AMD's OpenGL Linux Driver Already Scored A Nice Performance Win For 2024

[Eudyptula]

Why does the workload have to be demanding for it to warrant any performance improvements? All performance improvements that can be gained on the many processes in a system adds up. It's easy to take for granted the value of it when there are still a bunch of other processes running that you have no control over. But if everyone thought like that our laptops would run at twice the power and be overwhelmed by anything.

I don't know exactly where this driver improvement will present benefits but I imagine it being beneficial for older games and help low-end systems cope. But of course still help all systems of any power-envelop to run more efficiently.

So: what's not to like?

[smitty3268]

OpenGL is mostly stuff that is old and doesn't need optimal performance. Either way seeing as how dxvk and vkd3d are running directx on vulkan and running through windows apis clearly wrappers upon wrappers is not a problem. If they would just switch to zink then they could just do what they are already doing: focus on making vulkan as good as possible and then picking up everything else for free. it would probably save a lot of wasted developer time.

Nobody really cares about opengl for gaming anymore.

As mentioned in the article, AMD is working on optimizing this for workstation performance. There's still a decent amount of money they think they can get by improving benchmark scores in stuff like specviewperf. It may be what they need to finally kill off the old binary drivers.

And if they think it's worth increasing their scores there, then switching to zink would just be going backwards. Likely way, way backwards, since it hasn't been optimized at all towards that type of workload yet.

[Calinou]

OpenGL is mostly stuff that is old and doesn't need optimal performance.

It may come off as a surprise, but the most optimized Quake and Doom source ports (Ironwail and Helion respectively) only feature OpenGL renderers with no plans to switch to Vulkan. These ports are increasingly becoming the go-to options for large-scale modern maps, which can be extremely complex compared to the base game. Sometimes, things can defy expectations