Valve Shares Performance Numbers On Port of Left4Dead 274
New submitter nschubach writes in with an update on Valve's progress porting one of their games to GNU/Linux. From the article: "One factor in creating a good gaming experience is throughput. This post discusses some of what we've learned about the performance of our games running on Linux. ... After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL. Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4 FPS with that configuration."
nschubach adds "It seems there are good things coming out of this for both Operating Systems!"
Re:What does it tell you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)
Yea, I noticed several years ago, back when I used to play WoW and my computer could barely handle, that it would run faster in Linux on Wine with OpenGL than it would on Windows XP. I mean I'm talking ~5fps on windows to ~15fps with better graphics on Linux -- not really playable on Windows, barely playable on Linux.
Re:Interesting bit from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find really interesting is the fact that this port spurred impovements in proprietary OpenGL drivers, in close collaboration with manufacturers.
This push by Valve may benefit everyone, even people who never will use Steam.
Re:What about quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What does it tell you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Year of... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is unfortunate. Ever since I became a nomad (and switched to Apple) that I miss actually shopping for desktop hardware. Every time I enter a retail store and look at the high-end video cards I really really want to build a desktop, but it can't fit my luggage... The desktop PC is far from being dead and I am already missing it, I think it's gonna be one of those things that I will remember from early 21st century just like I miss tinkering with analog electronics in the 80s (no, I'm not old, I was born in that decade).
Rumor has it that Valve is building a console with PC hardware, so I wouldn't rule out that possibility. They feel that the Windows and Mac App Stores represent a threat to Steam as a third party, so this may be part of their strategy to build a platform of their own. Blizzard has expressed similar feelings, which makes sense if we consider the rumor that they had and probably still have a third party service like Steam planned for battle.net (at least according to the leaked schedules [techcrunch.com] which have been quite accurate, though battle.net third parties is overdue at this point).
Re:Episode 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
If you haven't noticed, Valve stopped making games a while ago and instead became a content whoring system. One game every 5+ years doesn't make you a game developer IMHO.
Re:Year of... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they aren't so much building a game console as they are building a spec for a Linux based gaming PC for everyone to get behind. That makes more sense to me. I, quite literally, only use Windows to play games. Every thing else I either do on my phone, tablet, or already just as easily could do under Linux. If they can make it easy for us hardcore gamers to transition to Linux, then I doubt any of us would bother with Windows again.
The only issue is support for all this cutting edge hardware I have. Linux is always a problem there, but if gamers start to flock, I hope so too will the companies that make our gaming hardware.
Re:Interesting bit from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure lots more details are coming.
Valve are doing a big presentation on their Linux adventures next week at SIGGRAPH (6th - 9th Aug)
Re:Interesting bit from the article (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, I sort of glossed over that distinction.
The problem is in how the code works with the kernel (or GL driver). That can be fixed either by reworking how the code calls it, or reworking how the kernel (or driver) works internally. I referred to this, ambiguously, as "problems with the kernel", not "problems working with the kernel".
As far as kernel stuff, they seem to have done it entirely on their side. I imagine most of it was memory allocation - Linux's malloc() has much different performance characteristics than Window's malloc(), and that's 90% of your kernel calls right there.
The GL stuff they fixed in both places. In some, they were using it in a sub-optimal way. Sometimes they had to work with the driver team to get it fixed in the driver.
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows loves developers, OS X hates developers, Linux IS developers.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)