The AMD Radeon Performance Is Incredible On Linux 3.12

[bobwya]

Michael, thank you for your continuous tests, but can you include other more tangible games in your analysis?

I guess many people will be really annoyed by my proposal, but I'd really like to see some present and past heavy-weights like:

3DMark 2006 (running in Wine, of course)
StarCraft II (ditto)
Fallout 3 (ditto)
Counter Strike Global Offensive (native)

The games you're currently testing are inconclusive in regard to modern GPU requirements.

+1

@Michael,

Anything more up-to-date and relevant would be useful... Say some of the recent Valve releases (the later HL2 series games, L4D).

Plus the venerable classic that I help maintain/moderate on WineHQ...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SOC. One of the most important (and arguably still relevant) PC games ever released. I've racked up >110 hours playing this and it runs like a charm via Wine - when it is launched (via Steam at nice'd @ -10). The Xray game engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. runs well on most Nvidia hardware (>8xxx series) but shows up the weaknesses in the radeon driver. It does render cleanly with all graphics settings (vs the trainwreck that is Catalyst that extensive graphical glitches) - but diabolical framerates with Dynamic Lighting and a loss of/drop in shadow quality (especially on my lowly Radeon 4650M laptop GPU!!) Tracking this game is one example of how AMD GPU users (such as myself) will track REAL improvements in the AMD drivers... Also you won't be seeing 200+ FPS with this game!!

Please help make these benchmark results more relevant to a wider audience!!

Thanks again
Bob

[Michael]

+1

@Michael,

Anything more up-to-date and relevant would be useful... Say some of the recent Valve releases (the later HL2 series games, L4D).

Plus the venerable classic that I help maintain/moderate on WineHQ...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SOC. One of the most important (and arguably still relevant) PC games ever released. I've racked up >110 hours playing this and it runs like a charm via Wine - when it is launched (via Steam at nice'd @ -10). The Xray game engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. runs well on most Nvidia hardware (>8xxx series) but shows up the weaknesses in the radeon driver. It does render cleanly with all graphics settings (vs the trainwreck that is Catalyst that extensive graphical glitches) - but diabolical framerates with Dynamic Lighting and a loss of/drop in shadow quality (especially on my lowly Radeon 4650M laptop GPU!!) Tracking this game is one example of how AMD GPU users (such as myself) will track REAL improvements in the AMD drivers... Also you won't be seeing 200+ FPS with this game!!

Please help make these benchmark results more relevant to a wider audience!!

Thanks again
Bob

see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQxMzY why I seldom use steam games.

i don't test wine unless the article is just looking at the wine performance exclusively.

[bobwya]

see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQxMzY why I seldom use steam games.

i don't test wine unless the article is just looking at the wine performance exclusively.

Yeh, the Steam argument makes sense (it seems to update every week now and that includes most Valve titles)... The constant updates would make benchmarking a bit of a crap-shoot...

But I still would argue that throwing in a Wine game or two would be beneficial. The Linux gaming segment is still very immature in terms of good AAA titles. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an example of game that is well supported in Wine - and has been (ever since offscreen rendering was enabled by default and the main menu mouse cursor fixes rolled in - around 1.4.xx roughly I think from memory). Heck I can get the game running Wine (via Steam) - when using Gentoo without any hassles!! Plus Steam does let you backup the full game data to any local or mapped network device (even when run via Wine). If there was another viable Digital game manager that actually worked I would promote it... But Desura has always sucked for me and title support is obviously much more limited...

I agree about the importance of FOSS game titles and supported the recent 0A.D. Indiegogo campaign (even though I don't really do RTS type games). But AAA game development takes a tonne of developer time and so it's very rare to see game engines of the quality of 0A.D. in the Open Source world... May the Dark Mod would be a viable option to add in to your regular benchmarks...
The Dark Mod ... It uses the IDTech 4 Engine. I haven't tested it out yet - but I believe they have made it completely standalone now (so it doesn't require any proprietary textures/assets from Doom 3 anymore). Certainly the Open Source IDTech 4 Engine works very well - as I've tried compiling it to run Doom 3/Resurrection of Evil - just adding in the proprietary assets from these games...

Many games (e.g. Bioshock) regress constantly are just plain buggy - when run via Wine - so would not be viable candidates for benchmarking...

Games that are graphically demanding and therefore on the edge of usability (or below) - due to poor FPS (@ <30) - are always going to be far more useful benchmarks to Linux gamers than games that already run well @ >60FPS...

If you are not convinced of the need for this data - then why not put it to the Community to vote on??!! Even if your GPU Driver benchmark pages had a specially demarked page with a disclaimer about the use of Wine. Pick the latest stable release of Wine. Choose 2-3 seminal games that are well supported under newer versions of Wine (with no reported regressions) and that can be benchmarked without too much inconvenience.

Thanks again for all your hard work!!
Bob

[Michael]

the Dark Mod would be a viable option to add in to your regular benchmarks...
The Dark Mod ... It uses the IDTech 4 Engine. I haven't tested it out yet - but I believe they have made it completely standalone now (so it doesn't require any proprietary textures/assets from Doom 3 anymore). Certainly the Open Source IDTech 4 Engine works very well - as I've tried compiling it to run Doom 3/Resurrection of Evil - just adding in the proprietary assets from these games...

TDM doesn't work as I can't find any standalone binary release of it on any HTTP mirrors. All I see is the Linux updater file that fetches everything, which then presents the same problems as with Steam: No way to properly bind tests to a given version and to be able to download older versions of the game, etc. If there is a TDM completely standalone file on a HTTP/FTP mirror somewhere, I'm more than happy to use TDM as I've wanted to with 2.0 now that it doesn't depend upon D3 assets.

[Morpheus]

I find this way of installing quite weird, even on Windows. But it is done like this to keep the ability to have it as a mod AND as a standalone in a single way. I bet it's not hard to get the standalone package tarballed, but at least for the linux version, it needs to be statically compiled.

Anyone with the skill and some time to help ?

[duby229]

see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQxMzY why I seldom use steam games.

i don't test wine unless the article is just looking at the wine performance exclusively.

Yeah, but you took the alternative path of not benchmarking at all, which seems like the worse option. At least put some benchmarks up with a disclaimer.

[duby229]

TDM doesn't work as I can't find any standalone binary release of it on any HTTP mirrors. All I see is the Linux updater file that fetches everything, which then presents the same problems as with Steam: No way to properly bind tests to a given version and to be able to download older versions of the game, etc. If there is a TDM completely standalone file on a HTTP/FTP mirror somewhere, I'm more than happy to use TDM as I've wanted to with 2.0 now that it doesn't depend upon D3 assets.

That's just how it is with commercial games. It isnt going to change. Instead you need to change your ideas on what you're willing to benchmark or you'll be stuck with this same problem forever.

[liam]

+1

@Michael,

Anything more up-to-date and relevant would be useful... Say some of the recent Valve releases (the later HL2 series games, L4D).

Plus the venerable classic that I help maintain/moderate on WineHQ...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SOC. One of the most important (and arguably still relevant) PC games ever released. I've racked up >110 hours playing this and it runs like a charm via Wine - when it is launched (via Steam at nice'd @ -10). The Xray game engine used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. runs well on most Nvidia hardware (>8xxx series) but shows up the weaknesses in the radeon driver. It does render cleanly with all graphics settings (vs the trainwreck that is Catalyst that extensive graphical glitches) - but diabolical framerates with Dynamic Lighting and a loss of/drop in shadow quality (especially on my lowly Radeon 4650M laptop GPU!!) Tracking this game is one example of how AMD GPU users (such as myself) will track REAL improvements in the AMD drivers... Also you won't be seeing 200+ FPS with this game!!

Please help make these benchmark results more relevant to a wider audience!!

Thanks again
Bob

If I understand your complaint correctly, you're upset that your old, lowend gpu isn't as ast as some upspecfied nvidia card running with the binary driver?
Yes, I understand that your other complaint is that he isn't testing with the games you want him to, but I think in your particular case you might be gpu limited. Especially so since you apparently don't normally game with that card.

[duby229]

If I understand your complaint correctly, you're upset that your old, lowend gpu isn't as ast as some upspecfied nvidia card running with the binary driver?
Yes, I understand that your other complaint is that he isn't testing with the games you want him to, but I think in your particular case you might be gpu limited. Especially so since you apparently don't normally game with that card.

So in other words it's, screw the benchmarks, just take my word for it.