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Comment on ROG Xbox Ally runs better on Linux than the Windows it ships with — new test shows up to 32% higher FPS

This is such a click-bait title, my God…

According to the article the only significant FPS gains are in the Performance mode. In Silent mode Bazzite has two FPS more in KCD2, and… one less in Hogwarts.

In Turbo mode, the difference is 5 FPS.

And even in Performance it’s not like you’re running at 13 FPS by default - it’s 47 in KCD2 and 50 in HL.

They even provide a nice summary themselves - on average, Bazzite gains 6.6 FPS.

What do you get in return?

Not stability:

I have 512gb model and am running on low with FSR2 on balanced. The game keeps crashing during every play sessions

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And you lose A TONNE of optional game stores, including the entirety of GamePass games.

I would get it if the difference was “20 FPS on Windows” and 50 on Bazzite", but come on…

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Thteven@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The article said the frame rates are more stable under bazzite with windows fluctuating a lot more even at low power settings.

I read through that thread you linked and I didn’t see bazzite mentioned anywhere.

Who the hell is still paying for game pass? Lol

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- Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  The article said the frame rates are more stable under bazzite with windows fluctuating a lot more even at low power settings
  
  I think that, as long as the framerate doesn’t dip below 30, a regular human won’t notice fluctuating FPS. It’s something you’ll see in benchmarks, but not in real life. For example: a friend of mine was playing Elden Ring and and Halo on the ROG Ally X and didn’t notice any issues with stability or framerate. And he’s pretty anal about this kind of stuff.
  
  I read through that thread you linked and I didn’t see bazzite mentioned anywhere.
  
  True, it was about Steam Deck performance. But I had similar experiences on Garuda Linux on my PC with Hogwarts. Every now and again it would just crash and burn. Got better after a Proton patch or two, but that’s the problem with Linux gaming - you never really know what you’ll get. With Windows, you don’t have that issue at all.
  
  Who the hell is still paying for game pass?
  
  Come on, now. You can’t be this childish.
  
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  - Thteven@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You can complain about click bait all day, that’s fine, but you came in here misinterpreting the article and then posted a non-relevant link to support your argument, followed by another back-pedaling comment to say “frame rates don’t matter as long as it’s over 30fps” LMAO.
    
    I think you’re arguing just to argue, seems a little more childish than anything I said honestly.
    
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  - Stez827@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You definetly do notice the fluctuating fps if it’s more than 10 fps at these frame rates. It feels like it’s speeding up then slowing down over and over. That’s why you should just lock your fps to something the device can maintain.
    
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  - nublug@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    games never crash on windows? lmfao
    
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    Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Games don’t crash on Windows >because of Windows<. Games do crash on Linux >because of Linux<.
    
    As in: games are inherently compatible with Windows, while on Linux you need Wine/Proton, which is just an extra layer of complication that can cause problems.
    
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  - TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You will notice “average” 30 FPS plenty when it fluctuates. If it STAYS above 30FPS the whole time then sure but if 30 is the average that shit is struggling and you’ll be getting like 20-40 FPS
    
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I think that, as long as the framerate doesn’t dip below 30, a regular human won’t notice fluctuating FPS.
    
    This is complete bullshit, 30 fps is playable for most games, and I have in the past bumper graphics until fps dip to 30/45 because depending on the game 30 fps on high is a better experience than 60 on low for me. But to say that a regular human won’t notice it is bullshit. There’s a game I play on my deck, for some reason it’s very sensitive to disk usage, so if I’m downloading stuff it dips to 30, and I always have to go and stop the download, because if you’ve been playing at 60, 30 feels very sluggish.
    
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    Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Read what I wrote again, but slower.
    
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  - bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They raised the GamePass price didn’t they? It’s been lackluster lately
    
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    Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They did, yeah. Stupid move, especially just before the Ally release, but shareholders must be appeased.
    
    But, other than the price, it’s been pretty great while I used it. Lots of day one releases, lots of less known titles I would never have tried if not for GP.
    
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nyankas@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
This is such a click-bait comment, my god…

Your source for stability issues in Hogwarts Legacy is a single user in the Steam community with other users in the same thread not having issues at all. Seeing that Hogwarts Legacy is one of the most played games on Deck (ranked 11th at time of writing ), I think many more people would report issues if crashes were common.

Furthermore, your TONNE of optional game stores is one. I can‘t really think of a game store, besides Microsoft’s, that doesn‘t work on Steam Deck.

These early performance comparisons definitely have limited value for comparing Windows/Linux performance on the device. But I’m sorry to say that your arguments have even less.

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100@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
losing gamepass is a plus, then you don't have to deal with windows store

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- Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  What a silly thing to say… You’re not dealing with Windows Store either way.
  
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  - 3dmvr@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    it has a xbox service that installs from the windows store, it is hella finnicky, ive had to do a full pc restore in the past to get it to work, no other option online helped
    
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bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Microsoft is the only one I can think of that doesn’t work on Linux though? What’s the tonne of stores you miss out on?

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ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Your source is from a game from two years ago when it was new; not only does Proton get big updates all the time, but it’s far more mature in general now than it was two years ago. You lose access to Windows store, but Amazon, Epic, and GOG work through Heroic. Maybe EA and Ubisoft are a problem for some people, but those also might work through Lutris. I haven’t shopped with either in over a decade, so I’m not the best candidate to check.

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- Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yeah, I was able to play through most of AC: Odyssey on my deck, thanks to Lutris. I also use Heroic just because I’ve never wanted to install Epic’s launcher.
  
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- Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  My source is just an example of gaming experience on Linux.
  
  I run Garuda (Arch-based) which is a distro “for gamers”. The experience is great, I love it. Everything works fine… most of the time.
  
  But, until Proton got a couple of updates, I was just unable to run Mafia. Until Proton got a couple of updates, Hogwart’s would crash randomly. Right now Cyberpunk runs fine… until it crashes during loading sometimes.
  
  That’s the gaming experience of Linux.
  
  All that for a +6.6 FPS average, and no GamePass.
  
  You lose access to Windows store
  
  Windows Store is irrelevant, you lose the XBox (App)-installed GamePass games, which means that you lose access to a tonne of XBox games.
  
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  - ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    New games pushing technology features will always lag slightly before they make it to Proton. It’s the nature of reverse engineering. On Kubuntu, on AMD, the only crashes I can came are for The Alters, which I knew from Proton DB ahead of time to expect some chop.
    
    The gaming experience on Windows is to get interrupted by updates constantly, less gracefully handle sleep and resume, and sometimes lose control over the game window when popups come up such that you need to be rescued by a keyboard or the touch screen. Those aren’t just my experiences but also captured in the reviews for this very device. What you gain is compatibility with live service games with invasive anti-cheat and Game Pass. For some people that will be enough, but this isn’t even the first handheld gaming device to show a performance delta in Linux’s favor when tested. I don’t think many people are experiencing this stability problem you are, as it doesn’t reflect in many reviews, and a two year old forum post for a game running on technology that moves this fast doesn’t mean that it’s still happening.
    
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    Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    The gaming experience on Windows is to get interrupted by updates constantly
    
    *gets updates literally on the same day every month with 14 days time before a forced update*
    
    *complains about getting interrupted by constant updates*
    
    Sigh… I’m not even going to comment on this. Can’t fix fundamentalism.
    
    but this isn’t even the first handheld gaming device to show a performance delta in Linux’s favor when tested
    
    Because, overall, Windows 11 is badly optimised and MS already fired all the competent developers, so, yeah, it’s going to happen. But what Windows gives you, is the guarantee that if you have the hardware to handle a game, it will run. Any issues will be on the side of the game, not the OS.
    
    I don’t think many people are experiencing this stability problem you are, as it doesn’t reflect in many reviews
    
    That’s also part of the “Linux gaming experience” - with all the distros flying around, almost nobody will have the same exact experience. Sure, if everyone installs Bazzite on the Ally, it should be a relatively uniform experience, but - again - I fail to see the point in going through all this, losing the (apparently) excellent touch UI and a unified gaming library, just to get… 6 FPS extra. In one power mode.
    
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Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
the main thing you get back is a better cpu governor to manage power consumption on 2d games. Reviews like the Phawks points out that microsoft kinda handed it off to the handheld makers to optimize for battery life. So in the instances such as getting 8hours of battery life running dead cells because the system doesnt really need to push that much to run the game, the Windows handheld is stuck on a higher performance clock and has a significantly shorter battery life time.

This would be extremely visible if more lighter games are tested, which typically aren’t for reviews like this because its not really fun to show a bunch of games all hitting 60 if you cap framerate.

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- Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  the main thing you get back is a better cpu governor to manage power consumption on 2d games
  
  Power consumption is handled by the power mode on the device. You get three modes - Silent (13W), Performance (17W), and Turbo (35W). You can switch between them at will, it’s not controlled by the game.
  
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  - Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    but a game may not necessarily need 13W, thats the point. youre using up more power than what is necessary because the CPU governor doesn’t know if its necessary or not to actually use all 13W.
    
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Kabutor@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
it’s weird, and refreshing, to find someone who actually reads the article and don’t base his comments only on the header, and also provides some additional info.

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- Alaknar@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Oop, you didn’t bash my “not really anti-Microsoft stance”, prepare for downvotes, friend! :)
  
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- Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  my opinion isn’t based strictly on the header. because to argue that the default is silent mode, when its very reasonable to assume that the middle tier performance mode is the default usecase, because it has a 80W/h battery when compared to typical other handhelds. Steam deck for example uses a 40W/h battery. 17W, which is seeing the chunk of the performance gain, is a very reasonable target for a 80W/h battery.
  
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