Mesa OpenGL Threading Enabled For More Games Yielding Sizable Performance Jumps

Written by Michael Larabel in Mesa on 2 April 2020 at 11:02 AM EDT. 17 Comments
MESA
Well known open-source AMD OpenGL driver developer Marek Olšák has enabled more Linux games to run with Mesa's GLTHREAD functionality enabled for helping with the performance.

This OpenGL threading functionality is now enabled by default for more games. This OpenGL threading is only enabled on a per-application basis or when setting mesa_glthread=true but can really help with the performance especially on older hardware.

With Mesa's latest commit, the following games are enabled along with the approximate performance benefit Marek is seeing with RadeonSI Gallium3D:

- Plague Inc Evolved is seeing its minimum frame-rate go from ~136 to ~144 FPS.

- The game Beholder is seeing its frame-rate increase by about 10%.

- The X3 games including X3 Reunion, X3 Terrain Conflict, and X3 Albion Preluad see their performance up by about 15% on average.

- Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is being boosted by about 30%.

- Also scoring a big 30% improvement is the game Transport Fever.

This work is currently in Mesa 20.1-devel though as it's DriConf additions should quite likely be back-ported to Mesa 20.0.x as well.
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