GNOME XWayland Radeon Gaming Performance Is In Good Shape For Ubuntu 21.04

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME XWayland Radeon Gaming Performance Is In Good Shape For Ubuntu 21.04

With Ubuntu 21.04 planning to use Wayland by default with GNOME aside from when running on NVIDIA graphics, you may be wondering about the current performance delta between running GNOME Shell on the X.Org session for Linux gaming versus its quite solid Wayland support. Or, rather, in the case of most games still - piped through XWayland. Here are some fresh benchmarks looking at the GNOME X.Org vs. Wayland performance on Ubuntu with the Radeon RX 6800 XT.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=29900

[Alexmitter]

Same or better, I expected nothing less. XWayland is extremely performant.

[treba]

Two comments about this (please correct me if it's wrong): one advantage of playing on Xwayland (vs Xorg) is that one gets tearfree unredirection without vsync, i.e. no compromise between performance and quality. The main disadvantage currently is (on Gnome) that if ones fps drop below monitor refresh rate, the cursor can get throttled to that rate as well. There have been multiple attempts to fix the later, with a proper solution on the way.

[M@GOid]

Of the games I play most frequently, only ATS/ETS2 have a problem with Wayland. The mouse input became erratic.

I believe that may happen with some other games that don't rely on SDL2 for input and other stuff.

[Spike29]

There is still this issue to be tackled for a perfect gaming experience on (X)Wayland: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1208

As I understand it, the input latency is currently more important on Gnome wayland compared to X11, and it seems to create micro-stutters in some games like CS:GO.
I also tested Xonotic on both Gnome wayland and X11, the FPS is about the same in both cases but the game feels smoother on X11 (at least with the game vsync disabled).

[Aryma]

gnome

NO Thanks.

[dylanmtaylor]

NO Thanks.

Hey, some of us like GNOME, myself included, but you can use whatever you like. Linux is all about freedom, including one's DE.

[gururise]

If only ThinkOrSwim (a Java8 application) would work under Wayland, I'd be using Wayland 100% of the time!!

[Dovi]

Hey, some of us like GNOME, myself included, but you can use whatever you like. Linux is all about freedom, including one's DE.

Wholesome FOSS

[aufkrawall]

one advantage of playing on Xwayland (vs Xorg) is that one gets tearfree unredirection without vsync, i.e. no compromise between performance and quality.

There currently is no advantage vs. Xorg single display in terms of vsync for games. If there are differences, it's only worse in practice due to

The main disadvantage currently is (on Gnome) that if ones fps drop below monitor refresh rate, the cursor can get throttled to that rate as well. There have been multiple attempts to fix the later, with a proper solution on the way.

this not just affecting the cursor, but also entire presentation of a game's frames.