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Comment by helterskelter | Hacker News Reader

If memory serves, Linux typically outperforms Windows with AMD and Intel graphics. Some of the gotchas are things like running games through Proton or anti-cheat/DRM stuff not getting the same attention that Windows does, but the raw performance is there. I wouldn't recommend using Nvidia on Linux though.

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I run NVIDIA on my Bazzite box and I get excellent performance. I had to fiddle with a few things though that probably work out of the box on AMD (example: screen tearing in Steam Big Picture mode. Fix: enabling developer mode in Steam and setting "Force Composite" to true).

In amd, you have to turn on TearFree in xorg.conf, but you can then avoid screen tearing with and without compositors.

I have no idea why this is not turned on by default.

It typically will only outperform Windows *if* you are running lower-end hardware. The main thing here is that when running on Linux, your game is typically in less contention with the OS for getting access to CPU cores and RAM.

If you have a beefy CPU and plentiful RAM, then typically one should expect Linux to be slightly behind Windows performance (though there are exceptions), because then Windows' bloat becomes a non-issue, and the impact of the translation layers start to become more significant.

> I wouldn't recommend using Nvidia on Linux though.

This was true 4 years ago, but is outdated knowledge now. Nvidia used to disallow distributing drivers with distro images, but they have since made agreements with some popular distros. If the distro image you download includes drivers or you know how to install them, the proprietary drivers work really well.

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