NVIDIA Is Still Killing AMD Over Linux OpenGL Performance

[legluondunet]

I'm a linux gamer, I play on Steam Linux game but windows game too with Wine.
I recently changed my graphic card from a AMD 7850 to a Nvidia GTX 770, it's a night and the day change!
The Nvidia GTX 770 performance are impressive on Linux and more stable.
Then Wine compatibility and performance are far better with Nvidia card.
At the moment the best choice for a linux gamer is to buy a Nvidia card.
Perrhaps tomorrow AMD will offer better experience for Linux users, but not today.

[felipe]

Nice trolling.

Intel drivers suffer random tearing for me, with nvidia I can play metro , serious sam bfe 3, dota 2, half life, counter strike, left 4 dead 2 etc, very smooth, and I have Windows 8.1 too for playing battlefield 4.

a real gamer play those games when they come out, 10 years ago... metro last ligth and serious sam 3 sucks i don't know who call AAA to metro

[TemplarGR]

Hopefully as Intel make progress on power and performance and the linux driver remains reasonably open, it will put pressure on NVidia and AMD to do more.

Actually, Intel's Skylake due in 2015, will have really good graphics performance. It is rumoured that Iris Pro will become mainstream. Currently Iris Pro 5200 can even play Crysis 3 with reasonable settings, imagine 2-3 times that performance. If only drivers improve, we could have a winner...

[FutureSuture]

Does the 290 run on Mesa yet?

I want to know this as well.

[pinguinpc]

I'm a linux gamer, I play on Steam Linux game but windows game too with Wine.
I recently changed my graphic card from a AMD 7850 to a Nvidia GTX 770, it's a night and the day change!
The Nvidia GTX 770 performance are impressive on Linux and more stable.
Then Wine compatibility and performance are far better with Nvidia card.
At the moment the best choice for a linux gamer is to buy a Nvidia card.
Perrhaps tomorrow AMD will offer better experience for Linux users, but not today.

Hi i see your revisions on wine appdb

http://appdb.winehq.org/contact.php?iRecipientId=116153

I was wine maintainer but im retired, but i up results with this name

http://appdb.winehq.org/contact.php?iRecipientId=168847

Back to theme, i have a question (give you use privative driver for both hardware), how fps gains (fps performance must be up seriously) on injustice god among us, starwars force unleashed 1 and tomb raider 2013 with your Geforce GTX770 vs Radeon HD7850

[arokh]

I see the situation is still the same as when nvidia started pushing out Linux drivers over a decade ago, back when I was still gaming. Open source hippies were advocating open source drivers back then as well, it's kind of sad too see them still bashing nvidia's "binary blob" even though it performs great and have done so always. NVIDIA made Linux gaming a reality very early on, they even made me believe in the "year of the Linux desktop" (which never actually came ). Having open drivers is nice and all, but I don't see the point in buying AMD just to support the "cause". ATi relased specs years ago, and drivers are still shit. With any luck your grandchildren might be able to get proper framerates in Linux with AMD cards. Why not just buy the best performer and enjoy what you want to do with your computer? Companies will follow suit, Intel has great drivers which will continue to evolve and that will put pressure on other companies to offer better Linux support as their IGP's continue to get better.

[Luke]

I found them neck and neck for what I use, real-world both are fine

Back in 2012 when I tested Catalyst, I found the Radeon HD6750 and Nvidia GTS450 to be almost identical in performance in the games I had-none of them being demanding ones. In Scorched3d with everything maxed out, they both gave about 75fps. I now sometimes see that on the Radeon HD6750 on the OPEN driver, though not on all maps. The most demanding game I have is 0ad, but that is CPU bound and any recent GPU should be fine for it. Most linux games don't need massive GPU's and from my video editing work I know that the eye can only minimally make out the frames in 30fps video and then only to a trained observer. Hell, the only times I've seen Scorched3d get unplayably slow is on a netbook, through LLVMpipe, or on an embedded Radeon HD4300 series GPU.

For most users without Steam or WINE games installed, the current situation is that the majority of the smaller cards from either Nvidia or AMD work fine with open drivers. For light gaming the r600 driver is great, Radeonsi rapidly catching up, and Nouveau finally has early reclocking support. If not running games you will never notice on the desktop, except possibly some reported GLAMOR issues on RadeonSI cards that should soon be worked out. GLAMOR works fine on r600, can barely tell the difference from EXA except in video editing on transitions. I did find problems with the 2012 era Catalyst blob in Kdenlive, as it was very slow for XV video, but the same card works great with open drivers for kdenlive. Kdenlive does not use GPU acceleration, and always slows down if OpenGL has to be used as the video output device, as often is the case with blob drivers. Ironically, the Nvidia GTS450 with Nouveau worked better in Kdenlive than any other card and driver combo I have ever tested, though all work well enough.

For now the rule remains AMD for open drivers, Nvidia for blob drivers, but I think the reclocking work will allow Nouveau to catch up.

[smitty3268]

you use privative driver

Question for anyone who knows. What's up with this "privative" word? Is that some kind of common slang in europe?

I've been seeing it used all over the place recently, from a bunch of different people. It can't be people just copy/pasting, i don't think.

[legluondunet]

Back to theme, i have a question (give you use privative driver for both hardware), how fps gains (fps performance must be up seriously) on injustice god among us, starwars force unleashed 1 and tomb raider 2013 with your Geforce GTX770 vs Radeon HD7850

Hello Carlos,

I often consult your wine video tests on Youtube, you've done a nice job.
i didn't know exactly how many fps I gained for this games but:

--> injustice: now fullspeed, graphic options max level, without csmt patch
--> Starwars force unleashed: fullspeed, graphic options max level, without csmt patch
--> Tomb Raider: I didn't test yet
--> MORTAL KOMBAT Komplete Edition --> fullspeed, graphic options max level, without csmt patch

Another great improvement: I regularly play Playstation 2 games with PCSX2 emulator.
One of the PS2 game that needs a very powerfull graphic card is "Shadow of the Colossus".
AMD 7850: 16 fps
NVIDIA GTX 770: 40-60 fps
Metro Last Night linux:
AMD 7850: too slow even with minimum graphic options
NVIDIA GTX 770: fullspeed with graphic options at the top

[Azultra]

I prefer that AMD grants half of its resources to a still maturing FOSS driver than all of its resources to improve Catalyst so it can stand up to nVidia in benchmarks.

If I buy AMD it's not just because of the current (already satisfying) state of the open source drivers but to thank them for their initiative and support it through the end. Once they finish what they started, nVidia will have lost on both fronts and their reward is that AMD should become the best choice by far for Linux.