Distinct outcomes fluctuate between games and GPUs. Borderlands 3, for instance, shows significantly better performance on Windows compared to SteamOS across all tested GPUs, with variations sometimes reaching up to 20 or 30 percent (with occasional smaller discrepancies). Although it is a game from 2019 without ray-tracing capabilities, it still operates adequately on SteamOS overall, yet it consistently favored Windows the most among the games we assessed.
Comparison of performance for Windows 11 25H2 versus SteamOS 3.9 on identical hardware. Typically, Windows surpasses SteamOS on dedicated GPUs, even when VRAM is not a consideration.
Comparison of performance for Windows 11 25H2 versus SteamOS 3.9 on identical hardware. Typically, Windows surpasses SteamOS on dedicated GPUs, even when VRAM is not a consideration.
Comparison of performance for Windows 11 25H2 versus SteamOS 3.9 on identical hardware. Typically, Windows surpasses SteamOS on dedicated GPUs, even when VRAM is not a consideration.
In both Forza Horizon 5 and Cyberpunk 2077, with ray-tracing features activated, a similar consistent advantage for Windows is observable across the 16GB dedicated GPUs, usually within the range of 15 to 20 percent.
Credit goes to Valve for the numerous games we assessed where the performance of Windows and SteamOS was essentially equal. Cyberpunk without ray-tracing, Returnal when not utilizing the 7600’s 8GB RAM limit, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla sometimes exhibited actual parity between Windows and SteamOS, or they varied by mere single-digit percentages attributed to the margin of error.
Now, let’s examine the performance from the integrated GPUs, the Radeon 780M and RX 8060S. These GPUs are quite distinct from each other—the 8060S boasts over three times the compute units of the 780M, and it utilizes a quicker pool of soldered LPDDR5X-8000 as opposed to two sluggish DDR5-5600 SODIMMs.
However, setting Borderlands aside, SteamOS performed considerably better on these GPUs compared to Windows. In both Forza and Cyberpunk with ray-tracing active, SteamOS slightly outpaces Windows on the 780M, and significantly narrows the performance difference on the 8060S. For the titles where Windows and SteamOS were nearly identical in dedicated GPU performance, SteamOS manages a slight but consistent edge over Windows in average frame rates.
