What’s the current landscape like for gaming with KDE Wayland? I’ve heard that recently VSync can be disabled and that Wine has better support for Wayland nowadays.

Whats your experience like with this setup?

  • ElectroLisa
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    1 year ago

    If you’re playing competitive FPS games then Wayland still isn’t there, use X11 instead. Outside of it, I’d say it’s worth a shot, it goes especially well with FreeSync monitors.

    Your experience will vary from your GPU vendor too. I have an AMD card so Wayland is a smooth experience for me, if you’re on Nvidia then you will most likely face issues.

    I’ve noticed a bug where in GPU bound scenarios entire desktop is lagging. This issue happens for me on Wayland but not X11. I don’t know what’s causing it, could be my graphics card running out of its 4 GB of VRAM.

    TL;DR give it a try, you can easily switch between X11 and Wayland.

    • marmalade@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I would say the exact opposite if you’re playing competitive FPS. Xorg tears and is super jittery like a motherfucker. Wayland is the only thing that properly drives my 240hz monitor.

      • ElectroLisa
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        1 year ago

        Weird, everything is fine on my end, however my screen is a bit slower, at 144 Hz. For games which run below my refresh rate I use Wayland + VRR, but for games which run well above it I use X11 and disabled compositing.

        Some examples on Wayland: Hunt: Showdown, Battlefield 4, Grounded, Genshin. On X11: CS:GO, Minecraft, Ultrakill

    • priapus@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Wayland with VRR should give you very comparable latency to X11, but if you have a monitor without support for it then X11 is definitely better.

      • ElectroLisa
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        1 year ago

        Do you know what happens when games run above your refresh rate? Is VRR still engaged there or does it fall back to Wayland’s FIFO Vsync?

        • priapus@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Afaik, it will fall back to FIFO. Fortunately, if you’re using a high refresh rate monitor, by the time you reach this point, FIFO will be adding a very small amount of latency. I generally choose to limit my games to my refresh rate when making use of VRR, as it leads to a good combination of low and consistent latency, rather than the spikes you will face when playing with it unlocked.