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Now that Steam has the ability officially to override a Linux game and run it through Steam Play instead, let's take a quick look at some differences in performance.

Before I begin, let's make something clear. I absolutely value the effort developers put into Linux games, I do think cross-platform development is incredibly important so we don't end up with more lock-in. However, let's be realistic for a moment. Technology moves on and it's not financially worth it to keep updating old games, they just don't sell as well as newer games (with exceptions of course). The intention with such comparisons is not to favour any developer or any method of gaming on Linux. It’s just to show what’s possible, what the differences are, what doesn’t work and so on. As the years go on, there will be more ways to run older games better and better, of that I've no doubt.

I'm not a zealot for any one particular method of gaming either and as a fan of all things gaming, software and technology, I thought it might be interesting and hopefully you do too. The tests were attempted on some games that have a Linux version, while also being games that are quite heavy on your system.

Note: All tests done at 1080p on Ubuntu 18.10, with the NVIDIA 415.25 driver and my 980ti with Proton 3.16-6.

First up, let's take a look at Tomb Raider (2013) which arrived on Linux back in 2016. Since Tomb Raider has a handy built-in benchmark tool, we will start off simply by showing the results:

Benchmarks also only tell one part of the story. In the case of Tomb Raider, through Steam Play it needed to run through entirely at least once or there was quite a lot of stuttering which wasn't the case in the Linux version. However, the Linux version has parts of the game where performance dives a lot and the Steam Play version is better there. To Feral Interactive's credit (who ported it to Linux), their later ports are miles ahead of this.

Sidenote: For the videos, the titles "Steam Play" and "Linux" show their corresponding videos to the side, in case that wasn't clear.

In the case of Cities: Skylines which released on Linux back in 2015 at the same time as the Windows version, testing out the "Benchmark" map from the Steam Workshop resulted in something I didn't expect. The performance was very close but the Linux version was noticeably smoother with a couple of extra FPS.

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Either way, a big city doesn't perform well no matter how you do it. I should note here too, that even though the Linux versions performs slightly better it does eat up quite a bit more RAM.

Next up, MXGP3 a rather new Linux port from November 2018. Given how it's quite new, I honestly would have thought it would do reasonably well. As noted in my previous article, the performance of the Linux version isn't very good and Steam Play blows it out of the water.

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Not a pretty picture, with the official Linux version struggling at times to even hit 30FPS it makes it difficult to control. It's also not a very good game but that's a different thing altogether…

Dying Light is up next, a personal favourite of mine. Also no benchmark mode I could find for the Linux version, so a comparison video keeping it as close as I could:

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As you can see, both versions work quite well. I've completed the game more than once and I was actually happy enough with the performance of the Linux version, it was good enough and playable. However, the Steam Play version with Vulkan is at times around double the performance of the Linux version which is quite striking.

Next up, I tried Total War: WARHAMMER II. A Linux port from Feral Interactive released only in November last year. This would have been quite an exciting comparison, since the Linux version uses Vulkan. First issue encountered when trying it in Steam Play, is that it gives you a completely blank white launcher, so you need to opt into their new launcher beta which does work in Steam Play.

So you hit play on the fancy new launcher, guess what happens next? You get a brief moment of life, a glorious flash of black…and then it just quits to the desktop. Happens across both Proton 3.7 and 3.16. So, Total War: WARHAMMER II in Steam Play is a dud whereas the actual Linux version does work rather nicely.

The curious one is Rise of the Tomb Raider, I've been told this should work in Steam Play to do a comparison. However, it faced the same issue for me as Total War: WARHAMMER II. A black screen for a moment and then it quits on me. I have sent a log to the creator of DXVK for that, maybe it will help somewhere. Again, the Linux version from Feral works nicely.

 

The testing in this article was going to be longer, I had some grand plans for doing a lot of comparisons. However, Steam Play is still in beta and it has an uphill battle ahead of it. Rise of the Tomb Raider, Total War: WARHAMMER II, Civilization VI, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and BioShock Infinite didn't work at all in Steam Play across both Proton 3.16 and 3.7 but the Linux versions do work. Sad about not being able to test more, but it's an example of how a supported release is the better option for certain games (especially multiplayer games like Darwin Project) and not the answer to everything as some claim. Great as an option but not quite ready for prime time overall, it will be fun to watch it evolve over this next year.

As I've said before though, with Steam Play it's not just a case of squeezing out extra performance. It's also a question of support and features of the Linux version (gamepad support, fullscreen issues, missing graphics options and so on). From a performance standpoint though, it shows clearly Linux can be a gaming platform that performs well.

The biggest question in my mind is: do you really get any true support with games you purchase to play in Steam Play? What exactly are you paying for? I don't really have an answer for that. For a purchased game, the developer (you would think) would be focused on it and fix issues as they come up. With Steam Play though, it covers such a massive list you could end up waiting a while for a fix (if it's possible at all). Thankfully, Valve has made a good step towards stopping Steam Play updates breaking games, since the latest Steam client beta no longer overrides the Proton version for a game in the whitelist.

I may do more tests in future, if readers want me to you will need to let me know what games you want to see tested (they have to have a benchmark mode in the Linux version). We still don't have a decent amount of Linux games that actually do have a benchmark mode, so it does make such a thing rather tricky to get a lot of value out of it and comparison videos eat a huge amount of time for even the most basic rough editing.

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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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YourPalMark Jan 19, 2019
Interesting stuff! I'm anxious to hear of others that have tried Ark: Survival Evolved. Running the Linux version I typically get 45+ fps with high settings, but to my surprise under Steam Play it creaks along at 12-17 fps. (and that's with the settings turned down to low)
Comandante Ñoñardo Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: elmapuli'm really disapointed, i was saying "there is no reason to run those games on proton, they already run on wine"
well, looking at those numbers, looks like we were wasting more performance than i thought and its hard to support aspy/feral with ports like that.

even if i want, i cant afford to pay an hardware much better than the needed to play the games, using windows is just cheaper at that point, using it and donating the money i saved on hardware to some floss software seems to be an better contribution than be just an number...

I don't know where you live, but here in Argentina, a Windows licence costs about 200 U$D.... For that money you can buy a more powerful processor.
Comandante Ñoñardo Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: thykrIt baffles me that non-native is much faster than native.

I really hope someday some smart software engineers will be able to explain why it is that way.

It's because none of them are really native, they all (including Feral & Co) use wrapper libraries. So to call those releases "ports" are really quite misleading.
Feral said they actually rewrote the rendering system for Rise of the Tomb Raider...

If it's made to run on another platform, it's a port.

If they can change things, I wonder why they didn't added linux exclusive features to the game, like press whatever button for 1st person view.
Narvarth Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: KimyrielleThese tests show that SteamPlay is on par with native ports in performance even now, and it didn't even leave beta yet.

Actually,to be honest, these tests only show that Proton is on par with old or bad ports...
PJ Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: PJthis tests make me think that John Carmack might have been right after all ;) ...

No , just look at one message above.

When ports done right ; native is preffered.

sure, native is preferred - sadly it's rarely the case. Most of the times we get some sort of wrapper anyways which those performance results show clearly. When you can get a game running without hassle and with better performance under WINE / Proton why would you choose semi-native version that runs worse. So I see the point in what Carmack said.
But totally agree that true native versions are preferred. Also translation helpers like the one Feral uses is really appreciated - it has taken a while, but performance I see on their recent ports (through Vulkan) is good.
So all in all - when the performance is good and if I don't have to go through extra hoops I'm happy with both options.


Last edited by PJ on 19 January 2019 at 10:37 pm UTC
elmapul Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI don't know where you live, but here in Argentina, a Windows licence costs about 200 U$D.... For that money you can buy a more powerful processor.

powerfull processor+powerfull gpu +powerfull motherboard to acomodate it.
i live in Brasil.
elmapul Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: Purple Library Guyand all the open source stuff with critical mass is maintained and improved on an ongoing basis.

those are the exceptions.

quoting Linus torvalds
" The normal size for most open source projects is three people"

even projects like gimp have something like 2 or 3 mantainers, so i dont know what you mean by critical mass.

and speaking of gimp, if you think its properly support, it isnt, they ditched support for old script-fu scripts some time ago, back then i needed to make an edit in a bunch of images, i tried to make an script to select the first pixel of a bunch of images and set it as transparent color, and failed, the documentation of ho to make script-fu for it was out dated, was no long working even if you know english you have an bad time solving those issues, imagine people who arent native speakers...
Phlebiac Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: MagicMythI can see Steam Proton soon being able to run a tone of older games easily that Windows 10 either requires a lot of hacks for or just can't be done. It will be a funny time when a large amount of one's Windows games collection only works on Linux as the years go by.

Back when Steam Play was still a rumor, I theorized that: 1) it was at least partially based on WINE (correct), and 2) it would be used not only on Linux, but also on macOS and Windows (for games that broke on newer Windows versions). It looks like the macOS support was there early on but got axed (due to Apple being so anti-gaming with their API support), and so far they haven't done it for Windows. But they could in the future?
Schattenspiegel Jan 20, 2019
Has anyone tried TW:Attila? Would be nice to get cross OS multiplayer working if fps are decent.
anewson Jan 20, 2019
great work Liam, thanks for doing this.
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