(Update, July 30 - Now that the FPS cap has been fixed, I am shocked to note a more than 60% drop in performance in Wayland vs X11 using DXVK. Native OpenGL itself has seen a 15% reduction in performance in Wayland vs X. My previous results are invalid and I will have to run all the suites again to get a clearer picture of what is going on).
Having managed to get Wayland working properly on both Kubuntu and Neon after a weekend experiencing every problem posted here since the release of P6, it is time to benchmark and see which one is faster. The results are interesting in that they are not interesting.
I benchmarked every form of rendering type: OpenGL, Vulkan, DXVK, VKD3D, Cuda, RT, and straight up CPU. The things in brackets () are the engine.
Due to some weirdness with Wayland imposing a 60 FPS caps on almost everything, I had to forgo most of my standard benchmarks as they all run well above 100fps and select only the heavy hitters that struggle to reach 60fps.
Results
DXVK - Fire Strike U 4k (3DM) - W:4666 vs X:4644
DXVK - Fire Strike E 2k (3DM) - W:8307 vs X:8471
DXVK - Fire Strike B 1k (3DM) - W10417 vs X 13330*
Vulkan - Spaceship (Unity) - W:51 vs X:56*
VKD3D - Cyberpunk 2077 (RedEngine) W:40.61 vs X:38.83
OGL - Superposition (Unigine) W:3708 vs X3546
Cuda - Indigo (Indigo) W:14.965 vs X:17.732
RT - EZBench (Unreal Engine 5.1) W:2734 vs X:2632
CPU - Cinebench (Cinema 4D) W:1310 vs X1298
(* these two are likely anomalies due to actually bumping into the FPS limit)
As you can see Wayland has a very slight advantage over X if you remove the outliers, but it is so slight it is within the margin of error. Quantitatively there is little to no difference between Wayland and X.
Qualitatively there is a lot. Wayland seems to surge when the FPS start to climb, where it seems that it is steady then speeds up, though it also can get rather jerky at times. X is the opposite… it is steady then occasionally lags or gets microstutters.
The worst culprit for this was Spaceship using the unity engine which had significant pauses and stutters within the benchmark in Wayland but runs smooth as silk in X.
The lack of hardware controls over the GPU means you can do no tuning, not even the fans. Due to this Wayland runs hot.
The lack of color controls in Wayland means it is also ugly. You are stuck with the default from your GPU, which may not work well with your monitor, and no way to adjust it from Plasma.
The lack of controls for 3D aspects like overrides for AA/AF/Vsync means games that need them are broken (some older games cannot use modern AA settings).
You also cannot build a video wall with Wayland using multiple GPUs and displays. It is not supported. We have been using video walls for 20 years, and after 15 years of development, Wayland still cannot even do basic things. Some of my benchmarks can span across multiple monitors.
In conclusion, you gain nothing with Wayland as a user experience, but you lose a lot. It is no faster, no more capable, and no easier to use than X (arguably less so), and you lose all control over your GPU and displays.
Wayland, at this time, has no advantage over X for desktop users who like to do ordinary things like play games or create media. It is more of a hindrance than help. It seems little more than reinventing the wheel, and they made it square. Wayland will only be useful when it matches the capabilities and features of Z11. As it stands, its not even close.