Updated Windows NT Sync Driver Posted For The Linux Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Updated Windows NT Sync Driver Posted For The Linux Kernel

CodeWeavers' Elizabeth Figura has been working on the NTSYNC driver to implement Windows NT synchronization primitives for the Linux kernel in order to help the performance of various Windows games running on Linux by the likes of Wine / Valve's Proton (Steam Play). The third iteration of that driver was posted overnight as it seeks to go into the mainline Linux kernel...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NTSYNC-Linux-v3

[byteabit]

Nice improvements. I'm about to play Resident Evil 2 Remake soon. Will wait for this update to arrive in the Kernel then. :-)

[doragasu]

Nice improvements. I'm about to play Resident Evil 2 Remake soon. Will wait for this update to arrive in the Kernel then. :-)

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think these performance gains are measured with respect to Wine with ESYNC/FSYNC off. If you turn ESYNC/FSYNC on, performance numbers should be very similar. So yeah, unless I'm wrong, you can play RE2 remake now, no need to wait, just make sure Wine/Proton is configured properly.

[byteabit]

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think these performance gains are measured with respect to Wine with ESYNC/FSYNC off.

I thought NTSYNC is there to replace ESYNC/FSYNC?: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-...-Sync-API-2021

[mbriar]

I thought NTSYNC is there to replace ESYNC/FSYNC?: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-...-Sync-API-2021

Well yeah, but not because it's faster than fsync, but because it is more correct. Though the correctness doesn't matter for 99.99% of games, so you might as well play RE2 now, it's not going to improve.

[jeisom]

I hope they get this merged at some point in the near future. I do think they should change the node name though. At some point it very well could be used for outside of wine/windows software after it is merge after all.

[skeevy420]

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think these performance gains are measured with respect to Wine with ESYNC/FSYNC off. If you turn ESYNC/FSYNC on, performance numbers should be very similar. So yeah, unless I'm wrong, you can play RE2 remake now, no need to wait, just make sure Wine/Proton is configured properly.

Pretty much that. While NTSync is more technically correct and potentially faster, current Wine/Proton with ESYNC or FSYNC is good enough government work. E/F/NT are usually very close in speeds in the limited, anecdotal posts I've seen. Heck, FSYNC is pulling more FPS in the NTSYNC demo (skip to 14:12).

byteabit
I've have RE2 Remake. Assuming you're using Proton, FSYNC, and have an AMD GPU, having a newer Mesa installed is more important than waiting on NTSync...or NVIDIA drivers if you have an NVIDIA GPU. If you have RE2 and want to play it, go ahead and play it now. The gains from E/F to NT aren't worth waiting for. That's especially true if you have a Zen 2 or better CPU and a GPU around the power of the 6700 XT.

If you have modern hardware and a modern Linux gaming stack then you're already good to go. Waiting is only doing a disservice to yourself.

[sophisticles]

You just have to love these types of announcements:

For some games NT synchronization is not a bottleneck and no change can be observed, but for others frame rate improvements of 50 to
150 percent are not atypical. The following table lists frame rate measurements from a variety of games on a variety of hardware, taken by users Dmitry
Skvortsov, FuzzyQuils, OnMars, and myself:

The performance claims have no context, no explanation of hardware configuration, resolution or quality settings of the game, OS environment, nothing.

Just "it improved" and we are supposed to jump up and down celebrating.

[byteabit]

I see. Thanks all for the explanation. Guess I don't need to wait any longer and will start playing this weekend. :>

So are the benchmarks presented in this article misleading? I mean why does it not compare it against ESYNC/FSYNC? It says right in the article.

in order to help the performance of various Windows games running on Linux by the likes of Wine / Valve's Proton (Steam Play).

[sophisticles]

Nice improvements. I'm about to play Resident Evil 2 Remake soon. Will wait for this update to arrive in the Kernel then. :-)

I'm a huge RE fan, to me they are some of the best games ever made.

Having said this, i never could get into playing them on a PC, they always seemed to run much better on a console.

BTW, I could have sworn that I read Capcom is coming out with another RE2 remake and a remake of Dino Crisis.