The vanilla kernel has always worked for me, FWIW.

Yeah, I know it works but perhaps another kernel can achieve more performance or something?

I have tried so far ck-kernel and I can say that it was even worst than the stocked kernel.(I have tested it while they jumped to MuQSS CPU Scheduler so maybe now performs much better)
Gaming optimization,NEW Drivers & Vulkan API maybe improve FPS in some games and thats all.if your CPU is not a bottleneck and you have an I5 or I7 processor the only thing that will increase your FPS is a better graphic card.
Overclocking your CPU will not make much of a difference.

Ah, the "good old days"...

make menuconfig; make dep; make clean; make bzImage; make modules

Arch has plenty of 3rd party "optimized" ones... Generally though, I wouldn't bother.

i have tried many and the differences are so small/if at all that its not worth the hassle.

OK, thanks for all your answers! So it seems like there is no really kernel for a significantly better gaming experience.