KDE & Xfce Don't Lead To Performance Wins Over Windows 8

[Mike Frett]

One thing

Exactly why would Windows anything be relevant to me?. I have zero intentions of going back to Windows, so of what relevance is it that Windows is faster?. It's not about whining, It's about relevance, being faster doesn't remove the back-doors, law enforcement agreements or insecurity of old code that's built on top of something thats a decade old.

So what now, is this just Phoronix in a bad mood and decides to fight it's users?. Sorry I don't get it, and I don't get why I should care about what's happening on the Windows platform either.

Serious sam BFE3 under linux with intel hd4000 is unplayable, 3-4 fps, but under windows 8 with the same chipset, I can run this game on the mid detailes on 1920x1080 and I get 30/40 fps...

This is the very difference, intel drivers on linux, are sooo sloowwww on 3d games.

It's not only driver problem, because SS3 isn't optimized for Linux. Wargame, in contrary works better under Linux, so I can say: KDE, XFCE and Ubuntu lead to performance wins over Windows. It's as true as moronix title.

[przemoli]

The Windows driver team is completely separate from the open source driver team, so I don't know what they're planning and can't speak for them. We'll have to wait and see. For now, I believe ES 3.0 is only available on the open source drivers.

Understand separate teams (since other may work on code under some bizarre licence restrictions), though I do not understand lack of code exchange :P

Anyway, I wish you getting into steambox or any other high profile project where Linux support would be even more significant than its now :P

EDIT: And win driver download page is horrible.. Real Horrible. Good luck finding info about capabilities of driver.. (beyond mere PR speak)

Also, in Serious Sam (I need to blog this, if for no other reason so I'll remember it, that's generally why I blog), you can issue the following commands to enable multi-core rendering (it only is using one CPU thread by default for me):

ren_bMultiThreadedRendering=1
ren_iMaxThreads=4

Where I need to to put this?

[Kayden]

Though I do not know if Intel on Win is capable of OpenGL ES 3.0. So here may be some unique Linux only thingy... (Anyone from Intel OTC to check what is official stance from Intel on GLES 3.0 in Win drivers?

The Windows driver team is completely separate from the open source driver team, so I don't know what they're planning and can't speak for them. We'll have to wait and see. For now, I believe ES 3.0 is only available on the open source drivers.

[Kayden]

Serious sam BFE3 under linux with intel hd4000 is unplayable, 3-4 fps, but under windows 8 with the same chipset, I can run this game on the mid detailes on 1920x1080 and I get 30/40 fps...

This is the very difference, intel drivers on linux, are sooo sloowwww on 3d games.

Something is wrong, then. Have you checked the Performance page in the options? In the past, Serious Sam 3 had trouble autodetecting settings for HD 4000, which caused it to use far higher settings than it should have. Currently, it appears to autodetect as CPU: Ultra, GPU: Medium, GPU Memory: Medium.

On my machine, I've set everything to "Lowest" and am getting fully playable framerates at 2560x1440. The game is fairly choppy, and this is a known issue - their game engine asks us to compile shaders at random points during gameplay, and can't draw until the shader finishes compiling. Once we implement the ARB_separate_shader_objects OpenGL extension, it won't need to do that, which should fix the choppiness. We hope to get to that later this year.

[not.sure]

hah damn Michael put the whiner's in their place

To be fair, it was the phoronix ueber-troll who wrote dozens of articles about how much compiz and unity suck at gaming performance, and who is at the same time a kwin fanboi who reports every fart of kwin maintainers.

It's the eternal crap-troll-fanboi-flame-troll-advertising cycle of life so what you gonna do...

[david_lynch]

Phoronix: KDE & Xfce Don't Lead To Performance Wins Over Windows 8

When publishing the OpenGL performance results yesterday showing Windows 8 generally leading with a performance advantage over Ubuntu Linux, there was the usual large portion of the Linux community in disbelief. For proving a point, here are now results showing the Windows 8 Intel OpenGL performance compared to Ubuntu Linux when testing the KDE and Xfce desktops.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18587

Do the same test with nvidia drivers and there shouldn't be much difference between linux and windows. What you're seeing here is better drivers on windows. The intel guys are doing some good work to catch up on the linux drivers, and performance isn't bad, but it's still a work in progress.

[jaysonrowe]

That's my blog!

Hey guys,
That's actually my blog linked to there.
Yes, I'm seeing the best performance by using the method that Martin Gr??lin showed me (Alt+F3 -> More Actions -> Special Window Settigns -> Appearance & Fixes and enable block compositing/force/yes). The next best was my original idea (suspend for full-screen windows), and worst by doing nothing. The difference is not *huge*, but using Martin's method, I'm hovering around 300fps @1920*1080 in CS:Source and between 45-80 in Serious Sam 3 (I get more in Survival mode, less in Campaign mode, I guess there is more going on). This is on a 3770 @4.1GHz w/ an Nvidia 560Ti running the 313 drivers in Kubuntu 13.04.

Also, in Serious Sam (I need to blog this, if for no other reason so I'll remember it, that's generally why I blog), you can issue the following commands to enable multi-core rendering (it only is using one CPU thread by default for me):

ren_bMultiThreadedRendering=1
ren_iMaxThreads=4

I've read that even on an 8 thread i7 (or AMD FX) you shouldn't go over 4 on the iMaxThreads setting as it'll flood the driver and result in lower performance. I would guess either 2-3 for a 4 thread i5 or AMD would be optimal.

Also, just to note, I've tried Unity and Xfce as well (under 13.04), and the performance isn't really all that different in real-world gameplay. I'm sure true benchmark runs might show some, but I play games on my machine, not run benchmarks most of the time. Even in KDE is slightly less performing (and I can't really see that myself), is the most productive DE for me for everything else, so I'm happy w/ Martins little Window Rule trick.

[juanrga]

This continues being a question of open-source versus proprietary drivers

As I wrote in the former thread, this is really a question of open-source versus proprietary drivers. I think that this recent test was really unneeded because changing the distro will not turn the performance of an open-source driver over that of a proprietary driver. This is not specific to Intel. KDE & Xfce do not lead to performance wins of AMD/ATI open-source driver over catalysis (proprietary driver).