Question regarding gaming, choosing a kernel

Hi. I am a Linux gamer. There are many kernels to choose from in the system, but which one is the best for gaming? I have the standard one that installs by default. I would like to get the best performance and ensure the system runs well under load.

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Did you see this post?

So far from what I read, the mention of gaming is about which process scheduler is used. In other words, select a kernel compatible with sched-ext then use scx_lavd.

Caveat, I’m still researching and do NOT have CachyOS installed yet to experiment.

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Actually, the default one (linux-cachyos called) is the suggested one. Others are explained in the wiki.

You can play and test sched-ext, which is an interesting attempt also ,but its not perfect yet - so better stay with the default.

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I have been testing my self, from Sched and Bore etc to find a reason to change. At this point, its close to red car, blue car. It comes down from game to game, and your hw, and what you want to atchive. But if I was you, i would stay on the default. Some times, you had a bit better MS, some times, a few fps more on different instances. Then it also could be oposit with worse performance. But not anything you would notice on your screen tbh :slight_smile: So the default one is CachyKing approved :slight_smile:

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I have heavily benchmarked this in the past, during development of CachyOS. My findings should still be as valid today as they were a few years back.

BORE is the default, and the best results overall between desktop and gaming. You can squeeze a few more FPS in specific titles but ultimately it isn’t really worth it.

If you want to get a little better performance, you can try using cachyos-kernel-manager and compiling the BORE scheduler (non sched-dev), at 1000HZ, disabling NUMA, LTO Full, and setting the MGLRU to “madvise”, and editing your kernel command line string with the “mitigations=off” parameter.

But note, it’s not going to be much of a boost outside the mitigations parameter (which has its own issues, RTFM). You’re much more likely to see real gains by following arch linux’s optimization guides.

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I wouldnt suggest putting mitigations=off.

Spectre does not really hit on newer cpu’s that hard. Only the ones, which are affected by retbleed appears to be really hard hit, right now.

Madvise will generally reduce the performance, but improves latency.

The NUMA disabling is nowadays not really required anymore, there is barely an overhead or equal. somehow people just keep it a thing, because this was like that 4 years ago, but people just keep it

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The Wiki has general info. I want to know which kernel is best for CS2.
Anybody knows?

My CPU is Intel 8 gen and very old RX 470 4GB
Playing mostly on 1024 resolution, and everything on low.

Using CachyOS obviously, with cpupower-gui set to performance and highest clocks.

CS2 is really hard for your GPU tough. You can just use the default kernel.

I’m using cachyos with gaming meta packages for more than 1 year and the default linux-cachyos kernel is the best for my gaming laptop as Im on powersaver mode normally it gave 5 hours battery life which when linux mint and others gave me 2 hours battery life even with the auto-cpufreq or tlp enabled. Also i can change to performance mode when gaming. It suits my needs thats it.

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Yeah, tlp or auto-cpufreq is not really required on CachyOS.
We are working closely with Mario, from AMD together to improve the powersaving and frequency scaling even more.

Really great works each other.

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