I recently took a look at four Open-World games in a benchmark battle between Bazzite Linux and Windows 11. Fifty percent of the results were as expected, and the other fifty percent turned out to be suboptimal for Linux. Since viewers often comment on my videos that they get better performance with a different distro, or ask whether I have checked out this or that distro, they eventually wore me down. I installed CachyOS and benchmarked the four titles from the previous blog post again, and we’ll briefly take a look at the results.

Three quarters are business as usual, and one quarter is actually interesting.

This is going to be a short affair without much fanfare, so let’s get to it.

I also have a German version of the video.

Hardware & Software

As usual, here’s a quick look at my test configuration.

I haven’t made any changes to Windows 11 or Bazzite compared to the previous post. In fact, I just copied the results without retesting.

CachyOS found a new home on a cozy 120 GB Kingston SATA SSD. All NVME slots in my system were already populated, and I wasn’t keen on changing partition schemes and reinstalling currently working OSes. You know how it goes: Never touch a running system. But it shouldn’t matter because all games are on a WD SN850 Black, which Cachy shares with Bazzite. More precisely, both share the same Steam Library.

On Cachy, I installed the KDE desktop, just like it’s the case on Bazzite.

CachyOS uses a slightly newer kernel, 6.18, compared to Bazzite’s 6.17. Mesa versions should almost be the same, but I cannot confirm that 100%. I didn’t explicitly write that down the last time, and I ran an update in the meantime. However, I’m quite confident that it was 25.3 on Bazzite.

The resolution is native 1440p.

So far so good. Let’s get going with an Open-World title.

Benchmarks

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

The results in AC Shadows are deflating. If any game was in desperate need of a performance boost, it was this one. CachyOS can improve the average framerate compared to Bazzite’s Gaming Mode by 4%. And that’s about it.

Let’s jump to the next Open-World game.

Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 performance on Bazzite was already very close to Windows 11, and CachyOS is right up there. On average, it’s one percent behind the Bazzite Gaming Mode.

Without taking a breather, we’re going right to the next Open-World title.

Horizon Forbidden West

Aloy’s colorful world isn’t a problem for CachyOS either. Its performance is on par with Bazzite’s KDE desktop mode. That means the average framerate hovers around 120 FPS, whereas the 1%-lows have a hard time keeping up with Bazzite’s Gaming Mode. Cachy trails by 10%. Whatever black magic the Gamescope session employs, it works so much better than the highly optimized CachyOS.

The only thing that’s left is an Open-World game.

Where Winds Meet

The Chinese game represents the quarter I mentioned in the intro. CachyOS does, in fact, have a tangible impact in this one. Bazzite already delivers solid, playable performance, but Cachy moves much closer to Windows 11 and trails by only 5% on average. Much more important are the 1%-lows, which improve by 23% compared to Bazzite. 60 FPS turn into around 75 FPS. That results in a much smoother gameplay experience.

Now that we left all Open-World titles behind, we can take a deep breath.

Famous Last Words

How would I best summarize the findings in one word?

Unspectacular?

Confusing?

Mhhh… unsatisfying.

Of course, this was only a very small excerpt from the vast world of video games and my first look at CachyOS. I want to be clear that I won’t be going back to retest all games with CachyOS. That would take too much time, and I’d rather move forward to new stuff. All upcoming gameplay performance tests will use Cachy and/or Bazzite as the basis. I’ll probably decide on a whim. Maybe I can find an efficient way to explore both systems in one post, but that likely requires some experimentation on my part.

For benchmarks, I will most likely include all three systems, as I’ve done recently.

In summary, I will handle this as follows:

• Windows 11 will remain Windows 11, which likely means it’ll continue to deteriorate.
• Bazzite will be my go-to distribution to serve as a PlayStation replacement. That’s the most interesting use case for other HTPC lovers and me.
• Lastly, CachyOS will be my Linux desktop test system. That should satisfy the PC gamer crowd.

As we’re coming to an end, I could get a bit philosophical and talk about the fragmentation and inconsistent performance of different distributions. But I’ll leave it hanging as food for thought. Maybe I’ll come back to this separately when I have too much time or a flash of inspiration that suddenly conjures about 1000 words into a document.

Until that happens, I thank you for your time and feedback.

Have a good morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you are on the globe.