other topics worth mentioning

[abfipes12]

disto actually matters:
that is the place from where you get packages. Distros use different optimizations / flags for compiling packages, other use custom patches, some even uses different compilers as default (clang instead of gcc), and others let you choose compilations flags.
more correct title would be "package manager matters".

Bleeding edge systems tend to be faster, not always newer package / library means faster / better but ... you may get some game changing features. Especially try recent kernels.

Hardware acceleration

proprietary codecs and other gst-plugins-ugly

DE / WM matters, and add-ons / plugins / other setting for them. e.g., blur-my-shell for gnome comes with yr computer slow.

Also, low swappiness may come with lag spikes. Fps is not as important as consistency. If you get 100 frames in first half a second and 20 during second half, this is much worse than constant 60 fps, even if you get more fps. (lag spikes bad)

check DRI (direct render infrastructure) settings.

tlp is a good way to manage hardware settings even if you don't laptoping.

also, don't forget to plug your devices to AC.

If you want to play with different kernels, you may want to not be limited to (usually) small boot partition and have separate partition for /esp and have /boot on primary partition.

Try wine natively on Wayland. Works really nicely for intel and AMD cards, even more fps in most games in my experience.

Older cards have not polished Vulkan drivers and shows Vulkan in worse light. But Vulkan supposes to be better, especially for newer cards

performance section from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wine

there is a project that is DXVK but for Vulkan older than 1.3. forger the name of it.

Don't forgor to compare different drivers for your graphic card and then driver settings.

I use btrfs too, but we may include some ext4 optimizations. xfs may be better.

pulseaudio vs. pipewire?

get zram / zswap

and much more...