Feral Releases F1 2017 For Linux, More Details On The Vulkan Driver Requirements

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 2 November 2017 at 11:57 AM EDT. 17 Comments
LINUX GAMING
Feral Interactive has just made F1 2017 publicly available via Steam on Linux and via the Feral Store for those wanting to try out this racing game that was released for Windows earlier this year.

F1 2017 happens to be the first Vulkan-only Linux game with this game that started out as D3D11 on Windows being limited to Vulkan on Linux.

The F1 2017 Linux system requirements state a minimum of a GeForce GTX 680 or a AMD GCN 1.2 (Volcanic Islands) GPU or newer. But they recommend a GeForce GTX 1070 for the best Linux racing experience.

These requirements are higher than F1 2017 on Windows where a GTX 460 / HD 5870 is needed, but keep in mind this game is Vulkan-only. So that immediately means a Kepler GPU at a minimum (GTX 600 series) and thus the GTX 680 requirement. Feral states a GCN 1.2 GPU or newer, but this game should work with GCN 1.0/1.1 hardware if using the AMDGPU DRM driver so you can use the RADV Vulkan driver. AMDGPU-PRO is not supported at this time.

I was able to confirm with Feral Interactive that the game should work with GCN 1.0/1.1 Southern Islands / Sea Islands GPUs, but they are not officially supporting it due to these GPUs by default using the Radeon DRM driver that is not compatible with the RADV Vulkan driver and obviously not encouraging gamers to mess with their kernel. But if using the AMDGPU DRM driver (e.g. by amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0), the game should work. I will be running some benchmarks to confirm shortly.

With RADV they are recommending the latest Mesa 17.2 point release or Mesa 17.3 release candidates.

On the NVIDIA driver front, they are recommending the 384.90 for launch day. They did confirm there are some known regressions right now with the 387 series, up to and including the recent 387.22 release. The regressions include crashes, thus for now recommending the 384 long-term stable branch.

F1 2017 for Linux is a benchmark-friendly game. In fact, earlier this week Feral already contributed an f12017 PTS test profile. While originally I was expecting to have pre-release access to this game as usual for benchmark-friendly Linux games, unfortunately, Feral didn't firm up their build until earlier today. With the release build being needed for ensuring an accurate performance picture with the benchmarks, I only have access to the game now. So I'm firing up benchmarks currently.

Today I will have benchmarks to publish of F1 2017 for NVIDIA Kepler/Maxwell/Pascal and then Mesa (17.4-devel, assuming no problems) with Linux 4.14 AMDGPU for GCN 1.0 through Radeon RX Vega GPUs. Stay tuned for plenty of benchmarks!

F1 2017 is available for $59.99 USD from Steam or the Feral store. Stay tuned for plenty of GPU benchmarks in the hours ahead.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week