this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Proton is amazing, but it's entirely overhead translating library/system calls to Linux. It's accurate to say they run better on SteamOS, not to say Proton is making it run better.
Now maybe Proton makes them run better than a janky but native Linux port, but that's a separate statement about games being better optimized on Windows.
That is not at all true.
Is that though? You can't say X is better than Y when you're changing multiple variables. If windows had a proton equivalent and both games ran through it then yes that would be a direct comparison. But you can't say X + Y is better than Z (by itself)
DXVK is a part of proton that also is available on windows. DXVK alone can get you double digit performance improvements on games. And that's not getting into all the one off tweaks users can do to proton to optimize the game. Enabling pre compiled shaders gave a huge performance boost for Elden Ring.
How is running an extra compatibility layer not overhead?
The compatibility layer is overhead, but the key difference for many games is that DXVK swaps directX for Vulkan, and Vulkan often gets better performance.
The performance gains of using steamOS are twofold, there's less OS load (this is particularly noticeable in low performance games, windows will consume much more battery on a game like Dead Cells than SteamOS will), and there's also a vulkan performance increase for some games. My understanding is if you see a big performance increase in a demanding game, that's usually thanks to vulkan.
Vulkan isn't magic, its power comes from the flexibility it gives developers in its API. If developers are using DirectX, especially older versions, then they're not utilizing that flexibility.
If DirectX code performs better through a Vulkan translation layer than on Windows, it means the driver implementations or OS bloat are what's causing it.
With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.
Yes, from what I've been told that actually does improve performance in many games.