Are AMD Athlon/Sempron APUs Fast Enough For Steam On Linux?

[bridgman]

It's funny, I read the title and my first thought was "no way, it's only got two CU's" (128 ALUs) vs 8/512 on Kaveri. Performance was better than I expected.

[dungeon]

I didn't play with the performance governor at all... It was left at its defaults.

Who knows somewhat goes wrong with your setup for the first benchmarks of Athlon 5350 . In kernel compile benchmark you got 16 minutes results with SSD, and i benchmerked it right now with HDD and got less then 5 minutes

http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1404158-PL-CURRENTDE87

With the 3.13 kernel of course no problemo

[dungeon]

I didn't play with the performance governor at all... It was left at its defaults.

OK we can say - Ubuntu was broken that day . But how first time you have performance default and on second article is ondemand default

[Michael]

OK we can say - Ubuntu was broken that day . But how first time you have performance default and on second article is ondemand default

Defaults of kernel used; mainline PPA I believe in some cases defaults differently from the official Ubuntu releases, etc. As said already, I made no modifications to the kernel configuration.

[dungeon]

Defaults of kernel used; mainline PPA I believe in some cases defaults differently from the official Ubuntu releases, etc. As said already, I made no modifications to the kernel configuration.

OK. I tried lubuntu with default 3.13 kernel too and don't have CPU performance problem .

And default kernel in lubuntu have ondemand by default, but you having performance there .

[mitcoes]

Why not 720p benchmarks?

Actual MODERN resolutions are 16:9 ones and 1080p 720p and even 480p are the usual for desktop monitors and in this case gaming or future steam OS box TV gaming

Why 720p was not tested?

I think 720p is the "normal" resolution of choice instead of the actual standard 1080p if your hardware is not powerful enough.
Even actual great hardware would have to do this resolution adjust for some hard games or only to have more fps

But also TV monitors and even desktop monitor resolution adjustments offer 720p as a 16:9 alternative to 1080p I do not understand why it is not included in this kind of tests

And why keeping the "numbers only" when there are more easy acronyms to remember

as XGA (1024x768)

or

CGA Color Graphics Adapter
MDA Monochrome Display Adapter
HGC Hercules Graphic Card
EGA Enhanced Graphics Adapter
VGA Video Graphics Array
SVGA Super VGA
WUXGA Wide Ultra XGA (1920x1200

[molecule-eye]

If you have a lower than full HD projector (as most do, I guess) and do some light gaming on it occassionally, the results here for the 5350 aren't too bad at probably the most common resolution, around 720p. Of course gaming on a 1080p TV wouldn't work.

[tomtomme]

Actual MODERN resolutions are 16:9 ones and 1080p 720p and even 480p are the usual for desktop monitors and in this case gaming or future steam OS box TV gaming

Why 720p was not tested?

a little math and then you know that 720p must be found in between:

1024x768 = 0.78 mio pixel
1280x720 = 0,92 mio pixel <== 720p
1280x960 = 1.3 mio pixel

more exactly it is a little bit nearer to SVGA.

[Gps4l]

Well ,*I*play at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 and so these are not that bad results....i wonder if there was stuttering with these games or they played tests smoothtly ....i believe that saddly there is a reason TF2 and L4D2 were not part of these tests....the fault is not the APUs themselves, is from Catalyst

I never said that these AM1 APUs are good options to play games as standalone...it would be a miracle if so...what is really important to know if we can use them to make a real low budget (if we consider low badget as in "sub-400" and/or "sub-500" bucks) SteamBox is their performance , and in special of the 5350, with a discrete GPU based on NVIDIA tech (that doesn?t have the problems under Linux that AMD GPU tech has), like the GTX750 and GTX750Ti...


These APU should be regarded as cheap CPUs with cheap Mobos, in special in mITX form factor, that can significantly lower plrice of a rig that uses a dGPU...this is what of many of us want to know...how well a 5350 will perform paired with a low power, relative low price (, short length and in some cases also low profile, that is relatively performant and recent dGPU like the GTX750(Ti).

Common Michael , dont torture us, give us the results of those tests

I have not tried left for dead 2 for a while.
But on my amd phenom II X4 at 3.2 ghz and a HD5750 with 1 gig ram, it run very poorly on Linux.
A bit better on windows.

On linux I keep getting the game freezing for a short while. ( but enough to be anoying )
On windows this behaviour goes away after playing a bit.....

I am pretty sure there is a problem with left for dead 2

The first time I played this game, before there was steam for Linux, it run better on windows, then it does now, on this hardware.

[dungeon]

Only problem is with games which doesn't allow disabling of advanced effects if they do in some cases 1080p is quite feasible, but on this kind of essential and low power device designed for Desktop (so hardware that can be used for the casual gaming too), one must know (and that is also common knowledge) that games must be played on low or medium detail or you need to disable some resurce hungry feature - that is it and that will help greatly . Some of advanced features in games is unaccelerated or not (well) optimised on mesa so that must keep in mind too, but as we know basics or better to say common scenarios works just fine for many .

That said one must know also that openarena phoronix benchmark use different kind of config, which is not like that in original game on original settings game fly flies on 1080p with hyperz enabled - bloom is not enabled on original for example, etc... . Or supertuxkart developers know that animations are resource hungry and slow if they are so many, disabled it greatly helps in performance - esspecialy one can better seeing all that on this essential hardware , etc...

Most of the games targets mainstream computing devices (that is the place for Kaveri) some of the most advanced today's games targets only enthusiastic or even future, but also enthusiastic hardware (that is the best place to be if you are The Gamer - near transformer substations ) and this Athlon 5350 is not that it is not even mainstream class but essential hardware for every day with accent on low power usage and if you want you can used it for casual gaming

That said, most games for Linux on Steam are casual game titles, even for Windows most games are casuals on Steam - those are supposed to work just fine on Kabini .