Earlier this week, Valve's Steam Machine was officially released, along with its peripheral components. To celebrate the launch of their long awaited machine, Valve discounted a bunch of SteamOS and Steam Machine compatible games. The list of games on sale included somewhat graphically intense games like Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux.
With the release of the new gaming platform, technology enthusiasts finally got to answer their biggest question… How does it compare to the vernacular of operating systems, Windows? Ars Technica ran some benchmark tests comparing SteamOS and Windows 10 and have come to the conclusion that SteamOS is more inhibiting than it is an advantage.
This might be why Origin chose not to use SteamOS on their Steam Machine.
The test was done on a dual-boot SteamOS/Windows machine, with all the operating systems and drivers up to date. Using Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux, Ars Technica ran the games through either operating system three times and took the median number " to ensure the results were reliable."
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The numbers revealed that SteamOS cab drop framerates anywhere from 21% to 58% compared to Windows:
"No matter how you slice it, running these two high-end titles on SteamOS comes with a sizable frame rate hit; we got anywhere from 21- to 58-percent fewer frames per second, depending on the graphical settings. On our hardware running Shadow of Mordor at Ultra settings and HD resolution, the OS change alone was the difference between a playable 34.5 fps average on Windows and a stuttering 14.6 fps mess on SteamOS."
Figuring that Valve's own games wouldn't run into the same issue, their own Source engine games were tested on SteamOS and Windows… Only to reveal the same thing:
"Unfortunately, Valve's own Source engine games showed the same performance hit when compared to their Windows versions. Portal, Team Fortress 2, and DOTA 2 all took massive frame rate dips on SteamOS compared to their Windows counterparts; only Left 4 Dead 2 showed comparable performance between the two operating systems."
Looks like there needs to be some general optimizations done on SteamOS to get it on par with Windows 10, but for now… Stick with what works for you.
Check out the full benchmark here.
