[COMMUNITY POLL] Framework Desktop x Gaming

Framework Desktop
1

Hello!!

In case you missed it, we pulled together a roundup of gaming performance in our recent blog post.

Now we want to hear from you!

What’s your Framework Desktop gaming setup look like? What games are you playing, what settings are you using, and what kind of performance are you seeing? Share your specs, and photos too, if you’re up for it!

Here’s a template to help you get started:

Framework Desktop Gaming Specs
Hardware
RAM:
GPU:

Operating System
OS / Distro:

Game Title
Game:
API (DirectX12, Vulkan, etc):

Graphics Settings
Screen mode:
Resolution:
Frame Rate Limit:
V-Sync:
Quality (Shadow, Texture, Shaders, Visual Effects, Post-processing, View Distance, etc):
Anti-aliasing:
Motion Blur:

Performance
Average FPS:

Anything else you think would be helpful (thermals, fan noise, scaling tweaks, etc):

:camera_with_flash: Photo of your setup (optional)!

If there are any specific games you want us to test or settings you’d like to see us document officially, let us know. We’ll keep building based on what you’re excited about.

Can’t wait to see your rigs and results :orange_heart:

4 Likes
Extending on Framework Desktop, Stylus availability, and a roundup of gaming performance
Extending on Framework Desktop, Stylus availability, and a roundup of gaming performance
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Was coming here to check if there already is a thread for this YAY

I havent gamed dor like 3-4years as i never had a machine for it and not really a need but now with the Desktop.

I have only tested a little and looking forward seeing good settings for different games.

Currently i am catching up on Alan Wake 2 and Spider-Man 2 so if anyone has a good settings to get a stable FPS please share!

Ill post more of my current settings little later when i have played around with them a little more on Bazzite

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Thanks for posting, I’m excited to see what performance the community is getting. I’m using the Framework Desktop AMD AI Max 385 - 32GB configuration.

Hardware

RAM: 16gb

VRAM: 16gb

GPU: Integrated

Operating System

OS / Distro: Bazzite

Game Title

Game: Silent Hill f

API: Vulkan

Graphics Settings

Screen mode: Fullscreen

Resolution: 2560 x 1440

Frame Rate Limit: None

V-Sync: On

Quality:

  • Screen Percentage: 100%

  • Indirect Lighting: Lumen High

  • Reflections: Lumen High

  • Shadow Quality: High

  • Texture Quality: Very High

  • Shader Quality: High

  • Visual Effects Quality: High

  • Post Processing: High

  • View Distance: High

Anti-Aliasing: FSR

Anti-aliasing Quality: Performance

Performance

Stable 60fps, up to 80 in some areas.

Additional Notes

  • Using “Balanced” AA hit 60 FPS most of the time, with some dips to the mid 50s.

  • Indirect Lighting is required for a good experience, but also has the biggest impact on performance.

  • Getting a stable 60fps in 4k required setting most settings to their lowest. However, I played a lot of the game between 45 - 60 fps in 4k with mostly medium settings.

  • TSR absolutely tanks the FPS, I had to use FSR to get acceptable visuals and frame rate.

  • All visual settings can be maxed out at 1080p and run well above 60 FPS, however I did not experiment with the different AA at this resolution.

Overall, the game at these settings looks and runs great. The quality settings look slightly better than the PS5 Performance mode, but at 1440p instead of 1080p.

Looking forward to trying Resident Evil 4 (2023) and Metal Gear Solid Delta next!

1 Like
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Tried out the first 6 chapters of RE4 (2023), dabbling with the settings across different scenes in those chapters. I’m using the Framework Desktop AMD AI Max 385 - 32GB configuration, and here’s the game settings I used the most.

Hardware

RAM: 16gb

VRAM: 16gb

GPU: Integrated

Operating System

OS / Distro: Bazzite

Game Title

Game: Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Graphics Settings

Screen Resolution: 3840 x 2160

Refresh Rate: 120.00 Hz

Frame Rate Limit: Variable

Display Mode: Full Screen

Vertical Synchronization: Off

Cinematics Resolution: 4k

Ray Tracing: Off (Not available)

FidelityFX Super Resolution 2: Off

FidelityFx Super Resolution 1: Quality

Image Quality: Disabled when FSR is enabled

Rendering Mode: Disabled when FSR is enabled

Anti-aliasing: Disabled when FSR is enabled

Texture Quality (Recommended VRAM): High (8 GB)

Texture Filtering: High (ANISO x16)

Mesh Quality: Max

Shadow Quality: Max

Shadow Cache: On

Contact Shadows: On

Ambient Occlusion: FidelityFX CACAO

Volumetric Lighting: Mid

Particle Lighting Quality: High

Bloom: On

Screen Space Refletctions: On

Subsurface Scattering: On

Hair Strands: On

Graphic Dismemberment: On

Persistent Corpses: Many

Corpse Physics: High

Diverse Enemy Animations: On

Motion Blur: On

Rain Quality: High

Terrain: On

Destructible Environments: On

Lens Flare: On

Lens Distortion: On (+chromatic aberration)

Depth of Field: On

Resource-Intense Lighting Quality: High

Resource-Intense Effects Quality: High

Performance

Between 55 - 65 FPS

Additional Notes

  • Dropping the resolution down 1440p allows you to turn off FSR and ~70 FPS (depending on the scene) with FXAA + TAA anti-aliasing
  • Turning off FSR with the above settings (and FXAA + TAA) drops the FPS to 30 - 40 in most scenes
  • Using the “Performance” settings for FSR1 at 4k gave the best performance, around 80 FPS in most scenes.
  • I can’t decide if I prefer 1440 with no FSR, or 4k with “Quality” FSR

Overall, the game plays really well and looks great. I’ve played through it on the Xbox Series X and it looks better here. I took some screenshots but they came out extremely dark, I’m not sure if it’s from HDR or a bug with Bazzite.

6

Framework Desktop Gaming Specs
Hardware
RAM: 64GB
GPU: AMD Radeon™ 8060S Graphics

Operating System
OS / Distro: Windows 11

Game Title
Game: Nier: Automata
API (DirectX12, Vulkan, etc): DirectX

Graphics Settings
Screen mode: 1080p
Resolution: 1080p
Frame Rate Limit: 60fps
V-Sync: ON
Quality (Shadow, Texture, Shaders, Visual Effects, Post-processing, View Distance, etc): Very High
Anti-aliasing: ON
Motion Blur: ON

Performance
Average FPS: 60fps, I bet I could higher but my monitors won’t allow more

Anything else you think would be helpful (thermals, fan noise, scaling tweaks, etc):

My thermals overall remain at < 60C. Fan noise is quiet, and even PSU fan remains quiet too (I mostly only hear this fan while the computer is idle), I have not made any tweaks to my build at all. I also have the latest Windows 11 AMD drivers 25.11.1.

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Maybe I am late to the party but I just played through Alan Wake 2. openSUSE Tumbleweed with Lutris. Power settings are 100W sustained / 115W boost.

I had stuttering issues independent from FPS. The solution for me was installing Gamescope, enabling it for the game in Lutris and setting a forced FPS to a level I can reliably achieve with specific graphics settings. I played at max settings (higher than “high” preset) for everything except for anything RT related which was all turned off. 1440p with FSR at Quality. That worked with fixed 40 fps.

The illumination settings even without RT eat a lot of performance, by scaling those back from max settings, I guess one can also get 60 fps but I think having those effects was worth it.

1 Like
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Anyone having issues with the FW Desktop while gaming on Win11? Sometimes it just restarts randomly.

I did all the stress tests, and they all look good. I suspect maybe a driver issue somewhere, but don’t know for sure…

Sometimes, even in Windows, when quickly switching tabs or apps, the whole page doesn’t fully load/appear instantly. Some horizontal lines are behind for a fraction of a second. I observed this in games, too. That’s why I suspect an AMD/GPU driver issue.

Overall, games run decently on 1440p, mostly on medium/high and performance settings.

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What is event log saying, when you reboot randomly while gaming?

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Event ID 41, Kernel-Power. And no dump file was created.

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Hey @k_peter_06

I’m experiencing the same issue with my recently-acquired Framework Desktop mainboard.

Did you manage to overcome this issue somehow?

I just started using my framework desktop mainboard by doing some initial benchmarks to ensure the system was stable and started facing this issue right away.

The system runs “fine” when doing light tasks like browsing, but as soon as I try to do something more power intensive it turns off / resets.

I tried with two different PSUs (Corsair 650w and a 750w one) but the issue persists.

Then I used the windows event viewer and saw the same “kernel-power” issue you had.

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In my case, I suspect two main issues.

  1. The kernel-power 41 event log often suggests a faulty PSU. On my unit, the PSU was extremely hot since day one. I guess either the fan was not running properly or at all. It was one of the first things I noticed with my unit. So I’m running an external USB-powered exhaust fan at the back of the case to cool it better, as described in this topic: Noisy PSU fan - #411 by joncak
  2. Driver or BIOS issues. Since I have my FW Desktop for about 2 months, I had a ton of driver issues, and I am very disappointed by how bad they are. For the graphics driver, many people suggest using the AMD ones, not the FW ones, as they cause a lot of issues/errors. Now even their latest BIOS update messed many things up. My unit also started booting way slower, and the same thing is reported by many other users too: Framework Desktop Ryzen AI MAX 300 BIOS 3.04 Release STABLE - #63 by k_peter_06

So I did both of the above things mostly at the same time, (setting up the external fan for the PSU & updating/changing drivers), and the issue seems mostly solved.

I did several stress tests for the CPU & GPU, and the system never shut down, and the numbers are what they should be. So, for now, my guess was faulty drivers. What tests should I run to check if everything is as it should be? - #5 by k_peter_06

Try doing some tests too and see if your unit still shuts down. If it doesn’t, your mainboard is probably fine. And you might also have some other driver or BIOS issues. Also, you probably don’t have any PSU issues, if you already tried with 2 different ones.

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A relatively easy way to try out would be to create a Linux live USB (eg Fedora which is officially supported for the Framework Destkop), boot from the USB and test something slightly more stressful that would crash the system in Linux. Fedora already comes with all the right drivers, so if drivers are your issue, the issue should go away.

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Friendly reminder, this is not a troubleshooting thread. Please open a support ticket or another thread.

15

After some troubleshooting with power settings on Bazzite (home + bottom / right button should pull up the power options in game mode), I’m getting great results on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Somewhere in the range of 50 FPS lows and 90 FPS highs depending on what’s happening.

Will have to share more details when I’m home.