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  • #21
    Originally posted by hal2k1 View Post
    Absolutely. The vast majority of machines out there are NOT gaming machines, nor are they used even occasionally for games.
    This is true in the Linux world perhaps (Linux users are not big gamers, in no small part because there are barely any games for Linux), but not even remotely true in the Windows world. Some 60% of people in the US play games. Weakly implies 60% of PCs are used for games. Even if you assume that figure is inflated by a wide margin, it remains a significantly high number; certainly enough that saying things like "the vast majority" of computers are not used for gaming is patently wrong.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by elanthis View Post
      This is true in the Linux world perhaps (Linux users are not big gamers, in no small part because there are barely any games for Linux), but not even remotely true in the Windows world. Some 60% of people in the US play games. Weakly implies 60% of PCs are used for games. Even if you assume that figure is inflated by a wide margin, it remains a significantly high number; certainly enough that saying things like "the vast majority" of computers are not used for gaming is patently wrong.
      Most PC desktop/laptop computers are owned by businesses, not by individuals, for a start. Business machines do not run games.

      As far as ordinary individual consumers go ... the US must be a very strange place if your figures are anything like accurate.

      Personal anecdote: Of the several dozen individuals whom I know well enough, none of them run any high-end games on their personal PC desktop/laptop machines. If they do run a game, it will be something like patience or mahjong. A few of them do like gaming, but they use a games console to play games, and sometimes, rarely, they will play a game (perhaps similar to Angry Birds) on their mobile smartphones.

      Whenever I walk past a local shop (local franchise is EB games) which sells computer games to ordinary consumers, I notice that the "PC games" section is ever-shrinking. It is mostly X-box, Playstation, Wii, Nintendo and the like. Far less than 10% of the stock would be PC games, perhaps as low as 5%. So even in the actual, real consumer gaming market, PC games are but a bit player.

      PS: Phoronix doesn't have much to do with the Windows world. The title on the browser window as I type this is "[Phoronix] Linux & Solaris Hardware Reviews". Windows is off-topic.

      PPS: When I walk into a local PC retailer store, if I am lucky there might be one gaming rig on display. There will be at least 50 non-gaming machines. If I walk into a local office supplies & stationary store, there will be a further 50 or so business PC machines to choose from, none of which is a gaming rig.



      If I look online at the website of a local supplier (they import piece parts from Asia and assemble machines locally, and you can get Linux pre-installed instead of Windows if you want):

      Pioneer Computers is an award winning manufacturer of laptop computers, notebook computers, tablet computers, industrial computers under the brand names DreamBook, DreamVision and DreamMicro.


      ... there is not one gaming rig on offer.
      Last edited by hal2k1; 29 July 2012, 07:24 AM.

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      • #23
        deleted accidental duplicate post
        Last edited by hal2k1; 29 July 2012, 07:21 AM. Reason: accidental duplicate post

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        • #24
          Originally posted by hal2k1 View Post
          Absolutely. The vast majority of machines out there are NOT gaming machines, nor are they used even occasionally for games.

          Having said that, aside from "decent 3d performance + stable 2d + decent powersaving", hardware acceleration for video decoding would also be nice. Intel's open source drivers have this, but so at least, far AMD/ATI programming specifications do not cover the UVD hardware, and so the Radeon open source driver does not support full hardware acceleration for video decoding. If proper power management is solved soon, then hardware acceleration for video decoding would be the only remaining area where the Radeon open source driver falls a bit short.
          Personally, I think that OpenCL is far more important than hardware decoding. But power management is the big elephant in the room that affects everybody. OpenCL and hardware decoding are (still) somewhat niche, in the sense that many people can do just fine without them.

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          • #25
            I'd say OpenCL only becomes important with APUs gaining enough market share. Most workloads are entirely unsuitable for GPUs at the end of a bus, it's only the unified memory that would make it rather usable.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by elanthis View Post
              This is true in the Linux world perhaps (Linux users are not big gamers, in no small part because there are barely any games for Linux), but not even remotely true in the Windows world. Some 60% of people in the US play games.
              On one of their home computers, or a playstation (which is also a computer).

              They will also likely have a netbook or similar, and at least one computer at work, which are never used for games.

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              • #27
                Originally posted by curaga View Post
                I'd say OpenCL only becomes important with APUs gaining enough market share. Most workloads are entirely unsuitable for GPUs at the end of a bus, it's only the unified memory that would make it rather usable.
                I completely agree, and AMD would be stupid not to offer good CL performance out of the box. Which is why they're working on this.

                At the moment, it's a niche market. But if you need CL, you can't simply beef up your processor, like you can with video decoding.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                  On one of their home computers, or a playstation (which is also a computer).

                  They will also likely have a netbook or similar, and at least one computer at work, which are never used for games.
                  In my family of four, we each have a personal computer (laptop or netbook). None of them are used for games. There is also a Playstation, which is no longer used for games (grown out of it).

                  All of the computers (but not the Playstation) are relevant to Phoronix, since they all have Linux installed. Only two of the machines also have a copy of Windows, but Windows is rarely booted.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                    I completely agree, and AMD would be stupid not to offer good CL performance out of the box. Which is why they're working on this.

                    At the moment, it's a niche market. But if you need CL, you can't simply beef up your processor, like you can with video decoding.
                    For playing videos on my home entertainment system, I use a media player, namely this one:


                    Like most embedded devices, this is a Linux machine, BTW. I attach a 1 TB portable hard drive via USB. Something like this:


                    To encode the videos, I rip DVDs on my DreamBook Style W76 i5 laptop (which is also a Linux machine, it does not have Windows installed, I saved $99 just by having no Windows, let alone heaps more for having no commercial Windows apps)


                    I then copy the .mkv compressed video files on to the portable hard drive, so that I can use the WD TV Live media player to play them (like a video jukebox) on my home entertainment system.

                    The laptop plays DVDs adequately well even without the Radeon open source driver supporting hardware accelerated video decoding using UVD, but normally I don't use the laptop for playing movies.

                    However, having said that, I would still appreciate it if the Handbrake software for Linux
                    HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.

                    was able to use hardware accelerated video encoding using UVD or OpenCL or whatever, because that would speed things up considerably for me.
                    Last edited by hal2k1; 29 July 2012, 08:58 AM.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by hal2k1 View Post
                      In my family of four, we each have a personal computer (laptop or netbook). None of them are used for games. There is also a Playstation, which is no longer used for games (grown out of it).

                      All of the computers (but not the Playstation) are relevant to Phoronix, since they all have Linux installed. Only two of the machines also have a copy of Windows, but Windows is rarely booted.
                      In my household, we have three. The main one is a multi-seat comp where I occasionally play some Humble Bundle stuff and OpenArena. There is an Apple which is not used for games. There is also a Dell laptop with Windows previously used by my girlfriend for work, which is waiting to be Debianised.

                      I also have a work computer which is not used for games. In my lab, there are about 20 PCs, none are used for games. In my last workplace, we had about 100, none used for games.

                      Games might be an important point for a regular non-technical user considering a switch to Linux, but IMHO, there are far more important issues. System administration and fragmentation. Lack of important killer apps (Photoshop, some CAD stuff, tax software, even MS Office compatibility). Much more important than games.

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