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#1 2025-10-05 22:24:08

haroldjhengis
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Registered: 2025-10-05
Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

I have enabled NTSYNC in my kernel and installed GE-Proton 10-17 (On kernel 6.16, sudo echo ntsync > /etc/modules-load.d/ntsync.conf, modinfo ntsync prints stuff, /dev/ntsync exists, and lsof /dev/ntsync shows the games I'm running)
However I am getting no performance benefit from this and I don't know why. I read on ProtonDB that NTSYNC would fix performance in the old Call of Duty games, but that hasn't seemed to work for me.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? Am I doing something wrong?

Last edited by haroldjhengis (2025-10-06 22:13:30)

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#2 2025-10-05 22:28:58

haroldjhengis
Member
Registered: 2025-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

Oh yes, and ~/.steam/steam/logs/console-linux.txt does display: wineserver: NTSync up and running!
and mangohud tells me that NTSync and my dedicated GPU are being used.

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#3 2025-10-06 10:41:00

Sidekick
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Registered: 2024-06-23
Posts: 52

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

Where on ProtonDB did you read this?

The performance benefits you mention are probably NTSync vs. unpatched WINE or old Proton versions from at least 2 years ago. Current Proton has FSync enabled and if you compare FSync vs. NSync the performance benefits are negligible at best - there are even some games where FSync has a higher average FPS. NSync is basically just a nice and better way, in terms of code cleanliness and responsibilities, compared to FSync.

For reference, take a look at this video where someone does an actual comparison between FSync and NSync: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBY_BA_IMAA

That is the newest video on the topic I could find.

As a point of discussion: People are claiming NSync leads to more reliable frame timings/less CPU utilization. Looking at the data displayed in the video I can see that NSync beats FSync by 0.2 - 0.5 ms in some scenes but not always and in some games it just goes back and forth, in one second FSync is faster and the next NSync is faster.

Found another forum topic with comparison data over on CachyOS's forum https://discuss.cachyos.org/t/proton-ca … te/7932/11 according to people there the load time for Uncharted is drastically reduced when using NTsync compared to FSync, otherwise it matches the video I posted above and both of these are "trading blows" when it comes to performance.

Last edited by Sidekick (2025-10-06 10:53:47)

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#4 2025-10-06 22:13:18

haroldjhengis
Member
Registered: 2025-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

Well that really sucks, all I read about NTSync was the hype around massive performance gains. As for the protonDB post, its right here: https://www.protondb.com/app/42700?device=pc

Thanks for the reply.

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#5 2025-10-06 23:37:17

Sidekick
Member
Registered: 2024-06-23
Posts: 52

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

Interesting. What CPU and GPU do you have?

jackra1n writes that the FPS is locked to 90 through MangoHUD. Maybe that wasn't done before and that is the actual source of the stutter being gone?.

There could be other explanations, one is that what ever is going on in Uncharted's loading screen is happening in a very reduced form when playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and that creates these stutters and due to the different implementation of NTSync compared to fsync these stutters disappear. In that case, if your CPU has enough headspace you should see the same benefit if you lock the FPS to something sensible.

An other explanation could be that there were other performance improvements and changes in Proton-GE that have improved the performance to this point. In which case you might want to try and use Proton-GE as well.

There is also a third possibility, although somewhat unlikely: jackra1n might have updated the BIOS and/or changed something in there in reference to overclocking, resizeable BAR or RAM timings and then forgotten about those changes or maybe did not think those changes would have a bigger impact on performance.

Edit:

Oh ffs, I just checked the ProtonDB page of that game and sure enough jackra1n's second report is there. 1 year ago. The system had a  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. Now the system has a AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT. But of course it's the NTSync and Proton-GE that are responsible for the improved performance. Not the high-end brand new AMD GPU.

Last edited by Sidekick (2025-10-06 23:49:47)

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#6 2025-10-07 02:46:23

haroldjhengis
Member
Registered: 2025-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

You've gotta be shitting me.

In my desperation I scrolled through that thread you linked and found this post

It turns out all of the old CoDs have been using my integrated graphics. I entered

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

into my launch options and the game runs buttery smooth, full resolution, everything.

I'm just confused as to why MangoHud reported that it was using my dedicated GPU.

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#7 2025-10-07 06:07:16

haroldjhengis
Member
Registered: 2025-10-05
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

Did some more digging. Don't use WineD3D, instead force vulkan to use your GPU.
Run vulkan info and get the name of your GPU. Add the following to your launch parameters:

DXVK_FILTER_DEVICE_NAME="GPU_NAME" %command%

All issues fixed.

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#8 2025-10-07 06:44:49

LinuxLover471
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From: Asia, India
Registered: 2025-02-23
Posts: 150

Re: [SOLVED] Seemingly no benefit from NTSYNC

NTSYNC is supposed to improve stability and reduce stutters, not necessarily a raw FPS increase. For me, it works very well, and makes my experience much better.

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