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

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 8 April 2024 at 10:41 AM EDT. Page 4 of 4. 344 Comments.

Quake II RTX benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Global Illumination: Off, Denoiser: On, Ray Tracing API: VK_KHR_ray_query. GNOME Shell 42.9: X11 was the fastest.

Quake II RTX benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Global Illumination: High, Denoiser: On, Ray Tracing API: VK_KHR_ray_query. GNOME Shell 42.9: Wayland was the fastest.

Quake II RTX benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Global Illumination: Off, Denoiser: Off, Ray Tracing API: VK_KHR_ray_query. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

Quake II RTX benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Global Illumination: Off, Denoiser: Off, Ray Tracing API: VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline. GNOME Shell 42.9: X11 was the fastest.

Quake II RTX saw only minor differences between desktops.

Unigine Superposition benchmark with settings of Resolution: 1920 x 1080, Mode: Fullscreen, Quality: High, Renderer: OpenGL. GNOME Shell 42.9: Wayland was the fastest.

Unvanquished benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: High. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

Unvanquished benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: Ultra. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

Unvanquished benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: Medium. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

Xonotic benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: Low. GNOME Shell 42.9: X11 was the fastest.

Xonotic benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: High. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

Xonotic benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: Ultra. GNOME Shell 42.9: Wayland was the fastest.

Xonotic benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Effects Quality: Ultimate. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

In some games like Xonotic and Unvanquished there were ever so slight differences for both KDE and GNOME when using the X11 session.

FurMark benchmark with settings of Resolution: 1920 x 1080, Demo: FurMark Vulkan, MSAA: 2. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: Wayland was the fastest.

Overall though it was a great experience running KDE Plasma 6.0 on Wayland.

Geometric Mean Of All Test Results benchmark with settings of Result Composite, KDE Plasma 6.0 Radeon Gaming. KDE Plasma 6.0.3: X11 was the fastest.

Overall the KDE Plasma 6.0 Wayland session was yielding nearly identical (X)Wayland gaming performance compared to Plasma 6.0 on the traditional X11 session. This was better than the GNOME Shell as packaged on KDE Neon where for a few games the Mutter Wayland compositor had led to lower performance than running under X11, but as mentioned KDE Neon is shipping older GNOME packages which we'll be seeing if the situation is any different with the upcoming Fedora 40 gaming benchmarks. In any event overall I've been happy with the KDE Plasma 6.0 Wayland experience when testing KDE Neon on a few boxes not only for the Wayland gaming performance but its robustness and reliability overall.

344 Comments

If you enjoyed this article consider joining Phoronix Premium to view this site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits. PayPal or Stripe tips are also graciously accepted. Thanks for your support.

Page: 1 2 3 4