Ubuntu 20.04 GNOME X.Org vs. Wayland Session Performance Impact For Gaming

In the past using the Wayland-based GNOME Shell session and other Wayland compositors has generally resulted in a performance hit in going through (X)Wayland but that is much less so these days. Here are some initial benchmarks of Ubuntu 20.04 running various Steam Linux gaming benchmarks both under the default X.Org-based session and then again when using the Wayland session and its (X)Wayland support.

With the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release next month will be some cross-desktop Wayland/X.Org benchmarks while for this article today is looking at just the default X.Org based session and then again when using GNOME 3.36's Wayland-based session.

Ubuntu 20.04 in its current development form (and should remain that way for next month's stable release) has the Linux 5.4 kernel, Mesa 20.0.2, X.Org Server 1.20.7, and GNOME 3.36 as the key components worth noting.

For seeing the impact with OpenGL and Vulkan Linux games when switching between the GNOME X.Org and Wayland based desktop sessions, the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX Vega 56 graphics cards were used for testing with the Phoronix Test Suite.