Linux Gaming: Native vs. Wine vs. Windows 7 Performance

[Licaon]

I tried on my GTX470 and windows results were better. I used the same settings as you, except that I set tessellation to extreme.

Extreme it is:

Linux 32bit OpenGL ~ FPS: 19.5 / Scores: 492 / Min FPS: 10.7
Windows 32bit OpenGL in WINE ~ FPS: 19.5 / Scores: 491 / Min FPS: 10.7
Windows 32bit OpenGL ~ FPS: 19.1 / Scores: 481 / Min FPS: 10.7
Windows 32bit DX11 ~ FPS: 18.8 / Scores: 473 / Min FPS: 10.7

____________________________

Mode: 1920x1080 4xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: extreme
____________________________________________

Binary: Linux 32bit GCC 4.3.2 Release May 20 2010
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1500 Release May 21 2010
Operating system: Linux 2.6.36-2.dmz.5-liquorix-amd64 x86_64
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7600) 64bit
CPU model: AMD Athlon(tm) II X3 450 Processor
CPU flags: 3200MHz MMX+ 3DNow!+ SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSE4A HTT
GPU model: GeForce GTX 460 PCI Express 260.19.29 1024Mb
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 8.17.12.6590 1024Mb

[yogi_berra]

Your graph shows WIndows 7 being faster at Urban Terror, not Ubuntu.

There you go letting facts cloud your judgment again.

[sabriah]

Thanks for showing the progress of Linux gaming!

It is the only parameter holding back Linux domination.

[boltronics]

I do quite a bit of gaming under GNU/Linux. I've listed some of the games I've finished under WINE here:

http://systemsaviour.com/?page_id=161

I'm running a i7 950/GTX480 setup, but even so this is a great topic to look at. I know a long time ago WINE had a huge performance hit on lots of the games I played. Either that's not the case these days, or my newer hardware generally makes any difference unnoticeable. I'm interested to know which.

[deanjo]

Thanks for showing the progress of Linux gaming!

It is the only parameter holding back Linux domination.

It's not the only thing, but it is a big piece of the puzzle.

[Thunderbird]

The OpenGL performance in Wine CAN be identical to Windows under certain circumstances, but by default not in all cases. Our OpenGL code contains locking code around each function call (needed for thread safety). This means that if an OpenGL application (usually older applications which do a lot of stuff on the CPU and make tons of GL calls) can be a little slower. I suspect this is the case in OpenArena, but in my past experience the locking didn't affect performance more than lets say 10%, but perhaps it can be worse here in Quake3 based games. (Did you test without sound?) Anyway under normal conditions as you see in things like Heaven performance is the same.

[BlackStar]

The OpenGL performance in Wine CAN be identical to Windows under certain circumstances, but by default not in all cases. Our OpenGL code contains locking code around each function call (needed for thread safety). This means that if an OpenGL application (usually older applications which do a lot of stuff on the CPU and make tons of GL calls) can be a little slower. I suspect this is the case in OpenArena, but in my past experience the locking didn't affect performance more than lets say 10%, but perhaps it can be worse here in Quake3 based games. (Did you test without sound?) Anyway under normal conditions as you see in things like Heaven performance is the same.

The locks are necessary to support multithreaded D3D devices.

Unigine is 100% GPU-bound at extreme settings, so the impact of the locking remains hidden. Quake3 is 100% CPU-bound, so the difference is most pronounced. In general, most games will fall somewhere between these two extremes.

[mjung]

Colours

Thanks a million for your excellent reviews and benchnak testings. I als way appreciate them!

I hav just one point that pains me and shurely 20% of the male viewers of your reports. 20% of all men have a red/green colour weakness. this means to view the charts with red and green (and often brown) lines can not be seen by us.

Please have mercy on us and use mor distintive colours. My I humbly suggest blue, orange, red (or brown or green [one of those is fine but not two or all]) black, white, gray.

If you even want to get one step better use different kinds of lines: dotted, hyphens, dot hypen dot etc.

I know we make up only 1/8th of the worlds population, but still be so kind and do not discriminate against a minority of 800 million people.

Thanks in advance!
Fundi

[Michael]

Thanks a million for your excellent reviews and benchnak testings. I als way appreciate them!

I hav just one point that pains me and shurely 20% of the male viewers of your reports. 20% of all men have a red/green colour weakness. this means to view the charts with red and green (and often brown) lines can not be seen by us.

Please have mercy on us and use mor distintive colours. My I humbly suggest blue, orange, red (or brown or green [one of those is fine but not two or all]) black, white, gray.

If you even want to get one step better use different kinds of lines: dotted, hyphens, dot hypen dot etc.

I know we make up only 1/8th of the worlds population, but still be so kind and do not discriminate against a minority of 800 million people.

Thanks in advance!
Fundi

Patches against pts_Graph and graph-config.xml welcome by your or others that improve the color scheme or make any other visual improvements... http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/

[devius]

It's not the only thing, but it is a big piece of the puzzle.

The other much bigger piece, that makes every other piece undistinguishable to the naked eye, being the fact that almost every single personal computer(*) bought in the last 18 years (or so) comes with windows pre-installed and there is no choice of not having it installed.

(*) except the ones from apple; oh wait, those aren't PCs, but Macs.... my bad.