SteamOS dominates Windows 11 in handheld gaming tests

The gaming handheld landscape is certainly heating up with Xbox jumping into the fray with the newly announced ROG Ally and a big push into Windows 11 being the predominant operating system on handheld devices. However, one thing stands in Microsoft's way: Valve, and, particularly, SteamOS.

Microsoft knows that SteamOS is its biggest competitor when it comes to PC gaming handheld devices, with the company recently canning work on its own first-party handheld device to pursue optimizations for Windows 11 on already established handheld devices such as the Xbox ROG Ally. But how far behind is Windows 11 compared to SteamOS? Well, Ars Technica has pitted the operating systems against each other in a new string of tests using the Lenovo Legion Go S.

The publication conducted performance benchmarks on five high-end 3D games: Returnal, Borderlands 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Homeworld 3, and DOOM: The Dark Ages. Each of these games was tested on SteamOS and then on Windows 11 using the Legion Go S as the testing platform. The results were very interesting, as Windows 11 lost to SteamOS in almost every single test they conducted, and in some instances, SteamOS was significantly better than the Microsoft alternative.

At both 1920 x 1200 with High Graphics Preset, and 1280 x 800 with Low Graphics Presets, the only game Windows 11 beat SteamOS in was Borderlands 3. But even then, SteamOS was about 1FPS behind Windows 11, making the performance almost identical. In the cases where SteamOS dominated Windows 11, Returnal produced a significant discrepancy between the two operating systems, with SteamOS hitting 33FPS at 1920 x 1200, and Windows 11 hitting 18FPS / 24FPS (ASUS drivers).

If you are interested in reading more about these performance results, check out the full performance breakdown here.