Valve Releases Proton 8.0-4 As A Big Improvement For Windows Gaming On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Releases Proton 8.0-4 As A Big Improvement For Windows Gaming On Linux

Valve has just released Proton 8.0-4 as stable on the Steam client for enhancing the experience for running Windows games on Linux for this Wine-based software that powers Steam Play...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Proton-8.0-4

[rhadlee]

I love my Steam Deck and at the same time I hope that ASUS, Lenovo, AyaNeo etc. take a good sharp look at what Valve has accomplished with SteamOS and Proton. One has to wonder how a ROG Ally would perform with a SteamOS+Proton software stack that is optimised for the hardware. As it stands, the nominally much faster APU in the ROG Ally is barely faster than the Steam Deck in battery mode. You wonder why and cannot help but wondering if performance is unnecessarily sacrificed because the Ally uses an opaque software stack based on Windows and DirectX.

[Lbibass]

I love my Steam Deck and at the same time I hope that ASUS, Lenovo, AyaNeo etc. take a good sharp look at what Valve has accomplished with SteamOS and Proton. One has to wonder how a ROG Ally would perform with a SteamOS+Proton software stack that is optimised for the hardware. As it stands, the nominally much faster APU in the ROG Ally is barely faster than the Steam Deck in battery mode. You wonder why and cannot help but wondering if performance is unnecessarily sacrificed because the Ally uses an opaque software stack based on Windows and DirectX.

it's likely due to the fact that the Z1 Extreme takes far too much power for the performance you get. The Van Gogh APU in the steam deck was designed to be as power efficient as possible. The Z1 Extreme is just a rebadged 7840u, which takes a decent chunk of power to really get going. It's not a software stack issue. It's a fundamental silicon design difference.

[Xicronic]

it's likely due to the fact that the Z1 Extreme takes far too much power for the performance you get.

I don't think this is true. AMD advertises Z1 Extreme as a 9-30W chip, just because it CAN use twice the juice of a steam deck doesn't mean it won't operate just fine in a 10-15W setting.

Z1 Extreme is newer architecture, newer manufacturing process, and has more CPU+GPU cores so they could be run at a lower (more power efficient) clock speed but still pack more punch. It has all the advantages.

So I'm pretty confident an end user (or better yet, an OEM like Valve) could dial-in settings for the Z1 Extreme that would clobber Aerith at 10-15W.

[drakonas777]

I love my Steam Deck and at the same time I hope that ASUS, Lenovo, AyaNeo etc. take a good sharp look at what Valve has accomplished with SteamOS and Proton. One has to wonder how a ROG Ally would perform with a SteamOS+Proton software stack that is optimised for the hardware. As it stands, the nominally much faster APU in the ROG Ally is barely faster than the Steam Deck in battery mode. You wonder why and cannot help but wondering if performance is unnecessarily sacrificed because the Ally uses an opaque software stack based on Windows and DirectX.

It's not Windows fault. Reality is ZEN4 APUs aren't that impressive in ultra low power mode. That's all. Valve said they are not releasing Steam Deck 2 any time soon because they want SD2 to be significant better in HW capabilities. I'd say it's quite likely they are going to wait for N3 based AMD IP and do some semi-custom on top of that.

[Citan]

It's not Windows fault.

It probably is though, to some extent. After all, there have been studies around the web displaying how abysmal I/O speed is between Windows and Linux by default, as well as the different overhead of Windows in terms of background process and memory (which rather impacts the battery but can impact the performance if you play intensive games) and network (always some things moving in the background).

That said, I suppose (hope) Asus did ask for Microsoft engineer's help to optimize their version.

[flower]

I hope that valve includes gamescope and game mode in steam.

And a way to force an output would be nice. Atm I have to set my "gaming monitor" as primary which I don't really like.

(adding a small rant that cyberpunk always thinks that I use a game pad when running with proton. Isn't related but it *really* sucks. I don't even have one connected)

[ojsl1]

(adding a small rant that cyberpunk always thinks that I use a game pad when running with proton. Isn't related but it *really* sucks. I don't even have one connected)

This has been an issue on both Windows and Proton: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Pro...ent-1730029611 the steam discussion link in that github comment has an easy temporary solution for it

[kalin]

What about darksiders warmastered with cutscenes. I wait for age's to play that game

[chithanh]

You wonder why and cannot help but wondering if performance is unnecessarily sacrificed because the Ally uses an opaque software stack based on Windows and DirectX.

it's likely due to the fact that the Z1 Extreme takes far too much power for the performance you get. The Van Gogh APU in the steam deck was designed to be as power efficient as possible.

I don't think this is true. AMD advertises Z1 Extreme as a 9-30W chip, just because it CAN use twice the juice of a steam deck doesn't mean it won't operate just fine in a 10-15W setting.

You are all correct, sort of.

Windows is slower compared to SteamOS on the Steam Deck, something which we do not see to this degree on the ROG Ally. So Valve was able to get some extra performance by tuning their software stack (something which would require coordination between the three companies ASUS, AMD, and Microsoft on the ROG Ally, so not gonna happen). TheTerk did a comparison and found SteamOS slightly faster for gaming on average with some outliers: https://youtu.be/IadP2cMf35k?t=134 (at 2:14)

What is also important is that the Steam Deck achieves much better frametime consistency, perhaps due to not so many background things running like in Windows. see GamersNexus review: https://youtu.be/Na1y7DyDe2w?t=1520 (at 25:20)

About the power efficiency, High Yield reports that Valve's custom APU is much better at power saving because it cut most of the unnecessary features, while the Z1 is same silicon as the 7840U and as such comes with a range of things that gamers do not want or need, but which still cost power: https://youtu.be/llOo10p1ijM

This was also found by Digital Foundry, as soon as you turn on the fps limiter then the Steam Deck soundly defeats the ROG Ally in battery life. This is because the ROG Ally cannot enter lower power modes as quickly or operate them as efficiently. In God of War at 720p low with 30 fps limit, the Steam Deck gets 136 min battery life and the ROG Ally only 101 min, despite the latter being faster at 15 W with no fps limit: https://youtu.be/I5oHS7CA6Qo?t=1475 (at 24:35)