How bad is gaming on Linux compared to Gaming on Windows and Gaming on Mac?

[nafukgt]

I planned to build a pc with R5 3600, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD and it runs PopOS. You must be asking "why you install linux on your gaming rig?" Well. Because of the Stability of EVERYTHING. How bad is it compared to Gaming on Windows and Gaming on Mac?

[Slottr]

Have you tried using an Nvidia card on any Linux distro?

 

The drivers are horrible

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Slottr said:

Have you tried using an Nvidia card on any Linux distro?

 

The drivers are horrible

I mean its not that bad, for most large distros, just isntall the package and it just works. There are some issues with bleeding edge stuff or some weird config, but it works mostly.

[Slottr]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I mean its not that bad, for most large distros, just isntall the package and it just works. There are some issues with bleeding edge stuff or some weird config, but it works mostly.

There's a ton of little issues I've run into. Not saying it's unusable, just a Windows experience for a gaming PC on the drivers side (with this hardware) would be much easier to manage

[nafukgt]

2 minutes ago, Slottr said:

There's a ton of little issues I've run into. Not saying it's unusable, just a Windows experience for a gaming PC on the drivers side (with this hardware) would be much easier to manage

but it's not as bad as macos, isnt it?

[Nayr438]

Compared to Windows

• You will take a performance hit of some sort whether its negligible or extreme.
• You will not have Ray Tracing or DLSS
• You will not be playing games that require Anti-Cheat Software
• Some Games may not work at all
• NVIDIA has horrible xorg configuration, whether that matters to you or not, depends on if you ever need to manually adjust something

Compared to MacOS

• You actually have a chance of running Windows Games
• You can actually use your NVIDIA Card

Check with ProtonDB and Lutris to see how your game performs.

[Slottr]

1 minute ago, nafukgt said:

but it's not as bad as macos, isnt it?

Well you can't use an Nvidia card in MacOS period, so I guess so?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, nafukgt said:

but it's not as bad as macos, isnt it?

I mean depends on the hardware and game?

 

Normally there are more issues on linux and mac os as there is less effort put into those ports, and more bugs that never get fixed as few people get affected. Id say windows is a better gaming experience for most.

 

But if you get the hardware, you can try both.

[nafukgt]

Just now, Nayr438 said:

Compared to Windows

• You will take a performance hit of some sort whether its negligible or extreme.
• You will not have Ray Tracing or DLSS
• You will not be playing games that require Anti-Cheat Software
• Some Games may not work at all
• NVIDIA has horrible xorg configuration, whether that matters to you or not, depends on if you ever need to manually adjust something

Compared to MacOS

• You actually have a chance of running Windows Games
• You can actually use your NVIDIA Card

Check with ProtonDB and Lutris to see how your game performs.

Lists of my games that I wanna play is Minecraft with SEUS PTGI HRR, Among Us, and Geometry Dash

[nafukgt]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I mean depends on the hardware and game?

 

Normally there are more issues on linux and mac os as there is less effort put into those ports, and more bugs that never get fixed as few people get affected. Id say windows is a better gaming experience for most.

 

But if you get the hardware, you can try both.

not hardware, but windows is kinda buggy so i decided to use linux instead.

[Nayr438]

Just now, nafukgt said:

Lists of my games that I wanna play is Minecraft with SEUS PTGI HRR, Among Us, and Geometry Dash

Minecraft is a Java Application and is Native to Linux. For Mods, make sure your using openjdk-8 / Java 8 and you will be fine.

 

https://www.protondb.com/app/945360

https://www.protondb.com/app/322170

 

You should be fine

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, nafukgt said:

Lists of my games that I wanna play is Minecraft with SEUS PTGI HRR, Among Us, and Geometry Dash

Looking at those mods there seems to be more issues on linux than there is on windows. Really linux will have more issues normally.

 

You can try both when you have the hardware, but don't switch to linux for less issues.

[nafukgt]

3 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

Minecraft is a Java Application and is Native to Linux. For Mods, make sure your using openjdk-8 / Java 8 and you will be fine.

 

https://www.protondb.com/app/945360

https://www.protondb.com/app/322170

 

You should be fine

i mean.. optifine? to run seus ptgi hrr?

[nafukgt]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Looking at those mods there seems to be more issues on linux than there is on windows. Really linux will have more issues normally.

 

You can try both when you have the hardware, but don't switch to linux for less issues.

did you mean.. break my ssd? nahhhh... the bug that will break my ssd...

edit : I already have among us in my phone

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, nafukgt said:

did you mean.. break my ssd? nahhhh... the bug that will break my ssd...

it won't break the drive.

 

Issues as in the game not working right or bad performance. 

[Nayr438]

Just now, nafukgt said:

i mean.. optifine? to run seus ptgi hrr?

yea, you will need to be on Java 8 / openjdk-8. Not sure what PopOS! ships by default. You will find out fairly quick if your not, as it will spit out errors left and right in-game for various mods including optifine.

[Craftyawesome]

11 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

Compared to Windows

• You will take a performance hit of some sort whether its negligible or extreme.
• You will not have Ray Tracing or DLSS
• You will not be playing games that require Anti-Cheat Software
• Some Games may not work at all
• NVIDIA has horrible xorg configuration, whether that matters to you or not, depends on if you ever need to manually adjust something

Compared to MacOS

• You actually have a chance of running Windows Games
• You can actually use your NVIDIA Card

Check with ProtonDB and Lutris to see how your game performs.

How much of the linux points are the open source driver only?

 

Also,

Ray tracing - does this apply to directx ray tracing only? What about the Vulkan's implementation?

 

Anti-cheat - doesn't this only happen on wine/proton?

 

MacOS

Windows games - isn't this a similar situation to linux?

MacOS doesn't let you use modern nvidia cards at all.

MacOS is also stuck on opengl 4.1 and Apple's proprietary metal.  

[Nayr438]

2 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

How much of the linux points are the open source driver only?

None as you wont be doing much of anything with nouveau,

 

3 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

Ray tracing - does this apply to directx ray tracing only? What about the Vulkan's implementation?

Nothing in Linux supports ray tracing currently, as far as I am aware. The extensions exist and I believe some work has been put towards it, but it will probably be awhile before we see anything take advantage of it. I believe NVIDIA is also still slowly rolling out there proprietary Ray Tracing Vulkan extensions as well.

 

4 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

Anti-cheat - doesn't this only happen on wine/proton?

Yes, but you will probably be running most games through Proton. Most Linux ports run worse than there Windows versions running in Proton.

 

5 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

Windows games - isn't this a similar situation to linux?

Last I knew, MacOS didn't support DXVK. I also don't know the state of wine on MacOS as I don't personally follow Apple. However a google search says that it may be possible now or in the near future thanks to work from Crossover. https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK/issues/203#issuecomment-682576084

Too bad the ARM switch is probably going to complicate things further for MacOS Gaming in the near future.

[BoxGuardian]

The support for Nvidia drivers on linux has improved considerably since Linus Torvalds made his famous statement in 2012.

 

[Nayr438]

22 minutes ago, BoxGuardian said:

The support for Nvidia drivers on linux has improved considerably since Linus Torvalds made his famous statement in 2012.

 

No they have somewhat improved since Valve began work on Proton. Linus Torvalds statement about NVIDIA being closed source and not sharing information made no difference to NVIDIA. Valves work on proton however seems to have helped push NVIDIA more towards the gaming side of Linux rather than just the Workstation side of things. Still not great, but better from what I have heard. Drivers were still horrid when I had my 1060 however imo.

[Goddess Zoe]

It's not as bad as some people try to make it out to be, i use Arch Linux as my main OS when gaming and for the games that don't work on Linux you just run a VM running Windows 10.

[Nick7]

For gaming rig, while you can use Linux, using Windows is much simpler.

Please save yourself headache, and fiddling all the time to try and make it work.

 

If you said you were going to code, run VM's, and just be able to run games here and there, then yeah - Linux is fine. For gaming, while it can work, it's a lot of hassle.

 

And as far as stability goes, I really don't remember last time my Windows crashed. Long gone are days of Windows XP/95.

 

Honestly, Windows is still easier to use for desktop, and for gaming there is currently no competition.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

At this point  essentially, the only Windows games which won't run on Linux are the ones which the developers explicitly don't want you to run on Linux (i.e. the ones which use some super intrusive anti-cheat software). Everything else will either run out of the box or after manually adjusting some settings in config files, which you can learn about by googling.

[Koeshi]

On 9/14/2020 at 12:31 AM, Nayr438 said:

You will take a performance hit of some sort whether its negligible or extreme.

That really depends on the game, some will not have a performance hit and some will have an improvement due to the increase in available system resources.

On 9/14/2020 at 12:31 AM, Nayr438 said:

You will not be playing games that require Anti-Cheat Software

Again that really depends on the game and what anti-cheat it uses.  VAC works fine for example and from my (limited) experience so does the 7Days implementation of EAC.

[nafukgt]

On 9/15/2020 at 2:15 PM, Nick7 said:

For gaming rig, while you can use Linux, using Windows is much simpler.

Please save yourself headache, and fiddling all the time to try and make it work.

 

If you said you were going to code, run VM's, and just be able to run games here and there, then yeah - Linux is fine. For gaming, while it can work, it's a lot of hassle.

 

And as far as stability goes, I really don't remember last time my Windows crashed. Long gone are days of Windows XP/95.

 

Honestly, Windows is still easier to use for desktop, and for gaming there is currently no competition.

well.. linux is much simpler and more stable than windows tbh. windows in unstable and more cluttered