After doing the last video on the GPD Win 3, I did have some comments wondering how well it would run with the new gaming mode in Windows, and something a bit more SteamOS-like, such as Bazzite. Well, I’m curious too.
Welcome to Esk Computers, I’m Scott and today on the desk of Esk, let’s defenestrate Windows from this machine and see how we get on.
First there’s a bit of repeat maintenance to undertake. The right analogue stick continues to play up so we’ll need to replace it. Well, the stick itself is fine, it’s the mounts to the case that’s the problem. So I’ll rip it apart and replace it in much the same manner as the last video, so I won’t overly labour the point here.
I’ll point you in the direction of that previous video for a full rundown of the specs, but in short it’s an i7-1165G7 with halfway decent integrated Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB NVME SSD hooked up to the 720p screen that slides up to reveal the touch keyboard, and of course it has the full complement of the modern joypad controls.
I’d slightly underestimated how much of this needed to be disassembled to reach the ribbon cable and plugging these things in is always a pain but we get there in the end. Points to note, the upper mounting plastic tab on the old stick had broken off, causing the problem in the first place, but when unscrewing the lower mount it also pulled out the metal insert in the post it’s screwed into. Closer inspection reveals a slight crack in that post that I don’t think there’s anything I can do about, apart maybe from glueing it. At any rate the insert for the moment can just friction fit back in and seems reasonably secure, so lets button this up and hope for the best.
Before removing Windows I wanted to try out the apparently now live Windows Gaming mode, but it doesn’t appear as a feature on the GPD provided installation. I have no idea why Windows is shunning me on this, but understanding the mind of Microsoft is a Sisyphean task I’m not up for undertaking.
However, the community provides. There’s a utility on github called ViVetool that allows us to force enable it, so after incanting the appropriate command line we now have the option available.
I suppose to be fair we should retest with the up to date normal windows install, so lets rerun a selection of the usual tests down at 720p where appropriate, and then we’ll do the same in Gaming mode. Let’s get this hooked up to a USB hub for a mouse and keyboard, ethernet, and hopefully video capture and output to this monitor.
Superposition at 720p low gets a bit confused by the screen or capture card, giving us this unique visual perspective then crashing on completion. Weird.
Being turned sidewise seems to be a recurring issue, as FireStrike shows. So, I’ve turned off the main display and set the monitor to 720p, returning us to our normally oriented programming. FireStrike does complete and gives a score of 4626. That’s a monster increase since the last video test where it only scored 3889. The Xbox mode gave a slight drop to 4603, but that’s margin of error stuff.
TimeSpy now return a score of 1689, another barely believable boost from the last test of 1291. Clearly there’s something wrong with that previous test run. In Xbox mode, it seems to be performing about the same in the first scene, but then refuses to load the subsequent scenes.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider at Low Settings gets 30 average fps, just the same as the last test. Xbox mode gives us a boost up to 36 average fps, so that’s a bonus.
Counter-Strike 2 at Low settings with all Dynamic Shadows gives a great average of 152 fps. Previously it was about 49fps, but the game was going through some traumatic updates at the time of the original testing, so most likely that’s a driver or engine update rather than specifically a Windows thing. Using Xbox mode gives practically identical performance at 151 fps.
The Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark at Steam Deck settings gives 32 fps, very close to the 30 fps result as the last round of testing in January. Xbox mode gives 31 fps, so again, effectively the same.
Red Dead Redemption 2 at the lowest settings got 48 average fps on the benchmark run last time, this time it was 44 average fps which like Cyberpunk is probably just run to run variance. Xbox mode gave exactly the same result.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage maintains a sort of playable 36 average fps with adaptive upscaling off and straight Performance XESS all the time. Xbox mode makes no difference, also at 36 average fps.
So, what’s the point of Xbox mode, then? While it does give a more useable interface for navigating with the controller, I don’t think it’s really shifting the needle otherwise.
The primary issue, at least on this installation, is that it doesn’t start in Xbox mode on start up, despite that option being selected. So we have to swich into the mode after booting, which was sort of defeats the point of going through this exercise.
Also unlike Steam, we can’t set the Xbox app to start on the library page. It very much wants to sell you games by parading its storefront in front of you as often as possible, and so it still very much feels like yet another axis of turning Windows into a series of adverts that occasionally operates your computer.
Now, I’ve had to hack it to even show up, so its perhaps unfair to judge it for not working 100% as intended. And with my positivity hat on, from the performance testing it’s at worst the same as normal Windows performance, and maybe 10% better which is nothing to be sneezed at for free, and of course the easier navigation is a huge plus.
However, it’s not really a massive improvement on what I’ve already been doing with this, which is to have Steam start up automatically on boot in the Big Picture mode, so you only have to look at the Window interface for a few seconds before it’s more or less a Steam deck.
This isn’t the complete SteamOS experience of course, but it’s a good chunk of the way there, and assuming you’re not constantly needing to change system settings or use non-gaming apps then it’s close enough, and it’s very well set up for controller based navigation. And at least for now, it can open directly into your library rather than a storefront, which is plus.
It’s still Windows underneath it all, for good and ill, so that’s not changing the performance it delivers one way or another. Valve only officially make SteamOS available for the Steam Deck and a handful of other devices, but Bazzite is a Linux distribution with a similar design ethos. As is CachyOS, but Arch Linux scares me.
GPD still have a Windows install image on their website with all the necessary drivers and such, so I can afford to be a bit cavalier in just forging on with the install. If you do something similar on oddball hardware, make sure you have your drivers backed up in case you need to return to Windows.
The Bazzite website gives a proceed at your own risk message for this hardware when looking for the SteamOS handheld like experience, and would really rather give you the standard desktop setup. But I’m not a coward, so lets go for broke. Besides, it’s a live image so you can test before committing to anything,
This boots, but soon crashes. Well, in for a penny, let’s go straight to the installer. Which also crashes. Okay, you win this time Bazzite website. Let’s use the boring generic desktop install.
This installs with no drama or complaint, albeit I think it’s expecting a higher res screen so these scrolling fields are a bit of a pain. This is actually a boon for my failing eyesight so I kept it on large print mode for as long as I could before realising down the line that we’ll need to reduce the interface scaling from this odd 180% default to something a bit more sensible where you can actually, y’know, see the window controls.
Now that it’s installed, we can do the same boot to steam big picture trick, so in that regard Bazzite on the Win 3 is not really any better I suppose. That’s only part of the picture, so let’s run through the same barrage of tests from Windows and see if there’s any change. I’m not expecting anything significant, I’m really just checking they still work. There’s also some older games I struggled to get running on the Lenovo X220 under ZorinOS a couple of weeks back, so let’s see if that’s working here. We’re comparing the 720p results from Windows and Bazzite unless otherwise stated, that being the screen resolution of the device.
3DMark can’t be installed, it seems, so that saves us a bit of time.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a native Linux version, and while it’s default settings crashes, changing the renderer fixes that. It gives a bunch of warnings about the hardware not being up to scratch, which might be the case but the benchmark at Low settings is up to 41 average fps from the 36 average fps that’s the best Windows could offer.
Here’s Counter-Strike 2, and the FPS Heaven benchmark at Low settings with High Shadows, which was sitting at 152 average fps in Windows. Now we are seeing 132 fps, so about 20fps lower. Disappointing, but still very playable performance.
Cyberpunk 2077 has some slight issues with the menus, it seems, but fixed itself after a benchmark run. It’s getting 18fps on the Steam Deck settings so that’s nearly half the performance of Windows. Also disappointing.
Red Dead Redemption 2 acts a bit funny. The quality slider in settings doesn’t seem to change any actual settings, but that can be done manually. It then took about ten minutes trying to load the benchmark and crashed. After a bit of troubleshooting and a delve into a system.xml settings file to change a flag it’s now working, so thanks to the ProtonDB commenter Igor Kujavas for that fix. But the disappointments continued with a drop to 20 average fps on the benchmark, so less than half as fast as Windows on this set of hardware. From what I read on the ever-reliable Internet, this is a game could be reasonably expected to run better on Bazzite than on Windows, so maybe there’s further troubleshooting needed, but out of the box, a straight loss for Bazzite.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage took a bit of convincing to fit on a screen, but it got there in the end. Getting further than that was a bit of a problem with the best I could manage being one frame vaguely faded in. If the corruption seen on the loading screen is anything to go by, I guess I’m not missing much. Again, this is not looking like a successful experiment for the current version of Bazzite.
At this point I’m now more concerned with games working at all, let alone getting any sort of performance boost. Let’s see if some of the other games I showcased in the last GPD Win video work.
Fallout 4 gave some welcome reassurance but just working with no fiddling needed, and it gets much the same 40-50 fps range at Low settings as it does in Windows.
Batman Arkham City continues that streak, just working without issue, and at Medium settings holds much the same 60 average fps as Windows.
Here’s Skyrim, the original release, at high settings which reaches 60 fps in less demanding moments and 40ish when taxed a bit, but that’s much the same as windows. Again, it ran with no tweaking required.
GTA V’s Enhanced edition at High settings under Windows was getting 40 odd average fps, it’s down at about half that on Bazzite, and clearly there’s a bit of an issue with the character model geometry during the cutscenes.
I tried the Legacy version, also at High settings and it’s getting framerates more towards the 50’s, and it is working without any obvious problems without any tweaking.
Max Payne 3 was gave me some issues under Windows and at low settings was only getting an average of 29 fps. Here it’s translating the Directx11 mode much better, getting up to 80-odd fps on the opening sequences. No tinkering required, well apart from the usual settings changes.
Street Fighter 5 at High Settings ran at a solid 60fps under Windows, and it’s the same story under Bazzite. Again, this just worked.
The Witcher 3’s Classic version defaulted to the Directx12 version and would not launch, but when it thinks it’s using DirectX11 it starts up fine. Annoyingly my save file is for the enhanced version and won’t transfer over, but the fifty odd fps it’s getting at Low settings in the starting area means it ought to run about as well as it would in Windows.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s native Linux version seemed to get hung up at 58% on this loading screen, when generating the shader cache. It wasn’t kidding when it said it would take a while. But after leaving it overnight to sort itself out, it just crashed on launch. Switching to the Windows version under Proton, it’s again not working under Vulkan, giving a “device lost” error, which seems silly. It’s right here, it’s not gone anywhere. Stupid game. DirectX11 proves third time lucky. Unfortunately at Low settings it’s running less than half as well as under Windows, with framerates sitting in the mid teens on running through the Lower City. A disappointing way to round out the kinda current game testing.
Moving on now to test some older games that mostly failed on our recent look at the Lenovo X220’s i5-2520M. Let’s see what improvement the best part of a decade brings to integrated graphics, and how far back Proton compatibility reaches.
The original Max Payne at 720p High settings has gone from the 30-40 fps range to 80 to 100 fps, and started up first time with no tweaking required. I believe this was one of the games that on the original GPD Win would wind up displaying a rotated, cut off screen, so it’s good to see it’s compatible with older DirectX versions and oddball screens too.
Fallout: New Vegas has a similarly lengthy shader compilation step as seen on the old laptop, but ultimately has gone from not working in any meaningful sense, to a solid 60 fps at High settings, so has headroom for either higher settings or framerates.
Smilarly, the original release of Burnout Paradise goes from not working to a solid 60 fps at Medium settings, and indeed seems to run just as well on High settings, and there’s no issues with starting this one.
2007’s Bioshock had a seconds per frame result on the Lenovo, here we’re seeing literally hundreds of fps at High settings in the admittedly less demanding opening stretch, but it’s working fine and again, no tweaking necessary to get it running.
Half-Life 2 ultimately managed a pretty solid 60 fps on the X220, so no surprise that we can get into the hundreds of fps at High settings here. Again, this just worked.
The first Deus Ex game ran okayish on the Lenovo, so no surprise that it’s running much better here, getting around 120 fps at High settings and again, just worked.
Midnight Club II was another not working experience on the Lenovo. Out of the box we’re getting a solid 60 fps, but there’s a bunch of black artifacts affecting the lighting, I think, I’m not sure how noticeable it will be after YouTube’s compressed the video. Falling back to Proton 9 resolved this, so here it is at it’s Highest settings at 60 fps.
Shadowrun Returns was in the single digit, barely functional club on the X220, and I thought I’d be ending this segment with another disappointment. It turns out that it’s another game with a native Linux version that doesn’t work here, but switching out to the Proton gets it going at a solid 60 fps.
So, is it worth moving the GPD Win 3 over to Bazzite? Well, I’m not your mum, you can make your own mind up. For me, were I advising myself a week ago I’d say the juice is not worth the squeeze, unless you are so sick of Windows that the act of deleting it would bring you more joy than the minor anguish the loss of game compatibility and performance in some titles brings.
And to be fair, for the most part the games with compatibility and performance issues are the ones that are probably too much of a stretch for the hardware to play acceptably, so it’s maybe more of a theoretical problem than one you’ll encounter in reality. The games that it can comfortably play in Windows generally perform much the same in Bazzite, so in practical terms it’s much the same experience. And, of course, it’s still a minor miracle that Windows games can run under Linux at all, let alone this well.
In terms of Bazzite as an operating system, it’s installing fine, it’s supporting all of the hardware like controls, touchscreens, wireless and so on straight out of the box. Even the buttons on the back which I forgot existed utill reaching this part of the script work out of the box, mapped to the Steam and Quick Access Menu buttons in Steam Deck nomenclature.
I’ve only really been looking at Steam here, and I’m no expect on the rest of the Linux gaming scene but it ships with Lutris installed which on a quick poke should get most games from alternative stores and sources working with a small amount of configuration.
Of course at heart it’s a Linux system, so all those solid open source apps are available, if you do want to use this with peripherals as a laptop type device. As with any other Linux system the direct equivalents for what you are using on Windows might not exist so do some checking before making that jump, but I don’t imagine that this is a common use case for this gizmo.
If the processor in this machine was part of the left-behind contingent that can’t get Windows 11, I suppose I’d be recommending it as a more secure alternative to staying on Windows 10, but, well, that’s not the case for the 11th gen i7 here. I did want to see how the original GPD Win handled Bazzite, but it’s very much too old to be supported by this OS. Maybe there’s an alternative similar distribution for that device, but the security angle isn’t a compelling for recommending Bazzite on the Win 3.
I suppose I’m saying that if you’re happy enough tolerating Windows, there’s no compelling logical reason to upend that by installing Bazzite and having to reinstall all your games as opposed to just spending that time playing the games instead. That said, if you’ve bought this rather than a Switch then you might well find this sort of tinkering fun in and of itself, and if that’s the case I would not dissuade you from trying it. That’s right, on this channel we steadfastly refuse to get off any fence..
As for me, well, I’m in no rush to return to Microsoft’s arms. I’ll keep Bazzite on here and kick the tyres a bit longer and see if there’s any problems or delights that are interesting enough to follow up on in the long term.
Until then, if you have any questions or want further details please leave a comment down below, and if you enjoyed this videotronic missive then consider subscribing. Until next time, take care of yourself, and each other.