It Should Now Be Easier To Benchmark Steam Linux Games

I was notified by a Valve Linux team member today that they have some new code out that should help in automating Steam Linux game benchmarks.

Phoronix readers should know quite well by now that the reasons why I don't benchmark many Steam Linux games... It all comes down to reproducibility and automation. If you're not aware of my extensive reasons, read Running Benchmarks On Other New Linux Games and Finally, Team Fortress 2 Benchmarks For Phoronix!

I was delighted to learn this morning Valve has put out the code to voglperf, a way to launch Steam games and to dump the frame timings. This should work towards easier automation but I'm told there's still a dialog box and in my cursory examination of the code there's still some other sore points. However, it's open-source so I'll be looking at voglperf closer and hopefully making some improvements and then making it easier to integrate with the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org.

Those wishing to learn more can visit the GitHub voglperf page by Valve Software. Once I am back to my office I'll be digging deeper into voglperf so stay tuned for benchmarking updates on Phoronix for hopefully making it easier and more reliable for Steam Linux game benchmarks. It also appears voglperf can also be used with some binaries independent of Steam for gathering frame time information.