\When Valve first announced its SteamOS, one of the most touted features was performance gains in gaming. Without the hefty overheads a fully featured operating system like Windows 10 has, SteamOS was expected to provide a much faster, streamlined experience, dedicated towards gaming.
Now the first Steam Machines with SteamOS pre-installed are out there, and the benchmark results are less than convincing. Tests reveal the gaming frame rates are between 21-58% lower when running on SteamOS compared to the exact same hardware running Windows 10. In each and every benchmark performed, the Windows 10 system came out on top of SteamOS. This covers both synthetic benchmarks and actual gaming performance. However, while benchmark tests like Geekbench 3 showed very little difference between the two systems, actual gaming was an entirely different matter.
In Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor for example, the Windows 10 scored an average of 34.5 FPS at 1792 x 1120 resolution on Ultra, while the the SteamOS lagged way behind on 14.6 frames per second. The difference was felt on Low also, with 95.5 FPS on Windows 10 versus 61 on SteamOS. The same can also be said for Metro: Last Light Redux benchmarks. Ironically the results ring true even in Valve’s own Source-powered games like Team Fortress 2, DOTA 2, Portal 2 etc. Without this, it’s difficult to see what it offers above and beyond Windows, other than that it’s free.
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