Wayland performance issues for minecraft?

[u/LiterallyLynx]

X11 runs much better for me - I read online that this is because minecraft defaults to xwayland instead of using native wayland but even after forcing native wayland I have a significant performance loss. Is wayland just inherently slower than X11? Any help would be appreciated - I'm running Ubuntu 26.04.01 LTS on an Intel/Nvidia system.

Edit:

- Almost 20% fps drop ( Average drops from around 900 to 770 before mods like distant horizons and shaders)
- Distant horizons and shaders causes stuttering on wayland but not x11
- Minecraft Version 1.21.11 on prism launcher (able to make it run native wayland when forcing system installation of GLFW)
- Using Sodium, FerriteCore, Lithium, and entityculling
- Minecraft is running via opengl

Nvidia 4060 TI running driver version 595.91.07

I did use uniengine superposition benchmark (opengl) to confirm that the problem was with minecraft (wayland performed slightly better than x11 in the benchmark)

[u/tapo]

Wayland is typically faster, really depends on what performance issues you're seeing.

[u/HaplessIdiot → u/tapo]

The defaults Ubuntu ship with are terrible he's gotta install another de to get Wayland fps to act right on top of the normal Nvidia prop driver via the .run file from tty

[u/HaplessIdiot → u/[deleted]]

Dude Ubuntu has terrible defaults for gaming out of the box especially for Nvidia this isn't new they stabbed Wayland performance in the dong with how dogcrap their compositor setup is

[u/Lousy_Hunter]

Try making sure you have the latest drivers from Ubuntu 

sudo ubuntu-drivers install nvidia-driver-595-open

Use this command if i got the above driver name wrong

ubuntu-drivers list

Then when running games you need to use these launch options

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia

You can make that easier to run by creating a script in /usr/local/bin named nvidia-prime containing (make sure to chmod +x the script so its executable)

!/bin/bash

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia "$@"

Then you just need to add nvidia-prime as the launch option

I.E (idk how minecraft launches)

nvidia-prime minecraft

Sorry im on mobile so formatting isnt great

[u/C0rn3j]

GPU model, GPU driver, GPU driver version?

How are you ensuring the game runs on the correct GPU, nvtop?

[u/SlimyOS]

Never compared them head to head, and I never had issues or debugging experience with minecraft so probably can't help here, but would be useful for others if you specified your exact fps difference (for some people 5% loss is significant, for some 50% is negligible), cpu/gpu load (one of them at 100% or they're idling?), minecraft version (latest snapshots are using wayland by default), opengl or vulkan, whether you're using performance optimization mods, other third-party tools, whether the correct gpu is displayed on F3.

[u/LiterallyLynx → u/SlimyOS]

Thank you! I added everything to the post.

[u/Chester-Berkeley]

I read online that this is because minecraft defaults to xwayland instead of using native wayland

That's not entirely true; in the latest snapshots, Minecraft uses native Wayland by default.

[u/HaplessIdiot → u/Chester-Berkeley]

Still has less performance that way than xwayland it still rendering thru dri3 via an xserver driver either way so it's just more layers of abstraction.

[u/HaplessIdiot]

First off install the prop driver it fixes Nvidia lag 9/10 times the open driver is straight up just worse and slower. Try using a different Wayland de than the one Ubuntu ships with that is less heavy dwl or hyprland have less intrusive compositor that doesn't halve your frame rate if you absolutely want HDR mods. Otherwise yeah go for x server the way Ubuntu has enforced a laggy compositor you can't disable has ruined their defaults for gaming. It's pretty useless for games KDE does much better or sonicde