AMD Radeon Linux Gaming Performance At Parity Between KDE Plasma 6.0 X11 vs. Wayland

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Radeon Linux Gaming Performance At Parity Between KDE Plasma 6.0 X11 vs. Wayland

With a few weeks having passed since the KDE Plasma 6.0 desktop release along with some point releases for addressing initial fall-out, I've been meaning to run some Plasma 6.0 Linux gaming performance benchmarks. I'll have up some interesting metrics soon using Fedora 40 while for this initial article is a look at the KDE Plasma 6.0 gaming performance between the Wayland and X11 sessions atop KDE Neon. Then similarly are the results for GNOME Shell with its X11 and Wayland sessions.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/kde-plasma-6-amd-gaming

[Weasel]

Thanks for the benchmarks, but I doubt this can shut the blissful ignorants who keep parroting bullshit, since they never look at facts to begin with.

Wayland's issue isn't performance directly, it's lack of features (by design). I say directly, because some things like childing yourself to another window (for Wine's virtual desktops for instance) require more overhead due to lacking features that X11 has natively, so the performance will be lower (although it's not perf directly but input lag and latency). This is due to its stupid design and stubborn devs, and yes, it's the protocol's fault.

Anyway they should stop using the Linux kernel since that's also tech from the 90s. Who cares it got a lot of updates since then, right?

[pharmasolin]

Valve will implement needed fixes no matter what upstream thinks, and so DEs can do (if they care about gaming exp).

[mrg666]

Thanks for benchmarks Michael! I already knew already this result by experience (and your previous article in 2023) that Wayland 3D graphics performance is good. I have also benchmarked Windows games via Steam client (proton on Xwayland). The performance is still comparable with not only X11 but Windows as well (a few percent slower than native Windows performance). My Wayland transition is complete, X11 is not even running on my computers. Next step is deleting the X11 packages that will require resolving the dependencies. It can wait, no rush for that. I am all set on Wayland.

[SViN]

As far as I know there shouldn't be major differences between Xorg and Wayland performance. Usually games run under XWayland regardless since wine wayland support is still in development.

Also it seems like the drops in performance GNOME has are only under specific games. They should profile that but I suspect its just Mutter still not being efficient enough.

[ireri]

As expected, IF it works, it wouldn't have performance issues compared to X11. Hey, at least it is on par with _{"that piece of trash, old, dead, etc."} X11 on something.

[user1]

Also it seems like the drops in performance GNOME has are only under specific games. They should profile that but I suspect its just Mutter still not being efficient enough.

I think it's more likely because it's a 2 year old Gnome version (honestly I don't really understand the point of comparing the very latest Plasma to 2 year old Gnome). But we'll see the results compared to the latest Gnome on Fedora 40.

[clockwork]

Thanks for the benchmarks, but I doubt this can shut the blissful ignorants who keep parroting bullshit, since they never look at facts to begin with.

Wayland's issue isn't performance directly, it's lack of features (by design). I say directly, because some things like childing yourself to another window (for Wine's virtual desktops for instance) require more overhead due to lacking features that X11 has natively, so the performance will be lower (although it's not perf directly but input lag and latency). This is due to its stupid design and stubborn devs, and yes, it's the protocol's fault.

Anyway they should stop using the Linux kernel since that's also tech from the 90s. Who cares it got a lot of updates since then, right?

Not sure if you meant this to be dripping with irony or you're just too much of a x11 crusader to notice. But you are complaining about a perceived shortcoming in the performance of a protocol on a post about how the performance is nearly identical between the 2. Not sure if calling people "blissfully ignorant who keep parroting bullshit" applies here.

[HD7950]

I have to admit that Plasma 6 and its apps work almost perfect on Wayland, but what perfect is it when a lot of the applications I used don't work now? simplescreenrecorder, avidemux, kaffeine or smplayer among others. What about global shortcuts? I'm seriously considering going back to the old, solid and not secure at all X11 graphic server. I think it is still too early to use Wayland.

[anda_skoa]

What about global shortcuts?

Modern desktop application should be receiving those they have registered through the respective facilities.
Older applications should be receiving them from XWayland as long these shortcuts contain a modifier (those without modifier are usually application local anyway),