Other results vary from game to game and from GPU to GPU. Borderland 3for example, runs slightly better on Windows than SteamOS on all of our tested GPUs, sometimes by as much as 20 or 30 percent (with smaller gaps here and there). As a 2019 game without ray tracing effects, it still runs fine on SteamOS across the board, but it was the game we tested that most consistently favored Windows.
Performance of Windows 11 25H2 and SteamOS 3.9 on the same hardware. Overall, Windows edges out SteamOS on dedicated GPUs, even if VRAM doesn't matter.
Performance of Windows 11 25H2 and SteamOS 3.9 on the same hardware. Overall, Windows edges out SteamOS on dedicated GPUs, even if VRAM doesn't matter.
Performance of Windows 11 25H2 and SteamOS 3.9 on the same hardware. Overall, Windows edges out SteamOS on dedicated GPUs, even if VRAM doesn't matter.
In both Forza Horizon 5 And Cyberpunk 2077, with ray tracing effects enabled, you'll also see a consistent Windows advantage among 16GB dedicated GPUs, typically somewhere in the 15 to 20 percent range.
To Valve's credit, we also tested many games where Windows and SteamOS performance were functionally linked. Cyberpunk without ray tracing, Returnable when the 7600's 8GB RAM limit is not reached, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla were sometimes In fact related between Windows and SteamOS, or they differed by low single-digit percentages that could be chalked up to inaccuracy.
Now let's look at the results of the integrated Radeon 780M and RX 8060S GPUs. These are completely different GPUs: the 8060S has more than three times as many compute units as the 780M, and runs a higher-speed pool of soldered LPDDR5X-8000s rather than two crummy DDR5-5600 SODIMMs.
But Borderland Additionally, SteamOS actually performed slightly better on these GPUs compared to Windows. In both Forza And Cyberpunk With ray tracing enabled, SteamOS slightly outperforms Windows on the 780M and nearly closes the performance gap on the 8060S. For games where Windows and SteamOS are essentially tied to dedicated GPUs, SteamOS has a slight but consistent advantage over Windows in average frame rates.
