With more games being added to support Valve’s SteamOS, folks at Ars Technica decided to benchmark the operating system in comparison against Windows 10 in terms of gaming performance. The results are pretty interesting.
Just recently, Valve has announced the release of their Steam Machines lineup which will run on SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system that is developed by Valve primarily for gamers that want to play games in their living room. Alternatively, gamers also have the option to install SteamOS on their own systems.
So how does gaming on SteamOS compare to Windows 10? Not so good. Ars Technica benchmarked SteamOS gaming performance recently and found that it had a significant performance hit when compared to Windows 10. The benchmark was done on a dual-boot test-rig which gives a fairly accurate representation of the actual performance of both operating systems. It has to be noted, however, the hardware used on the benchmarking machine is a little dated but hardware isn’t the main factor that is being accounted for in this comparison. The benchmarking details can be found on Ars Technica’s site.
When running graphically intensive games like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light, SteamOS has a long way to go if it wants to catch up with Windows 10. Framerate difference varied from 21% to 58% slower on the SteamOS. Unfortunately this doesn’t only end at triple A gaming titles by other developers. Valve’s own source engine games, Dota 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 all showed similar lack in performance when compared to Windows 10. Only Left 4 Dead 2 gave a comparable performance between both the operating systems.
The good news for gamers is with the upcoming release of OpenGL’s Vulkan and further optimisation of graphic drivers from both Valve and GPU manufacturers as well as more game support, SteamOS might still be an interesting alternative for the future. As for now, Valve’s mission to conquer the living-room gaming scene might not take a giant leap, yet. Bare in mind however, similar mini-sized gaming rig that runs on Windows tend to cost less.
(Source: Ars Technica)
