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

[glxextxexlg]

AMD and its opensource & closedsource in parallel driver development model is a complete scam and utter crap. Its a lie and some in the linux community still refuse to understand this. A professional needs good driver support. Drivers are not your instant messaging app that you can easily change with something else. Good driver support is as essential as good hardware. People that still support AMD on their false and half-assed driver support model are a bunch of zealots that don't use computers to make a living or for entertainment but for their zealotism.

[vsteel]

Why don't PPAs ship it? NVIDIAs opencl implementation consists of 3 files that have to be copied onto the system after the NVIDIA installer was extracted.
https://projects.archlinux.org/svnto...s/nvidia-utils

I am not really sure other than Ubuntu says there isn't a point in it. Seems like it would be harder to split it out than just put the entire Nvidia driver in the PPA's.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTczMzE

[drSeehas]

... so no, i don't support nvidia...

Unfortunately AMD has no modern (28 nm, GCN) dGPU with less than 25 Watt.
NVIDIA has the GT 720 and GT 730.

[dad_ph]

...I get awesome 4 (!) FPS in bioshock-infinite benchmark when SLI is "on".(and 45-55 FPS SLI off)

BTW I Have tested on windows 7 (X64) using the same benchmark and the same graphics settings(QHD, ultra quality):

SLI gives me about 128 average FPS overall
no SLI is "only" 74 fps.

I believe that adequate GNU/Linux benchmark QHD result for the single(SLI off) 970 GTX should be roughly 70-75 fps, not 45-55. And so for me the difference in gameplay is huge between linux and windows: 2.5X fps boost on windows/SLI is quite noticeable even without in-game fps meter.

[dad_ph]

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.

To fix SLI flashing/flickering try to turn off 'Allow Flipping' in nvidia-settings OpenGL Serttings - this worked for me (346.47) to fix flashing in unity desktop. But the performance in still ugly - I get awesome 4 (!) FPS in bioshock-infinite benchmark when SLI is "on".(and 45-55 FPS SLI off)

[dad_ph]

How did you manage to get 100+ fps on GTX 980 in 2560x1600?

My results so far on single 970 GTX(SLI disabled) are quite poor: no more than 45 fps in QHD(2560x1440) and Ultra quality. Nvidia proprietary Driver version is the same: 346.47. The only difference is Ubuntu 14.10 x64, not 15.04 beta. I know 980 is faster than 970 but usually 10-20%, not >2x(!). My CPU is i7 3960x(RAM is also 16 Gb) and I believe this has little influence on performance here. You made some tweaks in nvidia-settings or ubuntu 15.04 adds so much?

[Kano]

@ancheling

First of all (K)ubuntu did not provide any driver updates over 331 series - only recently for vivid (most likely as backport available too). Then if you disable KDE fx while watching movies with Kodi/xbmc there is definitely no tearing. Oss drivers somehow enforce vsync in a different way (default is on for nvidia) so fx do not need to be disabled with those, did not test radeon so long but intel had no problems. nouveau has no vsync support.

[deppman]

One more note about System 76

When I first got my GTX 970, System 76 wasn't shipping systems with the 9-series card yet, so their PPA didn't provide it. After "manual" installation the driver worked quite nicely, and I saw few problems thanks to DKMS. The biggest trick it to prevent updates from overwriting the manual installation. (see http://askubuntu.com/questions/99081...eing-installed)

The System 76 driver repo disables overclocking in the nvidia-settings utility. While I understand their motivation, my system has a card that I bought before they were shipping the 9xx series cards, and it is built for overclocking. So I have "manually" install the 346+ driver to enable overclocking.

[deppman]

Yes, you are just doing it right

You're not lucky, you're just doing it right. The only way a kernel update is going to break your nvidia driver is when you installed the NVIDIA driver manually (which is retarded and unnecessary). Since it's compiled against the current kernel it of course doesn't work with a new kernel without recompiliation. That's what DKMS is for to automate this. Or you just use the official distro packages, since they are always compiled against the current kernel of that distro.

When I first got my GTX 970, System 76 wasn't shipping systems with the 9-series card yet, so their PPA didn't provide it. After "manual" installation the driver worked quite nicely, and I saw few problems thanks to DKMS. The biggest trick it to prevent updates from overwriting the manual installation. (see http://askubuntu.com/questions/99081...eing-installed)

[Fantaz]

AMD just put up two job postings for Linux open source graphics driver developers (which means for two positions), so it looks like they are investing more resources now.

https://www.amd.apply2jobs.com/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=31264&CurrentPage=20

https://www.amd.apply2jobs.com/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=31265&CurrentPage=20

We should just wait until newer patches and driver updates come that will eventually bring AMD card performance to parity with NVidia.