BioShock Infinite Is The Latest Game Showing Why Linux Gamers Choose NVIDIA

[Kano]

@dungeon

Well this game is a good example for fglrx driver quality. AMD had enough time to add multitheading to their driver, they did not add that, otherwise it would be impossible that it would be CPU limited. But AMD fanboys blame Nvidia that they introduced this with 310 driver series at the end of 2012.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_r310_linux&num=1

Basically game that runs with Wine or eON is slower with fglrx than nvidia. For YOU eON would need to use the Gallium Nine backend. Why don't YOU benchmark the game via Wine+Nine on OSS as you love OSS drivers so much?

[dungeon]

This near 300% slower case has nothing to do with lack of multhreading variabile with fglrx driver... how much that switch help nvidia, less then 20% or something?

We can ask Michael to do benchmark without that env for nVidia, so we can conclude how much that help... i guess that is just minor difference, less then 10% in whole.

[mr_tawan]

As far as I can remember, this game (even on Windows) favour Nvidia heavily (remember "It's meant to be played (TM)"). I'm not really surprise by the results.

[dungeon]

As far as I can remember, this game (even on Windows) favour Nvidia heavily (remember "It's meant to be played (TM)"). I'm not really surprise by the results.

Dunno for Windows, but this game which even has nvidia variabile in the start script, tell the whole story

Linux is not OS X for god sake But from Mac porters i don't expect more

[Max Payne]

Hm,


with native Linux-games Catalyst seems to shine,

the last time I tried it out

R9 270X, catalyst + Metro: Last Light

worked until close to the end where I had to give it back - no stability issue or crashes - at all !

the opensource drivers were from almost stable to totally unstable (3.14, 3.15, 3.16-rc*)


With nvidia (GTX760) - it kept on crashing after that - so I couldn't finish Metro: LL, haven't done so since

the native version (or: port) of Metro: LL and also Metro: LL Redux isn't very Linux-desktop friendly, that's at least my impression

it still causes sound underruns on my Intel HDA with pulseaudio - so I had to force or explicitly set alsa on it.

According to http://steamcommunity.com/app/43160/...3576312156402/ it seems to use alsa internally

which is kinda lame when pulseaudio isn't considered & the same behavior occurs on Redux ! (which you had to pay extra)

Also had isuues with metro crashing on my NVIDIA GTX760, their proprietary drivers are good for a single gpu but they are not without bugs and lag behind their m$ windows equivalents on that aspect.

SLI is also completely broken on linux and everyone seems to conveniently forget to mention that on their reviews, my desktop becomes unusable if I use SLI on AFR or SFR mode, with the windows flashing for no reason or parts of an older window staying on top of a newer one opened afterwards, and performance is actually worse than when using a single gpu. Switch to windows and SLI is working flawlessly.

[Kano]

All Source engine games have got the same var set, did you notice that?

[sarmad]

AMD should just open source Catalyst. The community might be able to fix what AMD doesn't have enough time to fix. I don't see what kind of secrets they are trying to hide in that driver, but with this kind of benchmark results their competitors won't be interested in stealing those secrets at all.

[stqn]

As far as I can remember, this game (even on Windows) favour Nvidia heavily (remember "It's meant to be played (TM)"). I'm not really surprise by the results.

Actually, this game has an AMD logo at the beginning.

[xylef]

Actually, this game has an AMD logo at the beginning.

It's even featured on AMD's web.

[gururise]

I like that Nvidia even supports linux (albeit with a binary blob driver). Unfortunately, I do not like some of Nvidia's business practices, such as purposely keeping the OpenCL version in their driver's back so that CUDA is better promoted. I also don't like the business with the proprietary nvidia extensions, wish everyone could code to standard opengl extensions.

I fear these tactics are designed to hurt other gfx card manufacturers, which in turn will end up being bad for the consumer. What happens if AMD goes belly up? You can expect the price of Nvidia gfx card and Intel CPU's to skyrocket.