X.Org vs. Wayland Linux Gaming Performance For NVIDIA GeForce + AMD Radeon In Early 2023

[cjcox]

If Wayland performance is so bad, what is the reason for its existence?

Because nobody will support Xorg longer term. YMMV of course.

Also, Xorg and Wayland are very very different things. But regardless, the future has been determined. Wayland is where development will continue.

You may need a time machine in order to give your question more credence.

[MrCooper]

A bunch of the nvidia side were about a 10% difference in favor of X11. I wonder if that is because of explicit sync in their X11 driver.

The nvidia driver currently doesn't do *any* synchronization with Xwayland, resulting in artifacts as described in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/.../-/issues/1317. Correct synchronization could only make it slower, regardless of the synchronization method.

If it were would that mean the amd side is giving up 10% by not using explicit sync yet?

Very unlikely.

radeonsi's performance compared to nvidia's (on Xorg) already seems consistent with how the HW compares in general, so it's unlikely that explicit sync (or any other single thing) could gain another 10%.

(I wouldn't expect explicit vs implicit sync to make any significant difference for performance)

[Weasel]

Wayland is the perfect example of how you can't polish a turd if it's rotten at the roots and shit by design. So at least it's good historical example of what not to do.

It doesn't bring security, it brings paranoia. Security would mean all apps under same privilege/user (that can access each other's files) can spy on each other's windows, or even the desktop if it's a trusted user. That's functionality people need.

X11 has low security, Windows has proper security, and Wayland is a piece of paranoid junk that's akin to cutting off your internet connection for "security purposes".

[caligula]

What's the point of Wayland? Like GNOME, it seems to be something that nobody truly wants or needs or likes, and which is even worse than its forerunner (X.Org / KDE) in many ways. But IBM keeps pushing with an iron will...

You seem to forget that with no new releases, Xorg will break at some point in the near future. You're dissing Wayland but not suggesting any concrete alternatives. Replacing a piece of turd with an unmaintained legacy piece of turd won't help anyone.

[Berniyh]

What's the point of Wayland? Like GNOME, it seems to be something that nobody truly wants or needs or likes, and which is even worse than its forerunner (X.Org / KDE) in many ways. But IBM keeps pushing with an iron will...

Basically Wayland is needed, because you can't break X11 specs. Everything else is a design decision (and of course one can debate on whether these decisions were good or not). They could've called it X12, but that wouldn't really have made a difference.
For details (also on why there is a desire to break with X11) see Daniel Stone's famous talk here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44

[Monsterovich]

The Microsoft sabotage of OpenGL was a great read back in the day (I think it written about on a 00s blog)

What? Source?

[Estranged1906]

What's the point of Wayland? Like GNOME, it seems to be something that nobody truly wants or needs or likes, and which is even worse than its forerunner (X.Org / KDE) in many ways. But IBM keeps pushing with an iron will...

[dfyt]

OptiX is practically everywhere, Nvidia has Tensor cores. While AMD finally added their AI accelerators to their consumer cards in the RX 7000 series. Only reason to use AMD GPUs is for gaming currently while everything else will be quicker on Nvidia GPUs and have been since 2018 thanks to Turing. For these task the best bang for the buck of a users hard earned money is Nvidia.

I have my pick of GPU's whether it be NV or AMD. I won't touch NV on Linux or Windows for most the part - main reason? My pc becomes very sluggish with > 1 monitor if I'm doing heavy workloads. NV doesn't appear to multitask very well. EG I can game on Windows or Linux while rendering a video in Davinci (with SW encoding - HW encode quality sucks) and I will barely even notice the pc is busy. With an NV card just moving my mouse and switching between destkops / activities is sluggish when doing stuff in the background. Just dragging windows between two screens skips frames without load.

So I don't really care if NV is double the speed if it means I can't use my pc - nicely - while it chugs away. I tested this with NV 1050/60/2080/3080ti all vs AMD 5450/RX580/5700XT so it's not a "you need a more powerful gpu" argument it appears to be architecture. The 5450 gave a smoother experience than the 3080 in desktop use esp with multi mons. FWIW I sell way more NV's than AMD but sadly FPS sells cards not overall experience. Thats why I feel this Xorg vs Wayland benchmark is a bit pointless in the real world.

In the same way ppl keep talking about how Wayland is "smoother" that's the same experience I get with an AMD gpu. I couldn't care less if Xorg got 200fps and Wayland 100fps. It feels way better for gaming, though I do sign out of X11 after work and use Wayland for gaming as Wayland doesn't support all my apps. Where I do miss NV is for it's AI in Davinci.

[abu_shawarib]

NVidia on Wayland actually feels a lot snappier than on X11.

My experience is the opposite.

[deusexmachina]

I also can't see a single reason to ever go with Ubuntu or RedHat. Debian, Mint, Arch, and some other distros do everything better - depending upon your needs.