Valve's L4D2 Is Faster On Linux Than Windows

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve's L4D2 Is Faster On Linux Than Windows

Valve's growing Linux team is already experiencing success in optimizing the Source Engine, and in particular their initial Left 4 Dead 2 game, for Linux. In fact, the native Linux build with the Source OpenGL renderer is faster than running the game on Windows 7 with DirectX!..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTE1MjI

[Tiger_Coder]

with the Direct3D renderer at 270 FPS while under Linux with OpenGL they are now at 315 FPS! Using the OpenGL renderer on Windows isn't also quite as good with its average frame-rate at around 303 FPS

Wait OpenGL on windows was faster then DirectX? Now that's a milestone.

[Dukenukemx]

Nobody has a problem running source games on their machines, as you can see when you can get nearly 300 fps. Good news is if you can squeeze more fps on a linux machine over a Windows machine, then people will switch over to Linux just to gain that extra fps. Even something like 10 fps is enough to convince some people.

Now if Valve does this to future more demanding games, that'll be one huge exodus from Windows.

[Vadi]

That's pretty great. I'm assuming it's running the same gfx features as well.

[kiwi_kid_aka_bod]

Wait OpenGL on windows was faster then DirectX? Now that's a milestone.

Except there is no mention of Image Quality. Maybe the DirectX looks twice as good. Who knows.

Also, it's kind of shady of Phoronix talking about all this optimising of the Intel drivers, and how Linux gets 300+FPS, before finally sneaking in the note that the 300+FPS was Nvidia after many articles omitting this detail.

Finally, in reading the original blog post, it would have been interesting to see how many frames each of the three areas contributed to the improvement (6 FPS to 315 FPS).

[Dukenukemx]

Except there is no mention of Image Quality. Maybe the DirectX looks twice as good. Who knows.

Also, it's kind of shady of Phoronix talking about all this optimising of the Intel drivers, and how Linux gets 300+FPS, before finally sneaking in the note that the 300+FPS was Nvidia after many articles omitting this detail.

Finally, in reading the original blog post, it would have been interesting to see how many frames each of the three areas contributed to the improvement (6 FPS to 315 FPS).

I really doubt that OpenGL looks worse then Direct X. If anything it would probably look better.

[MonkeyPaw]

I like the comments about how their work in Linux helped them improve their Windows and OS X ports of the game.

Unfortunately, Valve just changed their steam policy to prevent users from participating in class action lawsuits, just as MS and Sony did with the consoles. It's already stirring up some ill sentiment in nerdome.

[fenixkane]

I like the comments about how their work in Linux helped them improve their Windows and OS X ports of the game.

Unfortunately, Valve just changed their steam policy to prevent users from participating in class action lawsuits, just as MS and Sony did with the consoles. It's already stirring up some ill sentiment in nerdome.

The class action lawsuits thing is a response to a new law passed in the EU, namely that people should be able to sell used copies of digital goods. This is something Valve hasn't supported up till now and they wanted some protection against being forced into adding such a feature or needing to pull out of the EU entirely.

[fenixkane]

This fps improvement was actually predictable knowing that the linux kernel is much better optimized than windows. Also windows is just shit when it comes to memory management...and since opengl is the only way in linux the drivers are probably better optimized than in windows where direct shit is king.

As a side question. Why are people still programming for directx? It works only on windows. Program for opengl and you make your engine more portable from the start for if (actually when) you'll port it to linux. It's not like directx is so much easier than opengl.... brainwashed devs..

FUD is the reason. When Vista was announced Microsoft said that OpenGL would not be supported at all, this made many devs switch over to DX, then right around when Vista came out they said "Just kidding ", but by then it was already too late. The damage was done.

[MonkeyPaw]

I believe Vista's new driver model took OpenGL support and moved it inside of DirectX. People believed it was a natural course in reducing its use. It was sad,as I remember going from Win98 to NT4 and being blown away at the huge OpenGL gains in Quake 2. Vista definitely was a setback.

The class action lawsuits thing is a response to a new law passed in the EU, namely that people should be able to sell used copies of digital goods. This is something Valve hasn't supported up till now and they wanted some protection against being forced into adding such a feature or needing to pull out of the EU entirely.

Yeah. I don't know how I feel about it. It does sound like we might have another storm brewing in the disc-less distribution model. It's a bit of digression for this topic, I apologize.