Jarrr Maties!
I briefly made the best of a fresh early morning breeze and re-tested something.
In my performance analysis of the Black Flag Remake on Linux, I had only one complaint: Ubisoft’s stupid launcher showed a pirattitude like a blackguardly seefarer on the hunt for alcohol. That sucks if you just want to do some plundering after work but avoid Windows like a pirate avoids the law.
It’s been about a month now, and I wanted to revisit this topic in the hope that a few Proton updates fixed the problem. Since I already greeted you appropriately, we’re not wasting any time and immediately board the ship.
Hardware & Software
My Galleon is propelled by two AMD-shaped sails. A Ryzen 7800X3D is paired with an RX 9070 XT. The stockroom contains 32 GB of RAM and a bunch of SSDs.
Bazzite hasn’t changed since the last test, as the Deck Variant is still waiting for its update. I only checked out the latest ProtonGE version 11.3. The Kernel was still 6.17.7, and Mesa was on version 26.0.4. I always run Bazzite in its Gaming Mode, which is the fullscreen experience with a Gamescope session. If I ever use the desktop mode, I’ll mention it explicitly.
The changes to CachyOS are minimal. The Kernel received an update from 7.1.3 to 7.1.6, and Mesa updated from 26.1.4 to 26.1.6. Cachy’s latest Proton package is version 11.0-20260703.
Game Launch Retest: Only Proton Update
When I did my first tests on Bazzite, I was pleasantly surprised. My first couple of attempts immediately worked, and I was finally able to just play the game on Linux. As soon as I started recording the process, the cracks started to show. Ubisoft Connect didn’t take long to show its inner recalcitrant pirate.
That’s when I started testing all kinds of variations.
- Bazzite with ProtonGE
- Bazzite with Standard Steam Proton
- Bazzite Desktop with ProtonGE
- CachyOS with Cachy-Proton
- CachyOS with ProtonGE
- CachyOS with Steam Proton Experimental
You can see my different attempts on screen at an increased speed. Every combination had to prove itself in five launch attempts. As with an inebriated marauder, you cannot rely on the outcome. Bazzite fared best overall, but even in the best case, 3 out of 5 attempts is still around 2 failures too much. Imagine you’re in a bar and order five shots. The barkeep places five glasses in front of you but is already so wasted that he (or she) only fills half of them. Not cool.
So, I went on a voyage to plunder ProtonDB for somebody else’s treasure.
Game Launch Retest: Proton Options
And boy did I find a treasure. Many users mentioned the Option “PROTON_NO_NTSYNC=1”, and luckily somebody also gave an explanation that linked it to fixing Ubisoft Connect’s launch problem. But here’s the thing: NTSYNC is a performance feature for games built into the Kernel. That made me curious if deactivating this option would negatively impact the otherwise great performance.
But let’s slow down and go one by one. Adding PROTON_NO_NTSYNC to the Steam launch options did, in fact, fix the issue. Five out of five times, the game launched. Order five schnaps, have five times the fun. Arr!
Performance
What remains is the question of whether the tipsy pirate is still able to perform after that. For this retest, I concentrated on Bazzite with ProtonGE 11.3 and CachyOS with the latest Cachy-Proton. In terms of quality presets, I stuck with what I did in the first test. I ran the built-in benchmark at Medium + RT Standard, High + RT Extended, and Very High + RT Extended. Since I only wanted a rough idea of where we’d land, I did not run the benchmark multiple times to calculate a median.
Performance: Medium + RT Standard
In my first test, Windows averaged 106 FPS and 87 FPS in the 1%-lows. Bazzite produced 103 FPS and 78 FPS, and CachyOS achieved 103 FPS and 74 FPS, respectively.
After disabling NTSYNC, Bazzite and CachyOS achieved the same FPS values at 100 on average and 75 for the 1%-lows. Compared to my first test, this is a negligible drop in performance that you can also consider being in the margin of error territory. Running multiple tests and averaging the numbers could even this out.
System Average FPS 1%-Low FPS -------------------------------------------------- Bazzite (1st Test) 103 78 CachyOS (1st Test) 103 74 Windows 11 (1st Test) 106 87 Bazzite (NTSYNC=0) 100 75 CachyOS (NTSYNC=0) 100 75
Performance: High + RT Extended
On the High preset with more ray tracing effects, the values without NTSYNC match the first test. Windows slightly leads Linux with 82 FPS on average and 66 FPS for the 1%-lows. Where Bazzite managed 79 and 60 FPS before, it’s now 80 and 60 FPS. For CachyOS, it’s the other way around.
System Average FPS 1%-Low FPS -------------------------------------------------- Bazzite (1st Test) 79 60 CachyOS (1st Test) 80 60 Windows 11 (1st Test) 82 66 Bazzite (NTSYNC=0) 80 60 CachyOS (NTSYNC=0) 79 60
Performance: Very High + RT Extended
What remains is the Very High preset, and the results also fall in the margin of error category. Whether Linux delivers 70 or 71 FPS on average or the 1%-lows are somewhere between 50 and 53 FPS doesn’t make one bit of a difference. In practice, all systems feel the same.
System Average FPS 1%-Low FPS -------------------------------------------------- Bazzite (1st Test) 71 52 CachyOS (1st Test) 71 50 Windows 11 (1st Test) 73 58 Bazzite (NTSYNC=0) 70 53 CachyOS (NTSYNC=0) 71 52
Famous Last Plunder
In summary, I can say that disabling NTSYNC in Proton does not have any negative impact on the game’s performance. You actually only have advantages because the game finally launches reliably. If you turned the wonky behavior into a drinking game where you’d bottoms-up a shot whenever the game wouldn’t launch, you’d be having fun in a different way that is not playing. Now, you can remain sober and steer a boat without a bad conscience.
With that, I can finally recommend Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced on Linux.
Thanks for sailing with me on my ship. I hope you have a wonderful day, from whatever harbor you hail from.
The Gameslinger 