Heroes of Newerth performance

[Laughing1]

Insalled fglrx and tried to run it, got this:
K2 - Fatal Error: ARB_vertex_buffer_object not available.

[Laughing1]

The performance regression started in 10.5 fglrx. I think we need to make a phoronix test suite module for testing...

[blAster]

I have the same performance problem on my ATI mobility radeon 3470 (catalyst 11.10).

[Schmaker]

What doing some benchmarks on PTS? I dont have idea how to create module for PTS, but if someone else do, it would give much better informations for AMD developers i guess. Propably Michael could add HoN profile to benchmarks as well.

[PsynoKhi0]

PS: Thanks for everyones comment as this bug got enough publicity to get noticed by AMD. Thats exactly what i wanted.

Better yet: thanks to everyone who provided worthwhile info, for a change That's most probably what AMD wanted. Well, that and informative bug tickets.

[PsynoKhi0]

link to the bug ticket ?

... is on the first page of the thread... You know... That bug ticket you added a comment to on the 28th of august

[bridgman]

Can someone update the bug ticket with latest info ?

[Schmaker]

Im pretty much impressed how much discussion about HoN performance is advancing. So, for some resume of the problem:

• It happens since Catalyst 10.5
• Its just HD4xxx cards issue (or anyone experiencing problem on older/newer GPUs?)
• The OpenGL engine is slower, but not as slow to make game run below playable framerate on these GPUs (i can confirm that as i tried it like 2 months ago on slower nvidia GPU and played the game with all maxed and some antialiasing)

Bridgman? Any comment from AMD side?

PS: Thanks for everyones comment as this bug got enough publicity to get noticed by AMD. Thats exactly what i wanted.

[xpander]

and thats another hd 4xxx card
like i said before i dont have those problems with 5770

so is there anyone with the same slow perf problems with hd 5xxx series cards?

or im just one hell a lucky guy who dont have the probs.

[Ungweliante]

Another case

Hi to all!

I am a daily reader of phoronix news, but I don?t go to the forums often. I just registered to summarize my experience on this matter just in case it is able to help someone.

First, I use Debian SID in a eight-core Opteron 2378 with 16 GB of RAM. As a graphic card I bought some time ago a passive cooled Radeon 4670, because I was looking to some simple gaming needs and a silent card.

The main use for my computer is experimentation, I try new software/techniques I can later deploy at work. From some time ago, the only 3D application I use is Heroes of Newerth. My desktop of choice is KDE, but I deactivated all the 3D effects.

Until fglrx 10.4, the performance was correct. I will not tell you it was awesome, because I didn?t run windows at that moment and I can?t compare. But I was able to play properly.

When I installed fglrx 10.5 the performance became abysmal. It was so bad that I quit playing HoN for long time. I kept it installed, and tried it sometimes with the new driver versions. After some months, I was able to play again with minimum settings.

What I found at start, was that my gameplay level was much worse and I tought "how bad I?ve become, I?m getting older!!". Then, I had to install windows 7 on that machine too to check some things. And I remembered HoN, so installed and tried it.

It was incredible. The default graphics were gorgeous in comparison, and the first game I played I found that the game was so fast that I always "overreacted". I was acting everytime too early, I was missing my Linux lag!!!! As everyone who plays this game knows, HoN is very fast paced and your reaction time is key. Now I understand my really bad level of play.

In conclusion, HoN in a Radeon 4670 is not playable even at minimum settings without any 3D desktop. So, at this moment, S2 doesn?t have a "working native Linux client" with my hardware. I am so dissapointed I refuse to play the game again on those conditions, and for sure I will not be rebooting to Windows just for a quick fun.

I tried in a fast test HoN with wine. It is much faster, but as it usually happens with fglrx, the game presented graphic problems who made it unplayable.

On the other hand, AMD free driver strategy seems to be working. When Squeeze was released, I tried their free radeon driver with a mesa version I got from the experimental repo (?maybe 7.9?) and I was able to run the game!! It had some small problems, mainly the character and enemies were missing, but everything else was rendered correctly and fast enough.

I just hope that soon with the latest r600g performance improvements it becomes playable I will test it again when I get some time.

PD: BTW, thanks to bridgman, airlied and all the others involved in the radeon driver. It feels good to see how the situation is improving from some years ago