NVIDIA vs. AMD Linux Performance For GRID Autosport

[Nille_kungen]

I hoped way back in 2002. but i only getting old

As you see, if only one major player like nVidia wanted to go opensource drivers back then everything would be fine... Imagine all three major players doing it in mesa that should be paradise but no, nVidia don't wanted to do it so i think fglrx blob will going to stay too and to compete - you can only ignore it, but no hope it will be removed because i have no hope nVidia will go opensource

Do you not think that amdgpu will change how cards are supported since it uses the same user-space?
Even if the support if dropped officially the odds are that the blob will still work and it might be easier to create an legacy blob even tho i rather see the open source driver as the legacy driver.
2002 was a bit early to hope for good open source driver when ati/amd wasn't committed to open source drivers the way they are now and they hadn't released documents on the hw.
Looking down the memory lane:
It was late 2007 that amd committed to open source for real and a lot has happened since then so i think the future for open source graphics drivers looks rather bright.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=826

In 2008 we saw more documentation and other work but 2008 was still rather slow and i still remember the Novell/SuSE radeonhd driver.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_tcore_release

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=fosdem_08_bridgman

In 2009 things actually happened.
The big rewrite http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NzA2MA
Dropping pre HD hardware http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...md_r500_legacy
R600 3D code http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...md_r700_oss_3d
More documentation this time for R600 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...r600_700_guide
Mesa 7.5 with finally Gallium3D http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NzM4OA
I would say that 2009 was the year when things started to happen and that laid the path for where we are today, i think 2009 was the most exiting year for open source GPU drivers.

It's only the last few years that things actually begun to plan out and the support got really good so in 2021 i think we will look differently at the blob vs open driver.
Looking back 6 years when things actually started to happening for real makes me very exited of where we will be in 6 years time.
I haven't stopped hoping for open source GPU drivers, i rather see it like things starting to look a lot better and i enjoy the open source radeon driver every day.

[haagch]

I actually think there is no chicken or egg problem nor AMD drivers are horrible, because then we can say their DX driver is also horible performer by default for sure, because there they also control it via profiles. Basically there is no problem

How is it not a problem if their graphics driver performs poorly unless they specifically enable their secret proprietary "optimizations" in their closed source driver for your application?

[tuke81]

glad to hear that, but i'm kind if interested what it was. settings or need to restart game bug?

The latter. I did change a resolution to monitors native from some silly automatically calibrated 720p and didn't bother to restart the game(Haven't had time to play games anyway). So the port of dirt showdown is fine, grid autosport is fine too. At least if you have new enough nvidia card and proprietary blobs.

[dungeon]

Well lets hope that amdgpu supported hardware will work longer than that using the blob but by that time the open source drivers is probably in a much better shape and many users won't care for the blob anymore.

I hoped way back in 2002. but i only getting old

As you see, if only one major player like nVidia wanted to go opensource drivers back then everything would be fine... Imagine all three major players doing it in mesa that should be paradise but no, nVidia don't wanted to do it so i think fglrx blob will going to stay too and to compete - you can only ignore it, but no hope it will be removed because i have no hope nVidia will go opensource

[Nille_kungen]

I actually think there is no chicken or egg problem nor AMD drivers are horrible, because then we can say their DX driver is also horible performer by default for sure, because there they also control it via profiles. Basically there is no problem ANd only difference on Windows/Linux is that they faster respond for Windows driver which is normal.



Again nope, nothing quickly is done and nothing unexpected... they drop support roughly speaking every 3 years.



And whatever happens on earth AMD drop support every 3 years for currently oldest gen. I even setup my watch on AMD support, because i know history So lets guess, in 2018. GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.2 will go away. In 2021 first Zen GPUs...

Zen is year to be released but i know when supprot will be droped Of course you would not hear that officialy so early, because everything and that politcs might change in future, but according to history that is how they do it in last 9 years.

Well lets hope that amdgpu supported hardware will work longer than that using the blob but by that time the open source drivers is probably in a much better shape and many users won't care for the blob anymore.

[dungeon]

It's a chicken and egg problem. AMD's OpenGL drivers (on both Windows and Linux) performance has been horrible since forever compared to their DirectX drivers.

I actually think there is no chicken or egg problem nor AMD drivers are horrible, because then we can say their DX driver is also horible performer by default for sure, because there they also control it via profiles. Basically there is no problem ANd only difference on Windows/Linux is that they faster respond for Windows driver which is normal.

and they have a good track of quickly abandoning support for the slightly older hardware, which leaves users with the standard DirectX only drivers provided by Microsoft in newer Windows versions.

Again nope, nothing quickly is done and nothing unexpected... they drop support roughly speaking every 3 years.

So DirectX is the only option which enables the developers to easily target the largest crowd on Microsoft Windows, XBox and their phones. Thanks to AMD, developers planning to write fresh Vulkan based game engines, should also trail a DirectX11/OpenGL4 based rendering backend till 2020 or so, so they can also support non-GCN AMD users.

And whatever happens on earth AMD drop support every 3 years for currently oldest gen. I even setup my watch on AMD support, because i know history So lets guess, in 2018. GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.2 will go away. In 2021 first Zen GPUs...

Zen is year to be released but i know when supprot will be droped Of course you would not hear that officialy so early, because everything and that politcs might change in future, but according to history that is how they do it in last 9 years.

[justmy2cents]

Ignoring years of Phoronix testing of the same software on both Linux and Windows, a Windows game with a translation layer on top offers about 70% of the performance level on Linux. That makes you completely () right.
Btw, do you have examples of similar titles offering 70% of the performance on AMD hardware?

so true

people just expect that it will run better just because it is on linux. like any porter would ever go for full blown rewrite. with late port, at best you can hope is that they created translation layer that is strapped under the game and maybe rewrite few really expensive parts. usually port is no different than running in wine if not even worse if wine features better translation layer than the game

first games that will produce results that can be really compared will be UE4 since it features native GL without translation and has source available where tracking why and how is possible.

[justmy2cents]

Yes thank you it helped a lot, 1680x1050 high preset avarage fps 91 minimum 62.

glad to hear that, but i'm kind if interested what it was. settings or need to restart game bug?

[bug77]

Those are optimistic words (pesimistic should be 'almost never') i heard for decade plus, but reality is different (reality is something neither optimistic nor pesimistic, but how it is). Nvidia does not automagically deliver same performance, i know Linux people for years talks about that like it is holly something but it is BS most of the time ... as a proof another video here for this Grid game with nVidia hardware - he have 60% to 80% performance depending on settings:

So roughly speaking this port has performance 70% on average and that with nVidia hardware and nVidia drivers of course.

Also i am sure that AMD can make 60% on average once this game is profiled, but all this does not change fact that those ports are slower on Linux

Ignoring years of Phoronix testing of the same software on both Linux and Windows, a Windows game with a translation layer on top offers about 70% of the performance level on Linux. That makes you completely () right.
Btw, do you have examples of similar titles offering 70% of the performance on AMD hardware?

[tuke81]

don't know if these will help you anything. after you switch resolution restart the game. in some cases there is a bug where anything but started one completely underperforms. don't bother trying, just restart the game so it already starts at that resolution. at least for me game was stuck at VSYNC until i enabled and disabled it, until i did that i was somehow locked at 15, 30 or 60fps

there are only 3 settings that really impact performance as far as i saw: MSAA, ambient occlusion and enhanced lighting.

i7 810 (i think worse than yours cpu for this game since it doesn't really use multiple cores much), 750Ti, Fedora 22 (plain Gnome nothing modified) i get 65-70avg fps at 1080p everything on high except disabled lighting and MSAAx2 and this is with enabled fps counter in steam overlay

Yes thank you it helped a lot, 1680x1050 high preset avarage fps 91 minimum 62.