I have a gaming laptop with a Ryzen 7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and an RTX 2050. Everything I play runs well in Windows, but I'm considering switching to Linux, particularly CachyOS or Pop!_OS. How much should I expect gaming performance, compatibility, and frame rates to change?
2 Answers
With an RTX 2050, even a modest performance reduction may be noticeable because it’s an entry-level mobile GPU. Linux gaming can still work well, but you should check the games you actually play rather than assuming every title will perform the same. NVIDIA driver support and Proton compatibility are usually more important than the choice between these two distributions.
Most games should perform similarly or only slightly worse, assuming the proprietary NVIDIA driver is installed and configured correctly. However, some DirectX 12 games can have a more noticeable performance drop under Linux, and ray tracing generally performs worse as well. Results depend heavily on the specific game and whether it runs through Proton.
I don’t use ray tracing, so that part isn’t a concern. Is there any chance some games could run better on Linux, or should I mainly expect a small frame-rate loss?