The Best, Most Efficient Graphics Cards For 1080p Linux Gamers

[totoz]

For several benchmarks, I see that the GeForce GTX 980 is performing a bit better than the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

[Kano]

Maybe you could ask somebody from Nvidia why Unigine Valley has some performance issues with OpenGL. The only "reason" I can think of is that AMD enabled some kind of tesselation optimization. Could you rename the binary and maybe compare screenshots in case of huge differences.

[duby229]

Using Wine is IMO sending a bad signal to developpers/studios : "don't bother with Linux users, they will make it work by themselves"

I used it for a decade, but now I only play native games, even if sometimes loosing a tiny % of fps...

I agree 100%. That is exactly what happened with Eve Online years ago. They stopped developing the linux port because the game worked with wine. It's sad though because in the modern versions there are a number of features that don't work and performance is much worse than when that decision was made.

[Michael]

WTF. posted a reply for Passso, which was invincible and tagged as unapproved, then it disappeared. Will leave these forums right away if and when such sensorship happens.

You evidently don't read the forums much then.... I do next to no censorship of the forums; there's just pesky spam filters that sometimes work and sometimes are over reactive. But with me being the only main moderator (and a few others helping out once in a while), I really don't put myself in between political/brand/whatever fighting.

[moilami]

WTF. posted a reply for Passso, which was invincible and tagged as unapproved, then it disappeared. Will leave these forums right away if and when such sensorship happens.

Passso, you can play multiplayer games in Empire between Linux/mac machines or Microsoft/Microsoft machines. And guess how many Mac or Linux multiplayer gamers there are? I haven't seen any. Besides you can't get Napoleon for Linux. I am also die hard Total War fan, so if it works with Linux, then I for sure will play it.

[moilami]

Using Wine is IMO sending a bad signal to developpers/studios : "don't bother with Linux users, they will make it work by themselves"

I used it for a decade, but now I only play native games, even if sometimes loosing a tiny % of fps...

Well, I bought Napoleon because I thought games marked with "steamplay" means they are for Linux platform. I was wrong. It means that you can play the game on any platform it has been released, eg., you don't have to buy a copy for each platform you want to play it.

So there is no choise, if I want to play Napoleon I have to play it with Wine. On the other hand, regarding Empire: Total War, if I want to play multiplayer battles I can only play them with Mac/Linux gamers. And guess how many Mac/Linux gamers there are? I haven't seen any yet.

If Napoleon would be for Linux too, I would probably still play it with Wine because Napoleon have a concept I Totally Love (in theory at least) called drop-in battles. That means you can have at times surprise human player replacing AI in you campaign game battles or you can yourself become a substitute for AI in someone's campaign ggame battle. Brilliant!

[Passso]

I tried Napoleon: Total War with Wine, it ran better than native – or whatever port it is – Empire: Total War with my 7970 and "stock" Arch Linux with max settings. I don't know if Napoleon is more graphically demanding or not than Empire, but I could imagine it to be because it is more new game with improved graphics and supposedly not much optimization to talk about when compared to Empire.

So I am good as for now with AMD graphics.

Using Wine is IMO sending a bad signal to developpers/studios : "don't bother with Linux users, they will make it work by themselves"

I used it for a decade, but now I only play native games, even if sometimes loosing a tiny % of fps...

[moilami]

This article really should have included open source radeon driver results as well, at least in the benchmarks where it works. I've been testing catalyst against radeonsi a bunch lately (290x) and the number of games that radeonsi performs very well on far outstrips the number of games with significant speed gains from catalyst. I know it's not counted here but radeonsi crushes catalyst (and even nividia on a 970) on wine games such as Starcraft 2 at 4K.

I tried Napoleon: Total War with Wine, it ran better than native – or whatever port it is – Empire: Total War with my 7970 and "stock" Arch Linux with max settings. I don't know if Napoleon is more graphically demanding or not than Empire, but I could imagine it to be because it is more new game with improved graphics and supposedly not much optimization to talk about when compared to Empire.

So I am good as for now with AMD graphics.

[Passso]

Michael congratulations for this article : very clear, very interressant and complete.

As we talked about a few weeks ago the perf / $ is a good way to compare cards, I sincerly wish it will get you the traffic you desserve!

Thank you

[Jonathan Silverblood]

I always chuckle a bit about how bad these FPS/$ comparisons really are, given that they *always* gets it completely wrong.

Micheal, can you re-do the math on this, but cap every FPS number to the VSync of the screen you're running on (or just simply capping them at 60 FPS or some other arbitrary number) s? those looking at a particular game and wondering what to buy could actually get something that matches their needs, rather than than the artificial "this card is cheaper because it can run the game at 12000 FPS, so has lower $/FPS score"?

I've for a very long time recommended the low-to-midrange cards to clients after asking them what their intended use has been, and they've always been happy with the cheaper solution since it still delivers the FPS required, but do so without costing a buttload of unnecessary money.