NVIDIA/AMD Linux Gaming Performance For Hitman 2 On Steam Play

[Michael]

Have you 'tested' it on Windows, finally?

Haven't had a Windows install around able to test it on, but will do a Windows install on the 9900K box when doing the Windows tests, was waiting closer to Windows 10 May update for a new install on desktop hardware.

[nuetzel]

I messaged bridgman and the other AMD folks a few days back after doing more testing, but haven't heard back yet.

Have you 'tested' it on Windows, finally?

[birdie]

I think it's pure myth non-sense, but I can run a test Linux vs. Windows myself (with Hitman 1 levels in Hitman 2).

I guess lots of people will be interested. Please do.

[aufkrawall]

I'll wait for screenshots. I can't imagine AMD Windows drivers to be this bad. We are talking up to 20% difference which is just huge.

I think it's pure myth non-sense, but I can run a test Linux vs. Windows myself (with Hitman 1 levels in Hitman 2).

[birdie]

FWIW, in the next week or two hope to do a Windows vs. Linux Steam Play comparison with the same systems/GPUs.

That would be great! I also hope you'll find time to capture and post unresized screenshots (in PNG) from this game running under Proton and Windows to settle any possible speculations in regard to rendering paths/quality.

[artivision]

Eventually DXVK will beat AMD on D3D11 but not Nvidia. AMD's D3D11 feels abandoned and the ultra fast path with very advanced multi threading seams impossible there. Just invest on Linux with a Radeon, this is the best PC choice.

[Michael]

FWIW, in the next week or two hope to do a Windows vs. Linux Steam Play comparison with the same systems/GPUs.

[birdie]

Hitman 2 running faster on DXVK + radv compared to native AMD DX11 was already discovered months ago by reddit users:
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gamin..._than_windows/
(there are more posts than this one)

It's not a case of DXVK cutting corners, it renders everything correctly, it's just that AMD's DX11 driver is typical AMD cpu-boundware and ends up getting beating by DXVK + radv in some games, even with the translation layer overhead. This doesn't happen on nvidia because their dx11 driver is very efficient.

I'll wait for screenshots. I can't imagine AMD Windows drivers to be this bad. We are talking up to 20% difference which is just huge.

[Masush5]

TPU uses Intel Core i7 8700K which is not too much slower than 9900K in absolute most games.

I strongly suspect DXVK disables certain Direct3D 11 features for AMD GPUs that's why they end up running faster in Linux than in Windows.

Hitman 2 running faster on DXVK + radv compared to native AMD DX11 was already discovered months ago by reddit users:

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/alpcza/hitman_2_possibly_faster_in_proton_than_windows/

(there are more posts than this one)

It's not a case of DXVK cutting corners, it renders everything correctly, it's just that AMD's DX11 driver is typical AMD cpu-boundware and ends up getting beating by DXVK + radv in some games, even with the translation layer overhead. This doesn't happen on nvidia because their dx11 driver is very efficient.

[birdie]

It is not impossible, only unlikely. Imagine a case where Windows performance was crippled due to driver regressions or poor optimization and it worked perfectly well on Steam Play. The latter could win the performance race in such a case. Actually, this might be the case with HITMAN 2. Look at Radeon cards on Windows compared to Nvidia and you will probably notice how poorly Radeon performs in this game on Windows. The Steam Play results are more on par if you compare red and green team.

Also, I hate to be that prick, but Wine is not an emulator (but you already knew that I guess)

Wine is not an emulator but if you took a quick look at Wine sources you'd discover that very few Win32 APIs translate directly to POSIX calls: most Win32 calls require a lot of shim code to run on Linux which doesn't make this translation/emulation/whatever free.

Until someone who owns this game and compares its screenshots taken in Windows and Linux using Photoshop's layer difference, there isn't much to talk about. I could have carried out the comparison but I don't have any AMD GPUs in my possession. Michael has but I'm not sure he'd be willing to do that since it's relatively time consuming.