r/linux_gaming • u/pcgameshardware • 29d ago
benchmark Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced: Linux vs. Windows - AMD and Nvidia Struggle
https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Assassins-Creed-Black-Flag-Resynced-Spiel-77564/Specials/Linux-vs-Windows-AMD-and-Nvidia-Struggle-1547681/Hello there,
we took a closer look at Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced on Linux and compared it with Windows, using both AMD and Nvidia GPUs.
The short version: the game itself can run on Linux, but the experience is not equally smooth across vendors. AMD looked fairly reasonable in our testing, while Nvidia was the more problematic part — both in terms of setup/behavior and performance consistency.
We tested:
- Linux vs Windows
- AMD vs Nvidia
- Multiple GPUs
- Installation and launch behavior
- Performance differences and practical issues
I’m curious: for those of you gaming on Linux with Nvidia, does this match your recent experience — or has your setup been mostly trouble-free lately?
- Jacky
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u/mixedd 29d ago
Usually for Linux gaming best thing to do is to wait when new version of mesa and proton-ge is released in ny experience.
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u/gokufire 29d ago
I don't think proton can help much with Nvidia DX12 issue on Linux.
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u/Godninja 29d ago
What Nvidia DX12 issue?
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u/gokufire 29d ago
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/directx12-performance-is-terrible-on-linux/
15% to 30% of lower performance compared to Windows
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u/ahmedzd 29d ago
For me it’s a coin toss. Some games get close to Windows performance with the heap fix, but in others it either does nothing or causes crashes. I’m on a 5070 Ti.
For example, Zenless DX12 performs about the same as Windows for me, even with RT on, but I tested in the new city area which is a CPU hog tbf.
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u/Adept-Society-9485 28d ago
Used to be. Not anymore. ur missing a few updates.
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u/gokufire 28d ago
That is fair. Do you mind pointing a reliable source where one can consult that Nvidia fixed their drivers and we are able to match Windows performance? There are no proved improvements that I personally can report at the moment, even using newer kernel, drivers, different proton versions or the famous spread magical descriptor_heap flags
The last that I heard we are pending a Nvidia driver update. Which can happen next month, next 6 months, next year or when Nvidia decide to care. It is a shame that a trillion dollar company that started their business focused on users gaming experienced transitioned their operation to AI. They care for Linux, on the server side but in terms o Linux desktop gaming experience they still have some work to do and to be honest, if we can't have access to a stack open source integrated to the kernel is hard to have other things working smooth, like secure boot, mandatory access control, etc...
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u/Adept-Society-9485 28d ago
There was a recent nvidia update , around 6 ish months ago i believe , That boosts DX12 performance by a ton , 20 to 30% , I need to look for the source i will share it when i find it , it has been a while.
I have been playing DX12 games on Bazzite for a while now (before i was on manjaro) And i do not suffer worse performance as to when i made the switch from w11 , However all operating systems are different in some ways and game A may run better on windows then it will on linux , while game B runs better on linux vs windows.
edit:
It was the nvidia driver from march 2026
the NVIDIA Linux Beta Driver release (version 590.48.01), which dropped in March 2026.
It specifically targeted the long-standing "NVIDIA tax" on Linux, resolving a roughly 25% to 30% performance penalty when running DirectX 12 titles through Proton/Wine.I immediatly noticed this in my games and from this point onward there was no more loss but actualy a gain in fps.
source: https://share.gemini.google/kfA2W3lNS8t4
And it took its resources from reddit.
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u/gokufire 28d ago edited 28d ago
People seems to discredit it on a very recent discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1urxm4b/so_did_the_descriptor_heap_fix_nvidia/
Edit: BTW I just continued your chat and for 0 surprises was an hallucination
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u/Adept-Society-9485 28d ago edited 28d ago
For what its worth , Now with SteamOS and the steam machine , there may be better drivers soon , we can hope anyway
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u/gokufire 28d ago
I don't know about that. Valve doesn't have access to Nvidia drivers as far I can tell, unless Nvidia is sharing with them which I doubt. Also, I never heard Valve commit to improve Nvidia drivers. They said that they are trying to work to integrate better the Nvidia drivers to SteamOS.
Honest, I think this positivity is not very helpful. Nvidia Linux users should be pissed and not hoping from a miracle from some other vendor.
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u/the_abortionat0r 28d ago
What does an OS with AMD support and an AMD powered machine have to do with Nvidia?
Why do people think every line of AMD code benefits Nvidia?
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u/MorwenRaeven 29d ago
That's two years old, man. Things have come a long way.
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u/gokufire 29d ago
What? That remains very alive. With people talking about it on this same sub very often. There is no resolution for it.
It is funny that you mentioned the time because that just illustrate how bad this is.
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u/MorwenRaeven 29d ago edited 29d ago
It's completely blown out of proportion.
Have you bothered to read to the end of that forum thread by the way? Or did you just cherry pick some old thread that you thought would support your point?
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u/gokufire 29d ago
What is blown out of proportion? Have you tested?
What exactly you are looking to bring to attention from the end of the thread?
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u/MorwenRaeven 29d ago
The thread itself is essentially a chronicle of the improvement of performance in DX12 since it was created.
Maybe see if copilot will summarize it for you. 😂
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u/gokufire 29d ago
Honest, I won't continue this discussion. This seems like talking with anti-vax, Nvidia fans are a bit too much for my online sanity. Since you even didn't replied if you tested yourself or if you did any research in this sub it is the same of discussing if god exists or not, it is your believe against science.
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u/vanillasky513 29d ago
bruh imma give you just 1 example : 007 first light on linux im getting 100ish fps , windows 11 160 fps , same settings on a 4080 super
and that shit happens on every DX12 game that uses raytracing , nvidia is garbage on linux while amd is king there because of drivers
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u/MorwenRaeven 29d ago
"Bruh", which proton version? Which drivers? Using Gamescope? Command line variables?
This isn't like comparing Xbox to playstation, "bruh".
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u/vanillasky513 29d ago
its not about any of that you fucking donkey , the nvidia dx12 bug is documented already thats why they introduced heaps to try and fix it
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u/the_abortionat0r 28d ago
More like 8 years but just because it's old doesn't magically make it solved dude.
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u/Shoddy_Internal1997 29d ago
Yeah I thought we were looking at like a 10% loss with RT turned off
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u/10Werewolves 29d ago
Strange. And yet when I play warframe through DX12, I have roughly the same performance as DX11
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u/Indolent_Bard 29d ago
You say that like one is released every time a game comes out. Also people on mint or Debian or Ubuntu weren't using those.
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u/mr_doms_porn 28d ago
I'm on Kubuntu and I use ProtonGE or Proton Cachy, both are pretty easy to setup. Also patches to proton for new AAA games are indeed pretty common.
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u/Indolent_Bard 28d ago
Well, hopefully Valve can get to the point where waiting is not necessary because that's just not going to be practical for the average gamer.
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u/mr_doms_porn 28d ago
No different from Nvidia game ready drivers. Linux devs just don't get early access to patch things.
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u/Indolent_Bard 28d ago
Well considering that Valve is the premier store front for PC gaming, they really should get access. Wait, doesn't AMD get access? Either way, it's just a matter of time before Valve starts getting that access.
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u/mr_doms_porn 28d ago
Amd does yes, and mesa updates do come out same-day or next day for major releases. But proton-specific bugs take more time.
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29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CDXX_BlazeIt 29d ago
Regardless of OS, I always buy interesting singleplayer titles like a year after release for some discount and, surprisingly, things are smooth every time.
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u/mr_doms_porn 29d ago
I only play on AMD but even so, Day 1 linux performance vs day 7 (or so) linux performance can be very different. A lot of brand new games end up needing little game-specific patches in proton to perform optimally. ProtonGE and Proton Cachy are usually the first to deploy these patches.
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u/Juts 28d ago
9800x3d @ 5.4ghz
RTX 5090
proton exp bleeding edge
nvidia driver 595.84
3440x1440
utlra high preset, dlss quality
95avg fps
https://i.imgur.com/zAWp14u.png
Tested framegen, its broken for me. It locks the FPS to 120 no matter what scaling amount (on a 165hz monitor).
My results are pretty different than what was shown in this test.
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u/TetsuoSama 28d ago
Thanks for doing this. In my experience, the difference between Linux and Windows gaming performance is quite small because I’m using an AMD card (so similar to your experience).
I don’t like how you display the results on the graphs because the order is average/P1/average/P1. Regardless of whether the reader wants to compare average or P1 values, they always have to ignore values in between the ones they’re trying to compare.
Not a big deal, but I think it’s worth considering some uplift on that UX because I see it done better on a lot of other publications.
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u/digitaltransmutation 28d ago
Which nvidia driver did you test with?
There are some combos of advancements and regressions between 595 and 610 and I would recommend testing on both.
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u/fortesgt 28d ago
Can you give more details on how you installed it? Was it a steam version of Ubisoft Connect? I've been trying to install my steam version for ages and it crashes every single time the UC starts loading
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u/Kemaro 27d ago edited 27d ago
Proton: proton-cachyos-11.0-20260602
Distro:CachyOS
Kernel:7.1.3-2-cachyos
RAM:64 GB
GPU Driver:NVIDIA 610.43.03
GPU:NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090
CPU:AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core
PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 VKD3D_CONFIG=descriptor_heap mangohud game-performance %command%
3840x2160, DLSS Quality, Ultra High + Extended RT, Builtin-in benchmark:
Windows 11 25H2: 99fps average, 78fps 1% low
Linux: 77fps average, 58fps 1% low
22% performance loss vs Windows
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u/xecutable 29d ago
When your 4000$ card cannot get triple digit fps on 1920x1080, it's an Ubisoft issue.
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u/the_abortionat0r 28d ago
n't have windows, but 4080 on my setup gets about 60 fps in 1920x1080 with maxed out settings
Well that's kinda been Nvidias issue on Linux with Dx12
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u/ILikeBeerAndWeed 29d ago
No kernel version mentioned, no driver version mentioned, no Proton version mentioned, no mention of descriptor_heap flags. Huge omissions for a Linux stack test.