r/windows • u/redsteakraw • Apr 26 '26
App Windows 11 vs Cachy OS with limited V-Ram Side by Side
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LJEo6Kb6Rhg11
Apr 26 '26
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u/redsteakraw Apr 26 '26
I didn't create the video but it looks like there was only 8GB of vram the test was how both OSs perform under limited resources. Apparently it doesn't work well with some games on Windows and some games that do work are borderline playable while the others seem to be working fine on Cachy OS.
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u/yayuuu Apr 26 '26
The isue I have with these videos is that they all show AMD GPUs, only 1080p resolution and no ray tracing. Literally every post like this shows the same configuration, crank only ANY of these up, and the whole image shatters.
AMD in 4k is not that great, might be still comparable to windows in some cases, but it's not gonna win in every game.
Use RT and AMD on linux is gonna loose hard.
Switch to Nvidia and every DX12 game is gonna loose few FPS compared to windows.
Even Intel GPUs have way worse performance under linux than windows, especially Alchemist.
I use Linux as well, with Nvidia GPU and for me personally, none of these values shown here matter. The only somewhat interesting benchmark was the one done by Gamer's Nexus, when he tested more GPUs and also with higher resolutions.
I play in 3440x1440 and there's a lot of games that I play, that run basically the same on both systems. Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile 1/2, everything that is vulkan native. Also RT works great, unlike on AMD. The issue is still with DX12 games, but with the latest drivers and descriptior heap vulkan protocols, it has improved significantly. It's not yet there, but it's very close. Space Marine 2 for example, went from being 25% worse on Linux to being 6-7% worse. I personally don't even bother running windows now, the difference is so small.
Just a disclaimer, I don't dual boot. I've comapred it to running in a windows VM with GPU Passwthrough that is highly optimized for running games, but my results match the benchmarks done by other people on bare metal. Even with a VM's overhead (which is negligible) windows still wins. I've been using this VM for few years, when Nvidia had a lot of issues on Linux, now I don't even bother starting it, unless I do some comparisons.
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u/Helpful-Calendar-693 Apr 29 '26
Use RT and AMD on linux is gonna loose hard.
to be fair RT is just a "less FPS" button. RT on AMD will suck regardless of window/linux. Its an Nvidia thing that heavily favors Nvidia cards. Even on windows slap an AMD card in, turn on RT and your having a bad time. Same can be said if you use a 60 or 70 class card too! (or is that less bad now in the 50 series?)
Switch to Nvidia and every DX12 game is gonna loose few FPS compared to windows.
Nvidia are unable to code a decent driver for Linux. They just don't care about that market and wont open up the driver for the community to build off of. For my home gaming rig I built with an AMD GPU because Linux is what I use. A Windows / Linux test is flawed from the get go because they are just such different designs anyway tbh.
The isue I have with these videos is that they all show AMD GPUs, only 1080p resolution and no ray tracing. Literally every post like this shows the same configuration, crank only ANY of these up, and the whole image shatters.
This test looks to be specifically for gamers who can't afford/don't own a GPU with more than 8GB. That said a lot of work has been done on Linux for 8GB cards (probably because of steam machine around the corner) allowing it to play games quite well.
If I was going to do Windows - Linux, A - B testing the only fair way to do it is with AMD cards tbh. The problem is that nvidia has the market share so the comparison is not really valid. Nvidia just wont make a decent driver and intel are still trying to get their feet under them.
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u/yayuuu Apr 29 '26
I don't agree with "RT being less fps button", in most games I can turn on some RT effects with literally zero performance impact. Also Radeon RX 9070XT can handle RT pretty well on Windows, it can even beat RTX 5070 in some RT games, while on Linux turning on RT makes it loose to even 3060.
Nvidia drivers are already decent, 595 is a huge improvement in a lot of games. For me personally, AMD had nothing interesting to offer when I was purchasing my GPU. The FSR3 at that time just looked like crap, compared to DLSS. It has improved significantly with FSR4, but again, DLSS4.5 looks even better. If I purchased my GPU now, I might consider RX 9070XT, but again, the price is not that competetive anymore as it was shortly after the release, DLSS is still better, performance on Nvidia is now very close to Windows and turning on RT doesn't kill it like it does on AMD. Also AMD GPUs suffer from a vendor reset bug, so they are a bit useless for running a VM, which I sometimes want to do, because some games with anticheats are at least playable in a VM and it's possible to play local multiplayer on a single PC by running one copy of the game in a VM and one natively, so 2 players can play together (played Trine 2 with my prother like this).
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u/pangapingus Apr 27 '26
Us low end gamers constantly constrained to 8gb cards only play 1080p/1440p at 60fps without fancy stuff anyways, hence the testing scenario
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u/yayuuu Apr 27 '26
I see the point od benchmarking these resolutions, but the problem is, that at this point these videos feel like cherry-picked just to prove that linux is better at running games. The problem is, that there's way more videos that show 1080p and AMD compared to anything higher really, especially posted in various communities on reddit or discord.
That's why I said I like Gamer's Nexus benchmarks, where he tested multiple GPUs and multiple resolutions. At this point it's a bit outdated, Nvidia 595 drivers brought huge improvements in multiple games, as well as unofficial proton packages that already package descriptor heap development branch (which isn't ready yet and some games still crash, but some other games show improvements).
The point is, I'd rather see a bigger picture than only one scenario.
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u/pangapingus Apr 27 '26
Yea for sure, but until devs and GPU makers provide actual parity a true 1:1 test isn't possible. I'll say for virtually anything else tested from file I/O, RAM/network/CPU backpressure, and etc. I work with in rust/zig/go!/godot though Linux even with a DE has less busy headspace at a system level and I see perf gains; even back in my sysadmin days running any application on my headless *nix fleet was more efficient than even headless Windows Server (2k08-2k19 when I was in the space).
But with the parity of designed-for-Windows software/drivers then it's not really an OS comparison test but a comparison of goodies relegated/initially released for one OS over the other. But pragmatically, it boils down to your point where the out-the-box experience Windows is better; I play on Debian 13/Proton 9/Nvidia 550 just fine 1440p@60fps+ without the fancy stuff, different strokes and whatnot. For cutting edge, compatibility, and support def go Windows, but if you can accept a slower release cycle and lack of features in favor of less OS overhead go Linux.
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u/yayuuu Apr 27 '26
I play on Debian 13, 6.19 kernel, scx_cosmos scheduler, 595 drivers, proton10-cachyos, 3440x1440@170Hz and with HDR if possible (using hyprland). It's not far off from windows at this point, as I said earlier, it has improved significantly, just few months ago Space Marine 2 was ~25% slower on linux, now it's ~7% slower, other games also improved, so I hardly see anything loose more than 10% of the performance.
Also I am talking specifically about games (the video that OP posted is about games), so I'm not comparing other stuff. I use linux on my main desktop PC for about 6 years at this point, but I've only used VM for gaming during the first years. I think I've switched to proton about a year ago, before that a lot of things were missing on Nvidia, like for example framegen wasn't working at all, so VM with windows was just a better option - better performance, more features. Now with the custom protons, all features basically work. FG, HDR, DLSS upgrade (version selection), etc, and as I said, performance is not far off.
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u/pizoisoned Apr 27 '26
I see the 4k argument a lot as being a reason not to use AMD cards, but far and away most gamers don’t play in 4k. According to Steams hardware survey over 50% of people are using 1080, with the next closest being 2k at around 20%. 4k is around 5%.
I agree you’re going to have a bad time if you try to use an AMD card at 4k with RT, and it’s a shame that nvidia is the only real option at that level, but most people aren’t doing that and won’t be for quite a while.
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Apr 26 '26
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u/AvidCyclist250 Apr 26 '26
It's 8GB RAM I think, not VRAM. It's in the title
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u/OGigachaod Apr 26 '26
The errors thrown up are vram errors, which is possible if windows can't use ram as vram.
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u/MenschenToaster Apr 26 '26
Read the error from the last of us again. It specifically mentions that this could be an issue with the system page file, which is essentially swap on Windows, therefore being memory.
Before stuff can be uploaded into VRAM from the CPU, it still has to go through your system memory
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u/Slight-Coat17 Apr 26 '26
Unless you use Direct Storage, which allows the GPU to load data from storage to VRAM directly.
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u/MenschenToaster Apr 26 '26
Ah yeah, forgot about that. Apparently the last of us part II supports direct storage (Source: https://steamdb.info/tech/SDK/DirectStorage/) .
But that still doesn't mean that everything is going into VRAM directly. Some things will likely still be uploaded by the game. So if the game ran out of memory while doing exactly that, the error makes sense.
Makes this even more impressive on the CatchyOS side as to my knowledge Direct Storage isn't supported on Linux and I don't think an equivalent exists
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u/Mission_Shopping_847 Apr 27 '26
Obviously this is a showcase of vram management and the intent is to compare like settings. They could squash the textures so both systems run but then neither would be close to their vram ceiling making the comparison moot.
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u/hackiv Apr 27 '26
The purpose of this video is two show which OS handles low RAM conditions better (not a VRAM, mind you) apparently many games won't even allow you to boot with 8GB of ram on Win*ows
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u/Hrmerder Apr 27 '26
This is truely stunning... But I must say, if it were a 3060 or 4060 or 5060 side by side then it would probably swing the opposite way (minus the games that literally won't play due to bloat in windows).
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u/Microboy42 Windows 11 - Insider Canary Channel May 10 '26
If you’re Windows NT operating system performs worse than LINUX, then you’ve probably done something really stupid to mess up Windows, or you might have a bottleneck.
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u/redsteakraw May 10 '26
Well it is a couple things Proton is able to optimize for certain poor coding. Linux got native NT Sync and primitives so there is far less translating and Linux has gotten far better with their graphical stack and drivers. Now likewise Windows has been adding AI into everything using Web UIs as part of their core desktop and just stopped caring seemingly about Ram usage and performance so here we are. Linux is running a lot of games faster than Windows also DX7VK gained support for Direct X 3-7 meaning every linux computer with Vulkan drivers will get good accelerated classic games that mostly won't even run on a modern Windows system, making Linux actually a better option for playing your older games. Now the thing to also watch is FEX and how it will enable Arm transition better than windows did. Already most games are tested to be working and compatibility with existing x86 software is pretty good.
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Apr 26 '26
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u/JmTrad Apr 26 '26
if wasn't steam i would never consider using it
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u/Admiral_Bongo Apr 28 '26
You do realize that both Wine and Proton can be used without Steam even being installed? I've spent the past year and a half running Linux and it's a way easier experience than I thought. I mean, sure, everything works absolutely differently, but that's just a matter of getting used to it. The performance, the ease of maintenance and the overall convenience, though? No way am I going back to Windows. And I had been using Windows since the age of 3 (I'm 27) when my mom had a PC running Win 98 (can't deny, however, 95-2000 is peak GUI design that influenced almost every window manager to a degree).
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u/JmTrad Apr 28 '26
Steam made easier. Before to run any game was a headache. And i tried before proton was a thing. I repeat myself: if wasn't steam i would never consider using it
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u/Admiral_Bongo Apr 29 '26
Steam made it easier, but nowadays with Lutris/Heroic or even system Wine with a minimal set of libraries installed it ain't a problem.
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u/AvidCyclist250 Apr 26 '26
Madlad