NVIDIA 381 Linux Beta vs. Linux 4.11 / Mesa 17.1 Radeon Comparison

[stqn]

Well, what's not in the numbers is how frametimes are. Source Engine games stutter like garbage on Nvidia, despite of the high fps.

Can you give examples of source engine games? Is Portal 2 source? Because it was super smooth when I played it.

[ua=42]

Radeon R7 370 $150
Radeon RX 480 $200
GeForce GTX 1060 $275
Radeon R9 Fury $350
GeForce GTX 980 $500
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti $700

[ua=42]

Radeon R7 370 $150
Radeon RX 480 $200
GeForce GTX 1060 $275
Radeon R9 Fury $350
GeForce GTX 980 $500
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti $700

I was surprised to see that the Radeon R9 sometimes was faster than the GTX 980, while being $150 cheaper.

[dungeon]

It stutters less with Nouveau than with nvidia on Kepler.

Ah that, well these are entirely different drivers different memory managment... games mostly stutter when people does not have enough VRAM in attempt to run something that wants more, so when driver memory menagment is on struggle on some low mem cards...

Could be a bug on nvidia driver side, can't say how much they care about Kepler these days i guess it less than of about anything else

[aufkrawall]

Can you give examples of source engine games? Is Portal 2 source? Because it was super smooth when I played it.

Basically every Source game I own. It seems to get worse the more shaderload there is and stuttering gets less over time, likely because shadercache either by driver or engine.
Some games with really bad stutter would be CS:GO or Left 4 Dead 2. Stutter happens with nvidia driver on Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal. Kepler with Nouveau is ok.
I already tried turning off/on driver's shader cache, threaded optimization, cpufreq performance, GPU driver maximum performance, turning off Source Engine's multithreading etc. Doesn't help, seems to be related to shader compile issue, bad stutter always occurs the first time there is a new effect on screen.
Happens btw. with both Sandy Bridge i5 and Haswell i7.

[dungeon]

Basically every Source game I own. It seems to get worse the more shaderload there is and stuttering gets less over time, likely because shadercache either by driver or engine.

Or both I had worse stutter with AMDGPU-PRO previosly with The Talos Principle and Serious Sam 3 in relation to shader caching, as both driver and engine wanna do it at the same time and that looks like stutter fiesta

But there is a cvar there in Serious Engine to disable engine do caching and let only driver do it:

ogl_bDisableShaderCaching = 1

After disabling and once driver cached shaders (which might happen often as engine do it inside gameplay), it was only smooth afterwards Of course once you change driver version you lose cache, so if you roll nvidia drivers and use rolling distro too much that is unavoidable shit on average anyway

Just a rough idea as you should look for something like disabling engine do caching in Source engine to try, if such cvar exists there i dunno

[smitty3268]

Basically every Source game I own. It seems to get worse the more shaderload there is and stuttering gets less over time, likely because shadercache either by driver or engine.
Some games with really bad stutter would be CS:GO or Left 4 Dead 2. Stutter happens with nvidia driver on Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal. Kepler with Nouveau is ok.
I already tried turning off/on driver's shader cache, threaded optimization, cpufreq performance, GPU driver maximum performance, turning off Source Engine's multithreading etc. Doesn't help, seems to be related to shader compile issue, bad stutter always occurs the first time there is a new effect on screen.
Happens btw. with both Sandy Bridge i5 and Haswell i7.

I believe Marek said that the stutter should be mostly fixed in kernel 4.12, or in some custom branches AMD had available with the fixes backported.

Edit: oh, that's probably for amd only. didn't see you were talking about nvidia.

[aufkrawall]

But there is a cvar there in Serious Engine to disable engine do caching and let only driver do it:

ogl_bDisableShaderCaching = 1

Thanks, might take a look at it for Vulkan (with adjusted cvar name).

After disabling and once driver cached shaders (which might happen often as engine do it inside gameplay), it was only smooth afterwards Of course once you change driver version you lose cache, so if you roll nvidia drivers and use rolling distro too much that is unavoidable shit on average anyway

Yeah, but it shouldn't stutter at all. If it stutters, either driver or app is doing something wrong or in some other bad way. Shadercache should make things smoother, not the opposite.
Source Engine games run without stutter for me on Windows with DX9/11.

[dungeon]

Yeah, but it shouldn't stutter at all.

I wish that too but realty speak otherwise, their serious GL renderer stutter same way on both Linux and Windows... that cvar do a job on both OSes. While their DX renderer does not do that and there is no stutter, but you wait more game to be loaded at beggining

Shadercache should make things smoother, not the opposite.

Of course, but which one ... in this case game pretend or expect that your driver does not do shader caching. I guess it is maded in attempt to help people who have driver which do not have or do that.

It is same as their multithreaded render, because either engine can implement that in attempt to help people whose driver does not do that... but also some drivers can or at least might do force that like AMD making profiles to improve that

Basically it defaults to something and trying to set something pretending that user currently have worse drivers in exsistence... which is likely true on average in this wild world

[humbug]

A good reminder of how much further the MESA drivers still have to go for AMD
the R9 fury should match the gtx 980
the rx 480 should match the gtx 1060
the r9 290 should match the gtx 970

and hopefully in kernel 4.12 amdgpu drm is enabled for gcn 1.1 so we can say goodbye to the r9 290 regressions