According to a benchmark, SteamOS has already overtaken the big Windows competition on handhelds – now the community wants the success to be repeated on classic PCs.
New benchmark tests by Ars Technica on the Lenovo Legion Go S have revealed a remarkable result: Games run consistently faster under SteamOS 3.7 than under Windows 11.
In four out of five AAA titles tested, SteamOS delivered higher frame rates. In most cases, the gains were “only” in the single-digit percentage range, but there were also major outliers: In the third-person shooter Returnal, SteamOS achieved an average of 33 frames per second with high settings, while Windows 11 only managed 18 FPS with Lenovo’s pre-installed drivers.
At first glance, this sounds like a paradox: SteamOS achieves these performance advantages even though the system requires the Proton compatibility layer to translate Windows API calls for Linux in order to run Windows games.
This additional translation layer should theoretically cost performance – but apparently it doesn’t.
The (probable) explanation for the result
The reason probably lies in Valve’s years of optimization work both with Proton and with the integration of modern Mesa graphics drivers. The RADV Vulkan drivers for AMD graphics cards have achieved significant performance leaps in recent years and even outperform AMD’s own proprietary drivers in some benchmarks.
Another decisive factor is the different resource allocation of the two operating systems.
This efficiency is particularly evident in handheld gaming PCs, where every percent of performance and battery life counts. In addition, SteamOS benefits from features such as shader pre-caching, which reduces stuttering during gameplay.
Simply explained: With pre-shader caching, Steam downloads pre-compiled shaders for each game and stores them on the hard disk. This means that the GPU does not have to compile itself first when playing, but can use the finished shaders immediately. Although this costs hard disk capacity, it has the advantage of shorter loading times.
When will the SteamOS PC arrive?
Of course, such results quickly make the rounds on social networks. In the gaming subreddit, for example, there are calls for the return of a PC with SteamOS – even though the original “Steam Machines” failed to catch on a decade ago.
<blockquote class=”reddit-embed-bq” style=”height:500px” data-embed-height=“240”><a href=”https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1lkyp8g/games_run_faster_on_steamos_than_windows_11_ars/”>Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds</a><br> by<a href=”https://www.reddit.com/user/n0b0dycar3s07/”>u/n0b0dycar3s07</a> in<a href=”https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/”>gaming</a></blockquote><script async=”” src=”https://embed.reddit.com/widgets.js” charset=”UTF-8″></script>
Users who already use Linux distributions for gaming report similarly positive experiences. “I installed it yesterday and was really surprised, everything works straight away and the gaming compatibility is great too,” reports one user about his experience in the PCMR subreddit.
Hardware compatibility remains problematic
Despite the euphoria, the community continues to identify serious obstacles to wider Linux adoption. Popular games such as Call of Duty, PUBG and Riot Games titles with Vanguard remain compatible.
Almost every competitive game requires anti-cheat software that does not or cannot work on Linux.
Nvidia users are particularly cautious, as the graphics driver situation on Linux is still suboptimal. “70 percent of Steam gamers use an Nvidia GPU,” says one community member – although for some this is just another reason to look for an AMD or Intel alternative.
Would you switch to SteamOS for better gaming performance or is there a reason why you can’t switch away from Windows permanently? What has been your Linux experience so far? Let us know what you think in the comments!
