Is The Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Fast Enough For Steam On Linux Gaming?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Is The Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Fast Enough For Steam On Linux Gaming?

Following the recent articles about the open-source AMD Linux OpenGL performance for gaming (16-way Open-Source Radeon Linux Driver GPU Comparison and AMD Radeon Gallium3D Is Catching Up & Sometimes Beating Catalyst On Linux), here's a look at the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 performance when testing the games on the latest open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) Linux graphics driver code.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=21158

[edoantonioco]

seems to be nouveau is fast enough for most of those cards.

[Calinou]

seems to be nouveau is fast enough for most of those cards.

It is still very slow compared to the proprietary driver (2 to 3 times slower). Most “gamers” wouldn't tolerate a 25 % loss already.

[Dukenukemx]

But can it run Crysis? I mean Gallium-Nine? Sorry, bad habbit.

[AJSB]

But can it run Crysis? I mean Gallium-Nine? Sorry, bad habbit.

Bad habbit ? Not at all !

I can't wait for Nine is ready, even if it must be us doing the patch instead of WINE already have support for Nine, to latest Mesa, WINE,etc.

I expect that improves not only performance as in speed but also as in compatibility...i.e. the current graphical glitches in BF:BC2 shown in standard WINE.

Granted, it will still not be possible to play in ranked servers because PB, but i'm at highest level in that game, so no need/desire to play in ranked servers....i just want to play it in Linux.

[chrisb]

It is still very slow compared to the proprietary driver (2 to 3 times slower). Most ?gamers? wouldn't tolerate a 25 % loss already.

Most monitors can only show 60fps and most desktops and drivers enable vsync so the game won't render more than 60fps anyway.

[Luke]

Reasl world case: All of the Big Three now fast enough for desktop with FOSS drivers

Most monitors can only show 60fps and most desktops and drivers enable vsync so the game won't render more than 60fps anyway.

One takeaway from this is that you can now run current distros on any desktop machine with Intel, Nvidia, or AMD graphics built in the past half-decade and not have graphics issues hobbling the DE or typical desktop applications. I still remember Red hat sweating bullets about whether or not Nouveau would be ready in time for gnome-shell to be used in Fedora by default. We've obviously come a hell of a long way on Nouveau and a long way on AMD as well.

Even in Cinnamon, Unity, or GNOME3 there should be no issues that comes from the GPU driver anymore. Light games like Criticalmass should usually work fine as well, though in some corner cases some tweaking might be desirable such as manual reclocking. Criticalmass is only rendered in 2d over OpenGL but is notorious for dropped frames that create stutter unless the framerate is at least 300fps (or locked to vblank but capable of 300+ otherwise). Still should not be no issues.

[ruthan]

2 very old games and without comparion with official driver, pointless..

[Ardje]

Using the HD4890 the radeon driver was the only way to go to play metro-last-light.
And it performed well.
Having an R9-270 most games play well with the radeon driver. Some games play better with fglrx, but the pain with fglrx is too big in other areas.
So I am still glad with my ATI/AMD cards, since the open-source drivers are pretty good.

[Veske]

Well nouveau lack the power to even render my desktop on a decent FPS. Using a 1080p 144Hz monitor.