping is way better, explorer is way better, HDR support is way better, multi-monitor support is better, default apps in general are better, it's becoming easier to remove built-in apps you don't want, and just a whole bunch of small QOL changes and updated, more consistent styling, it's just a much nicer OS to use at this point.
If you haven't tried it yet, Tiny11 23H2 just came out, and while there's still some stuff I fixed after installation, it does an excellent job of trimming most of the fat off Win11 without sacrificing usability. You can use Windows update like normal (and you'll have to update after install) but it may be worth another try if you haven't tried 11 recently. IMO it's a really nice upgrade over 10 if you can fix all the little annoyances like the new right-click and such. (BloatyNosy on GitHub is what I use post-install, in addition to a few powershell commands and such)
I don't doubt you cleaned up it up well. But you are the exception rather than the rule for experiencing Windows 11.
The absolute shitfest that is the incessant integration with Bing and other online only tech is the biggest problem. If you have muscle memory like I do to start button + type keyword for a program + enter, it is unbearably slow to respond at times for the search to catch up. Or my new favorite, getting ready to hit enter, only to have it change the current selection right before.
And this is to say nothing of the critical settings you can no longer directly control or are just broken. Want to change the power profile of your laptop? Buried. Want to get an estimate on your battery time remaining? Better open the registry. Want to switch your background? Well, roll the dice on that high resolution PNG you just created; unlike 10, 11 fails on some backgrounds of certain filetypes if they're over a certain size (try a detailed PNG over 3000x4000). Just want a plain old Documents directory that isn't integrated with OneDrive? Happy hunting; turning it off ain't enough anymore.
Damn, you know what? I actually sort of liked windows 11 when I had it on an empty SSD but now that I've added all my software I've noticed it's much less snappy than win10 was.
Now I'm thinking of down(upgrading) back to windows 10 but Feel like it's going to be a hassle. I'm not as tech savvy as I used to be and can't even recall how to go back to win10 without just installing it fresh
It is just unfortunate that it does not run on Nvidia hardware. The benchmark runs if you disable all RTX features, but it crashes on a new game before you even have full control of the character.
Looking at protondb it looks like all people with Nvidia have issues since the 2.0 update. I hope there will be some fix soon. I don't want to replace the GPU yet it would be a waste (2080 Super).
For now I am playing it on my Steam Deck instead.
I don't know what you're talking about, It run very well on my Nvidia GPU on Linux before and after the patch and DLC.
Create a new character, select corporate start and once the other person enters the room the game crashes just for the easiest 100% reproducible crash. Other people have the same problems and even if they get past that (different game start) it still frequently crashes due to Nvidia driver bugs as far as I understand it.
If it works so well for you what's your setup? I heard some older Nvidia cards might work better.
Downgrade to the 510 Nvidia driver. Runs absolutely solid on my rtx2080. It should be noted that this crash seems to be quite correlated to the rtx20x0 cards - my speculation is that something about dlss is a bit borked on them since they're the first dlss 2+ cards. It's not even exclusively Linux either, reports indicate that there's some sort of overlay (I blame the call overlay myself) that is tanking fps on windows as well. The 510 driver works great because dlss isn't available for it as I understand it.
Just tried this on my Nvidia 3090 with no issues. Corpo start, went all the way to T-Bug's Mili-tech training program just fine. DLSS and Psycho RT enabled.
Thank you for testing. Seemingly it is just the 20XX cards affected then. I just checked the other reports again and they are also using turing cards. Bummer!
I never had an issu with this game on steam, my setup is a basic dell gaming laptop with Intel i5CPU and Nvidia GTX 1650 from 3 years ago and my OS is an Arch based distro, Garuda, but I also played on other distros without problems.
Looks like it really is just turing cards affected then. Bummer!
The 1650 is Turing though. Both 16XX (low end) and 20XX (mid/high end) cards are on Turing architecture
I am starting to believe it just affects the 2000 series of cards then although some of the driver bugs causing crashes should affect all modern Nvidia cards equally.
I am confused why that's the case though.
I looked through protondb again and it looks like all people using 20XX cards cannot play the game. While it looks fine for 30XX with some minor tweaks. For older cards it is a mixed bag, but there are just very few reports overall.
I just did this a couple days ago(new game with corpo start) on my brand new system that I just built. No crashes, no issues at all. Using 7950X3D and a 4090.
Edit: I misread. I’m using windows on this system.
No issues here, more than 20 hours on Linux on a 3080 latest drivers, wayland, , dlss, ray tracing or not, works great.
Can you do ray tracing on Linux? I played today a bit and the option was grayed out. I’m on X though, using official drivers.
Yup, you just gotta set the right environment variables. Can't remember them off the top of my head though, "NVAPI" is part of one of them I think. Don't have an nvidia gpu anymore, though, switched to AMD about two months back.
Just came back to say it freaken worked. Cyberpunk on linux looks and runs just as well as it does on windows. I don't think I need to dual boot anymore...
In case anyone else is wondering...
Haha glad it worked out :)
Casual vulkan W?
Now can you make it stop defaulting to controller keybindings on Linux?
echo '2C45C6: EB' | xxd -r - Cyberpunk2077.exe
In the x64 bin folder
Source, and what is this command supposed to do? We shouldn't blindly copypaste shell commands from online.
xxd man page
The Steam community thread about this issue and I can vouch it does fix it.
"trust me bro" is not an answer
Thank you!
This bug was fixed in a patch when phantom liberty launched? I haven't seen it since that patch anyway.
Shut up and look at the more frames. - article author mumbling - God damn ingrates always complaining just because things don't work right... 30% more frames is practically 10% less controller!
໒꒰ྀི -᷅ ⤙ -᷄ ꒱ྀི১
Haha, what a crazy coincidence! I had the original cyberpunk last year on windows 10. It was glitchy as hell but ran semi decent on my hardware.
Deleted it, and last night just installed phantom liberty.
Ngl, the gameplay and feel is so far 10x better than it was before the update. It's actually complete now and if you hated it before I'd honestly recommend another try as so far I'm actually sort of enjoying the gameplay whereas I hated it before and only played for the story.
Anyway, my issue is that with all of the updates it's not running anywhere near as nice as it was before. I'm having to run it on the lowest resolution with every graphic option disabled which stinks because with the gameplay being fixed somewhat I'd really like to enjoy it graphically as well.
I've installed Ubuntu dual boot on my ssd before and can do that again but any tips? I wouldn't know about where to even get phantom liberty on fedora or how to install it?
What did you play it on before? If steam you just have to change a dropdown and it should just work
If gog or something else you should just add it to steam as a non steam game and change a drop down and it should just work
I can definitely add it to steam as a non steam game but which drop-down? Would be awesome if this worked, thank you!
Oh and I played it exactly how I'm playing it now but not on steam, heck idk I just have a cyberpunk icon I click to open it on win11, I don't open it with steam or anything but will try for the dropdown
In the games properties under compatibility first you click a check box that says "force the use of a specific steam play compatibility tool" and then in the drop down below that select proton experimental
Oh! You're talking about getting it to work on Linux sorry I was so confused. So I can use the same cyberpunk setup.exe on Linux or do I have to download a different one? This is great news didn't realize it would be so simple
Yes, you can use windows installers on linux, Lutris and bottles provide different UIs for that, some prefer one or the other
There's also heroic launcher (even for windows iirc) for an alternate launcher for Epic games (amung others)
Personally what I tend to do is use one of those for installation, and run it through steam to play it, there are other ways, but I like the Steam UI and controller customization
Also if you are considering fedora and you want to try it for gaming, I just want to recommend nobara, it's basically Fedora just with some modifications for gaming
It occurs to me that if you aren't installing it through steam it might be slightly more effort becouse you can't use a windows installer without something to run the .exe, steam should work for that too, but so would something like bottles or Lutris
Not sure we're on the same page, I have installed it and it runs, just not as smoothly as it did before.
But you're talking about something having to run in the background to emulate steam since I've installed from elsewhere, correct?
How could I use bottles or lutris?
I wasn't sure how you were installing it, if you were using something like a gog installer lutris for example could handle the installation for you, but sense you have it installed that's irrelevant
steam runs natively on linux though so no you wouldn't have to emulate it or anything
Without knowing more I'm not sure about the prefomance though, and I'm not an expert, but if you are dual booting it might have something to do with the file system you are using, I've not messed with dual booting before so I can't be sure, and I wouldn't know how to fix it either
I'm sorry, I've been confusing myself in the comments haha thought you were advising about how to get the windows version to run better now realize we're on Linux sorry!
So lutris is for running windows .exe on Linux! Good to know, and no I'm not dual booting yet just windows 11 just considering install Ubuntu/fedora or something to dual boot with and running cyberpunk from it instead of win11, or just going back to win10 and seeing if it helps
Hey that's a similar setup to mine, except I have 6700XT, on ultra settings, worst case scenario I get ~60FPS, on average it's 80
I haven't tried the new update but this gives me high hopes for what my 6800 can chew through.
It's a well known fact that every second major release of Windows is crap.
I thought the new upgrade scheme (2 editions per year) Microsoft introduced with Windows 10 would be like "every second release will suck" but it started to look like Microsoft were able to break the curse....
...and then Windows 11 happened.
casusally skipping millenium edition because most people opted to buy windows 2000, the enterprise server os instead.
Windows 2000 couldn't run games because it was based on Windows NT and the NT Kernel. ME was still based on DOS. XP frankensteined the NT Kernel and DOS to somehow make the most stable, longest running and best windows ever.
And 20 years later they're bleeding marketshare.
Windows 2000 could run games (I should know: I kept being a gamer whilst using it for years) but in the early days with so many games designed for DOS that required direct low level access it was a problem. If I remember it correct one had to boot in DOS mode for those.
Eventually with DirectX that stopped being a problem (plus, again if I remember it correctly, OpenGL also became compatible with it).
I ran 2000 back in the day and didn't really have any problems with it. IMO it breaks the pattern somewhat. XP was better, of course, but 2000 was a good OS.
I still game using Windows 2000 on a Pentium 3 Tualatin based system.
All my retro games run no problem, Tiberian Sun is the shite.
W2k was awesome. Great stability. However, the legacy from Windows NT meant that applications had no direct access to hardware which games of that time required.
That was a showstopper for most users outside the enterprise world.
I am not gonna disagree with you, but I remember playing half-life on it with no problems. Of course, you couldn't play DOS games on it, if that's what you mean.
You know what? I never had issues with ME, it actually worked quite well for what I did, which was a lot of gaming.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=RsWrGRVMDXg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
By the way, the "rendering at lower resolution and upscaling" thingy, is there a way to force AMD's version on any game in Linux? I want to play Satisfactory and got a 5700G, fat iGPU but only 2GB VRAM.
Forcing FSR1 is possible (and was even possible before it was on Windows), FSR2 is not.
Thanks! FSR it is. Saved.
You can use Gamescope or I think Proton/DXVK has FSR1 support as well
Why does the Nobara benchmark report as Windows 10 pro?
Wine always reports itself as some version of Windows. Mostly, it doesn't really matter.
probably from the wine trick it uses or something, no?
I wouldn't know personally. I don't use linux for games except on my steam deck, so I don't have any knowledge on the subject. That does make some sense though if WINE relies on tricking software into thinking it's Windows.
Wine simulates a Windows environment to some degree, Steam is the only platform that fixed the reporting issue and that wasn't always the case ether because the system tells the game it's Windows.
@JigglySackles @cron wine self reports itself as windows 10 for compatibility
Thanks!
definitely believable
16gb ddr3 ram
ten year old i5
rx580 8gb
arch linux gnome desktop
standard prebuilt dell pc
have two of these machines built and operating in the house both are able to play modern games including Hogwarts Legacy low settings at 60fps no ray tracing
some games run fine with medium or high
some games such as Hogwarts Legacy and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered require a per game specialized wine wrapper script that is usually already made by an awesome entity unless you go through the steam launcher and then it just plays like a steam deck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Deck
"Steam Deck runs SteamOS version 3, based on the Arch Linux operating system. While SteamOS had been previously developed for Steam Machines using Debian Linux, Valve stated that they wanted to use a rolling upgrade approach for the Deck's system software, a function Debian was not designed for but was a feature of Arch Linux. An application programming interface (API) specific for the Steam Deck is available to game developers, allowing a game to specify certain settings if it is being run on a Steam Deck compared to a normal computer. Within the Steam storefront, developers can populate a special file depot for their game with lower-resolution textures and other reduced elements to allow their game to perform better on the Steam Deck; Steam automatically detects and downloads the appropriate files for the system (whether on a computer or Steam Deck) when the user installs the game"
Even Valve can't help but tell everyone that they run Arch.
There's no such thing as magic. Some computation is absolutely getting skipped.
Sure, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; if the Linux version is missing useful output that would be bad, but if the DX to Vulkan translation ironed out a performance regression, or the scheduler works better in this scenario, or filesystem access had issues with NTFS it could also cause performance differences in Linux favour.
I guess I agree, but because the title felt a lot like a youtube channel clickbait promo, I bit. In an opposite way.
NTFS is pretty outdated, btw
Yeah, that's usually called optimization ;-)
Also don't know how much stuff runs in the background on W11, maybe there is now more stuff needing memory and CPU time
No, that is not what optimisation is.
Was meant with tongue in cheek - at least that was meant with the smiley
But still, could very much think of some hungry background processes. I'm just guessing, as I don't run Win11 anywhere
... Is probably defender
well, unfortunately i have the opposite but it's not too bad. high settings with motion blur etc.,fsr disabled but with chromatic aberration on i get like 10fps less than windows gtx 1660 ti and ryzen 5 3600 prolly a nvidia issue
Chromatic aberration drops my fps too, on windows 10
Chromatic aberration is so bad, it's trying to imitate bad lenses in a camera instead of our eyes which are so fine tuned that we don't really have it(unless you need glasses lenses)
@arin @gothicdecadence
Hate to tell you, but eyes have chromatic aberration. They have lots of optical faults. They're really pretty crappy, but our visual system learn to filter out and ignore it.
Not true, when i have glasses on i see the chromatic aberration, but not when i take them off. The game exaggerates CR like old cameras where newer high quality lenses on cameras don't have such bad CR mimicked by the game.
@arin You see the chromatic aberration from your glasses. You don't see the aberration from your eyes, same as you don't see the blind spot or the yellow spot, or notice that your peripheral vision is in black and white only.
Nice, next game should have black/white peripheral zones
i should've rephrased that,normally the high preset disables chromatic aberration, i enable it and i use the same settings on both operating systems
@cron
I couldn't get the link to work--I get a server error--but I was able to look at the video on YouTube, so this might be useful to others with the same issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWrGRVMDXg
Edit: I did get the link to work one out of five times. I guess the site is just congested? I don't know. But anyway, there's a link to the YouTube video directly anyway.
Not suprising. Linux is usually faster, that is whe backend of every internet service uses Linux.
30% is extremely surprising. I'd expect single digit percent gains, if any, on Linux. This 30% difference was in the opposite direction 10 years ago, when Windows had access to low-level graphics APIs and Linux was only on OpenGL. I wouldn't expect there to be 30% worth of frames per second to be tied to Windows bloat.
30% means either Windows is doing something dumb, or the game is doing something dumb and the compatibility layers are mitigating the issue on Linux.
Exactly. Some people here seem to be completely detached from reality if they honestly think that this isn't just some weird bug and these tests being an indicator of one OS being better than the other.
Sure there are some aspects where one OS's philosophy has some performance gains over the other when doing very specific tasks, mostly when it comes to file access or creating processes. A 30% difference is just way too much, particularly for a game, where those differences shouldn't matter as much.
Like how Elden Ring ran better on Linux at the start because Wine could patch in cache precompilation which normally the game devs would need to do themselves
Exactly. And usually there's a 5-10% performance penalty on Linux because of WINE overhead when running Windows games on Linux, but sometimes Linux makes up for it in other ways (maybe the scheduler) and can get 5-10% faster.
Honestly, on Proton, performance differences between the two operating systems are a dice roll in either direction, but still single digit percentages like you said.