SteamOS vs Bazzite vs ChimeraOS vs CachyOS - All On Nvidia, All Benchmarked
Now that SteamOS runs on Nvidia thanks to the patch, the obvious question — how does it stack up against every other console-style Linux distro on the same Nvidia hardware? So I benchmarked all four: SteamOS, Bazzite, ChimeraOS…
Now that SteamOS runs on Nvidia thanks to the patch, the obvious question — how does it stack up against every other console-style Linux distro on the same Nvidia hardware? So I benchmarked all four: SteamOS, Bazzite, ChimeraOS, and CachyOS deck edition, plus Omarchy with my Gamescope launcher as the desktop-distro control. Same 5060 Ti, same settings, same games.
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THE CRITERIA
Every system tested boots into a Gamescope session — that's the qualifier. This isn't desktop distros; it's the console-like spins designed to sit under your TV. Cyberpunk 2077, Doom: The Dark Ages, Returnal, and Homeworld 3 — all with built-in benchmarks. Each game gets a shader-cache warm-up run then three continuous runs, all logged through MangoHUD at 100ms samples for average FPS, 1% lows, and frame pacing. The logging tool is on my Git if you want to run your own.
One caveat — drivers vary. SteamOS is patched to 610, CachyOS is on 610, Bazzite plays it safe on 596 (the production branch), and Chimera is stuck on the older 575 from the SteamOS extras repo.
THE RESULTS
Average FPS — a tie. Bazzite edges Cyberpunk, Omarchy nicks Doom, Homeworld is even. No standout. And honestly, averages are the least useful metric anyway — you want to be over your baseline, but past that it only matters for competitive play.
1% lows — SteamOS takes it. Wins on Returnal and Homeworld, with CachyOS pipping Dark Ages. All incredibly close.
Frame pacing — SteamOS again, winning three of four by fractions of milliseconds. Omarchy was oddly erratic on Doom, which I've seen before — likely the desktop runtime difference.
Compatibility — the only real separator. Returnal flat-out refused to run on Bazzite, and Doom threw a wobbly on Omarchy. Chimera and SteamOS ran everything.
WHY GAMESCOPE LEVELS THE FIELD
This is the point people keep missing. GameScope exists because Valve discovered back in the Debian SteamOS days that running games through a desktop compositor gives you erratic frame delivery. Run a game through Wayland and you might get HIGHER average FPS — but the frame pacing is all over the shop. GameScope trades a few frames for consistent, smooth delivery, which matters most on low-powered hardware. Every distro here uses it, so they all converge on near-identical results. It's the compositor doing the work, not the distro underneath.
THE HONEST VERDICT
There's no winner and no losers. SteamOS is tweaked slightly better for gaming — best 1% lows, best frame pacing — but by margins you'd never feel. Chimera is a brilliant project but the desktop experience barely exists, and bizarrely you can't use a mouse in console mode — controller only. Bazzite is where SteamOS should aspire to be on compatibility, but it's Fedora-based and immutable which puts it in a weird place. CachyOS deck is solid. And to the comments section — no, CachyOS does not magically produce 10 extra frames. I've run a billion tests. It's not there.
The real story is that SteamOS is the one we actually want — it's Valve, it's integrated with the platform we buy our games on — and now it runs on Nvidia. If they ship official Nvidia support and Bazzite-level compatibility, it wins everything.
Windows comparisons keep getting requested — it's genuinely hard to measure the same stats fairly on Windows, but I'm working out a method.
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00:00 - Start
00:09 - PREAMBLE
04:33 - Averange frame rate
06:08 - 1% lows
07:19 - FRAME PACING
09:11 - FINAL WORDS