Gallium Nine Still Seeing Improvements In 2021 For Direct3D 9 Within Mesa

[aufkrawall]

Hell, with DXVK, it runs even better than running it natively on Windows!

Yes, that's very often the case, yet the context was slow CPUs with few cores. However, I doubt it's actually different vs. better CPUs, as DXVK probably still causes less CPU load than a native D3D9 driver/GN.

[mannerov]

Then You obviously haven't done a proper comparison between DXVK & Gallium-Nine with one of the most demanding game making use of the Direct3D 9 API:
Grand Theft Auto IV

Hint:
Gallium-Nine doesn't even stand a chance...

Hell, with DXVK, it runs even better than running it natively on Windows!

Do you know if it is CPU or GPU limited on Gallium Nine ? It might be that RADV wins over radeonsi somehow over some important shaders.
Or maybe if it runs better than on Windows, the game is using some resources improperly and somehow it runs into a fast path for DXVK and not gallium nine.

[Linuxxx]

Gallium Nine's overhead is quite low because you almost never block on the worker thread. And when you do it usually has already finished its work.

The Direct3D 9 API was well designed, and thus almost no work is spent outside the worker thread.

Before my laptop died, I had done some CPU overhead benchmarks versus windows (half life 2 lost coast with everything set to low and no fps cap), and we were not too far from Windows, but Windows was slightly better.

Then You obviously haven't done a proper comparison between DXVK & Gallium-Nine with one of the most demanding game making use of the Direct3D 9 API:
Grand Theft Auto IV

Hint:
Gallium-Nine doesn't even stand a chance...

Hell, with DXVK, it runs even better than running it natively on Windows!

[mannerov]

Gallium Nine's overhead is quite low because you almost never block on the worker thread. And when you do it usually has already finished its work.

The Direct3D 9 API was well designed, and thus almost no work is spent outside the worker thread.

Before my laptop died, I had done some CPU overhead benchmarks versus windows (half life 2 lost coast with everything set to low and no fps cap), and we were not too far from Windows, but Windows was slightly better.

[JoshuaAshton]

@schmidtbag, Vulkan is actually lower level than the Gallium interface. It being a "direct driver" is complete nonsense, it's actually working on a higher level than DXVK.

[schmidtbag]

Nine has CSMT and my impression is that DXVK doesn't cause noteworthy overhead (it rather reduces it). I haven't tested slow CPUs though.

DXVK is overhead, at least on the CPU side of things. It's a translation layer. The overhead isn't noteworthy as long as you have enough CPU cores. Vulkan reduces CPU usage and PCIe bandwidth, but because it's doing a translation, the CPU overhead bonus is negated, especially if you're translating from DX12.
GN is a direct driver and it's a lightweight one at that, so it works pretty well on systems that don't have a lot of resources to spare.

[leipero]

Nine has CSMT and my impression is that DXVK doesn't cause noteworthy overhead (it rather reduces it). I haven't tested slow CPUs though.
Would be really interesting if Axel Davy's memory management improvements can really make more 32 bit games playable (with high visual fidelity) in Wine. This would really be a great accomplishment.

Even the creator(s)/contributor(s) of DXVK acknowledge the fact that DXVK impact on the performance is expected behaviour. Sure, it would have less impact on higher end CPUs, but, impact is there, and in specific scenarios, it doesn't really matter how fast the CPU is, the difference will be quite substantial. You can create (not artificial) scenario where you can bring DXVK to the crawl on specific games under specific circumstances, while gallium nine offers bare-metal performance.

But gallium nine have it's own issues, compatibility issues, scaling issues etc., while DXVK (from what I saw) doesn't have those issues for the most part.

[bemerk]

Oh well, would be nice to get proper DX mesa components one day. Although i seriously doubt that after DXVK and VKd3d there is enough dev power to make it happen.

[mannerov]

I just discovered Virtualbox uses gallium Nine: https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/v...p/wddm/gallium

[Chewi]

i guess memory usage can be lowered by reducing texture quality

We tried that. It still crashed sometimes.