SteamOS Gaming Performance Lags Well Behind Windows (arstechnica.com) 184
New submitter NotDrWho writes: As reported by Ars Technica: "With this week's official launch of Valve's Linux-based Steam Machine line (for non-pre-orders), we decided to see if the new OS could stand up to the established Windows standard when running games on the same hardware. Unfortunately for open source gaming supporters, it looks like SteamOS gaming comes with a significant performance hit on a number of benchmarks." They tested with two graphically intensive titles from 2014, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux. They say, "we got anywhere from 21- to 58-percent fewer frames per second, depending on the graphical settings. On our hardware running Shadow of Mordor at Ultra settings and HD resolution, the OS change alone was the difference between a playable 34.5 fps average on Windows and a stuttering 14.6 fps mess on SteamOS." Even most of Valve's own games took big performance hits when running under SteamOS.
But the real question is.. (Score:3)
.. is the extra $199 you save by not having to buy a Windows license enough to make up for the frame rate difference if you divert that cash to your video card fund?
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it's $199 retail. when you buy a new computer the included windows license costs your OEM a lot less. more like $50 or less depending on volume and discounts
You don't even need a new computer, OEM licenses apply to hardware alone. Meaning you can buy a dvd/bluray drive/stick of ram/etc and be covered as OEM hardware. People have been doing the oem+hardware bit since the '90's. You can also find cheap keys on various software trading forums, or you can wait for MS to offer the el-cheapo OS upgrade, like they did with Win8. Lot of people I know who pirated Win7, went legit with Win8 because they could buy the upgrade for $9-15USD.
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it's $199 retail. when you buy a new computer the included windows license costs your OEM a lot less. more like $50 or less depending on volume and discounts
Depending on the crapware that comes preloaded in the computer the OEM cost may be even negative.
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It's $96 on Amazon.
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Back in the day World of Warcraft was originally intended to be cross platform so the game was developed with both libraries in mind. They yanked the linux support just before release but when codeweaver s
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OpenGL and Linux actually rival or beat windows + directx in terms of raw capability.
Part of the issue is fragmentation. The extended capability comes from extensions in OpenGL, they are great for maximizing exploiting new features and performance of specific graphics cards but it's rarely worth the effort to produce a code path that only a tiny percentage of users might benefit from - and might ultimately be outweighed anyway by some software or hardware configuration or imbalance (CPU/RAM bottleneck for example). So most often these extensions aren't used and engine developers resort to t
Re:But the real question is.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because they already know direct x and probably don't know opengl. Because direct x is what is primarily targeted and optimized by graphics card drivers with opengl a secondary consideration. And lastly because sound is then organized into the same library whereas with opengl they would then need to pick a secondary sound library.
OpenGL is an api, it has no performance characteristics, those all come down to the implementation.
"Are you saying that every developer in the industry is in a mass conspiracy with Microsoft"
No conspiracy needed. Microsoft has no interest in opengl performing well on windows therefore they don't expend any effort to make it perform well and thereby cripple it relative to their own library. Manufacturers target Direct X because game developers do, game developers target Direct X because manufacturers do.
In almost every case the "ridiculous big conspiracy" argument is a false dichotomy, you don't need active conspiracy for individuals industry wide to create the same result active conspiracy and collusion would. In most places this occurs out of lots of individuals working out of self interest. The same is true of widescale consumer screwing in industry, if all the major competitors engage in the same practice the consumer can't vote with their dollar, the major competitors don't actually need to agree though. The same things are profitable for all of them, if they all pursue what is most profitable for themselves the result will be all of them engaging in the same practice and screwing the consumer.
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Because they already know direct x and probably don't know opengl.
Most game developers work directly with the engine which most often has multiple rendering backends to target OpenGL (desktop and sometimes ES), DirectX (predominantly a 9, 10/11 and now 12 path), GCM, GNMX, GX and now some with Metal support too. This has the effect of both abstracting them from the low level API and enabling them to target different platforms with the same codebase. Moreover GCM, GNMX, GX are all very similar to OpenGL, targeting iOS has up until recently been only OpenGL as has Android a
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If that's true, then why aren't game developers focusing on OpenGL instead of DirectX then?
For the same reason you don't see anyone opening auto-part stores for Ferrari. There's no market for them because they're so rare, even though Ferraris break down all the time. But yes, a Ferrari is one of the fastest things on the road. But you'll make more profit selling parts for Ford or GM...
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Unfortunately with Linux+OpenGL you have bits that are neither Linux or OpenGL which are the driver implementation and the game engine implementation and those things have been optimized for DirectX. Given that linux provides a more performant and stable base system all else be
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Or you know couldn;t because of licenses they have for certain tech in their products. That is why you have binary blobs for the official linux drivers and not source. Neither Nvida nor AMD own all the IP used in their video cards and thus cannot legally distribute the source for their drivers.
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I suspect that, if they could get away with it AND do so without revealing trade secrets, they'd absolutely love to open source the drivers - both companies.
Pay per bit (Score:3)
Who the heck orders an OS box shipped these days instead of instant download?
People behind metered Internet access, for one. See a story a couple months ago about surprise overages caused by Microsoft preing an instant Windows download [slashdot.org].
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Same machine. New video card - still same machine.
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Honestly, that sounds like poking yourself in the eye with a pencil because you don't like wearing glasses.
But, hey, if you feel like doing that, go right ahead.
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In essentially every other area windows offers the relatively painful experience.
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Most people have gone console for gaming.
Except without a ` key, how do you get a console on a console game?
In essentially every other area [than video games,] windows offers the relatively painful experience.
Unless you're dealing with a market segment dominated by Linux-incompatible chipsets, such as the detachable laptop/tablet market.
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Those niches exist but you chose a poor example. Android = Linux... it is the dominate platform in that market. I have two tablets, one a detachable ASUS that was the best performing detachable available running any platform when I bought it sitting in my living room right now The same model could be purchased with Microsoft's option but that offers poor app support and slower
SteamOS games don't run on full screen calculators (Score:2)
Those niches exist but you chose a poor example. Android = Linux... it is the dominate platform in that market.
I apologize for moving the goalposts, but thank you for proving RMS's point about the importance of the term GNU/Linux, which I had carelessly neglected to use. Android uses the kernel Linux, but it is not compatible with applications designed for Steam Runtime or any other applications designed for GNU/Linux. One could port a GNU/Linux application to Android, but then Android's all maximized all the time window management policy starts to get in the way. What good is it when a calculator fills the 10 to 12
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So you are willing to get a system that runs more slowly so you don't need to run a systems that runs quicker? Your decision is just fueled by hate and that is really sad.
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So you are willing to get a system that runs more slowly so you don't need to run a systems that runs quicker? Your decision is just fueled by hate and that is really sad.
Windows is a time-stealing PITA in many ways that Linux doesn't share. If the majority of games would run at all on Linux, let alone as well as on Windows, I would not have a machine that only boots into Windows. I'd still need a Windows-booting netbook for configuring things that want to plug into a USB port, because sometimes USB passthrough is flaky (especially while flashing devices whose USB IDs change during the process) and you really need to do it right on the machine.
Also, fuck Microsoft right in t
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At least USB works on my Windows box. What a fucking fag this guy.
USB Passthrough for running Windows in a VM. It's flaky as hell when doing e.g. firmware updates of connected embedded devices (especially, as noted, when the connected device has it's PID:VID change during the firmware flash.)
Go read the full post next time before opening your keyboard and letting your shit-for-brains leak out of your mouth.
I don't care what you say. Linux VM -> Windows Host, Windows VM -> Windows Host, Windows VM -> Linux Host, Linux VM -> Linux Host, you'll always have troubl
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Nope, as a gamer and rigs that aren't top of the line, every advantage of frames count plus keeping the graphics up on medium/high settings.
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Actually, that kind of trade off would work really well.
Also note that Mac games suffer the same penalties.
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Is this just a drivers issue with the video hardware? Or is is actually a problem with OS itself?
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It is absolutely the drivers. In the windows driver there is code that checks if the name of the application matches a game that it has custom mode of execution hand coded to optimize that game's performance on top of the very best general driver behavior they can manage. In the linux driver you have a steaming pile of crap that barely works at all.
Er, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true - in fact, Nvidia's Linux driver is quite good. The issue is that 'important' games get special attention from the graphics companies, who special-case things in their drivers - replacing whole shaders, etc. [rebrn.com] That doesn't happen in Linux. It winds up being necessary because OpenGL has grown so complex that it's incredibly hard to write fast code for it [gamedev.net].
Vuikan [hexus.net] is liable to change that considerably - a much lower-level API, that engines can interface with more directly and consistently. The drivers won't have be huge tangles of special-case code, and will be much simpler to implement on multiple operating systems because they are called upon to do far less.
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You're missing the stupid questions. They contribute a lot of those to the community. They used a search engine to find the site. Why didn't they use a search engine to find the solution?
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It would be fixed by the users if the game engine and the graphics driver were open source.
There already are open source graphics drivers, nouveau [freedesktop.org] for nVidia and the radeon [freedesktop.org] drivers for ATi/AMD. There are also plenty of open source game engines and even if there weren't, users could build them. Additionally even using the SDKs for proprietary game engines and the profiling tools is more than enough to isolate performance bottlenecks. If there is a problem with the engine it isn't going to be difficult to identify where it is stalling and discuss with the author (particularly when it is Valve that
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Its nothing to do with the OS, its either drivers *or* the ports, but often a combination of both. AMD's video card drivers are plagued by serious performance issues on Linux (even worse than their Windows offerings) while in most cases the Nvidia Linux drivers are much closer in performance to the Windows ones. Throwing "Shadow of Mordor" in there for this test really skews the whole average performance comparison off badly, to a degree that is not representative of Steam's Linux catalog as a whole, beca
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Or is is actually a problem with OS itself?
Let me put it this way: PS4s run FreeBSD, and they have less of a problem with graphics performance. It's definitely the drivers.
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Or is is actually a problem with OS itself?
Let me put it this way: PS4s run FreeBSD, and they have less of a problem with graphics performance. It's definitely the drivers.
Let me put it this way: PS4s run a different operating system on different hardware with different drivers and a different graphics API. And there is no way known that that information can in any way give you any indication of what the performance problem in this situation is.
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I know this is contrary to what many people wish to see or hear, but I don't worry about intense graphical games on Linux. That's not what I use Linux for. Although it sounds like treason (even to my own ears) I don't have any big issue with dual booting into Windows to play those things.
Some things work best on Windows. So what? Some Mac stuff only works on Macs. And so on.
Of course I'm happy to see things develop on the Linux side. But if certain games don't run on Linux, it's not going to stop me and man
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That's not what I use Linux for.
that's nice, but the point is that there's a company that *is* trying to us linux for that, and it's failing (in comparison).
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that's nice, but the point is that there's a company that *is* trying to us linux for that, and it's failing (in comparison).
Hopefully the point is that with a significant commercial interest at stake, linux drivers will actually receive more development and will improve.
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After all, it took Microsoft all the way to Windows 7 to produce an OS that didn't suck ass.
To be fair, Win2k and WinXP were pretty good.
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Windows is free nowadays.
Only free as in beer, though ...
Negative Windows tax (Score:2)
Never paid for windows since xp. You were saying?
You either use another OS or you're a software pirate, so your post is completely irrelevant.
You appear to have forgotten a third option: someone else is paying for Anonymous Coward #50924157's copy of Windows. This is likely the publisher of trialware bundled with a name brand PC. I can tell that publishers of trialware for Windows fully subsidize Windows because GNU/Linux PCs from companies such as System76 tend to cost more than Windows PCs with equivalent specifications. The maker of PCs that ship with GNU/Linux cannot collect revenue from trialware publishers because trialware publishers are o
Benchmarks don't matter... (Score:2)
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No, but gaming companies will not focus on Linux if the performance is poor. The question is who is going to fix this? Do kernel developers at the moment have a vested interest in bringing Linux (drivers) on par with Windows, or is that job left to gaming companies like Steam.
What I hoped to get from the comments is... why? (Score:2)
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The Shadow of Mordor port is garbage. Glean nothing more from its particular benchmark than that.
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If the SoM port wasn't literally the worst example you might have a leg to stand on here, but there are a number of ports that were significantly better done. In this particular case, I'm not bitching about a company that went "out of its way," I'm bitching about a catastrophic fuckup. For another example of a completely fucked up Linux release, see Dying Light. Most the rest haven't actually been nearly so poorly done.
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Incidentally though, in the case of Dying Light, they did actually after-the-fact work hard to improve performance based on user feedback, and had notable, if not complete success. They're both textbook examples of how NOT to port a game to Linux though, unless you own Microsoft stock.
(yes, I know it should have all gone in one post) (Score:1)
Its also worth noting, the company you say "went out of their way" to port their game to Linux did nothing of the sort. They hired a third party (Feral Interactive) who has also ported several games other than SoM which were not catastrophically fucked-up at launch, and in fact include some of the better AAA ports available for Linux as well, suggesting that the original developers (not Feral) may be more to blame here for the sorry state of the Shadow of Mordor port than anyone is acknowledging here.
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If you read the article they also compared 5 valve made games with similar results. I have no idea if those games were optimised for Steam OS.
Just to be clear (Score:5, Informative)
These tests were done on their own custom built steam machine from 2 years ago. (Mentioned in article)
They have an older video card and older CPU than any of the steam machines for sale.
I'm guessing most optimization work has gone into the latest nVidia series rather than 1-2 previous ones.
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Seems Ars' recent reviews suggest they don't really care anymore about the quality of the review, but click bait and views.
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The video card is question is the series of Nvidia card that had 2G of memory but could only physically address 1.5G without a massive penalty to rendering. In the windows driver the last 0.5gb was basically turned off and only used as an absolute last resort.
Clearly the same optimization for bad design doesn't exist on the Linux side. Personally I think that was a stupid choice of GPU to test with, though it's sure generating the clicks they want.
sample... (Score:4, Interesting)
On one machine, in two games.
I recognize that testing this sort of stuff on a wide variety of hardware and with many games is hard, and that they haven't had the time yet to put together a thorough analysis. But you should really qualify your results, like "preliminary testing has indicated that Steam OS performance may be worse than Windows 10 performance in some games on certain hardware configurations."
But that makes for a terrible headline :p
One of my primary suspects for the difference is the video card - how well optimized are the Linux drivers?
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One of my primary suspects for the difference is the video card - how well optimized are the Linux drivers?
They used an nVidia card, so it's not necessarily the most likely culprit like an ATI card would be.
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One million times better (for games) than 2 year ago, thanks to Valve.
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But you should really qualify your results, like "preliminary testing has indicated that Steam OS performance may be worse than Windows 10 performance in some games on certain hardware configurations."
"certain hardware configurations" implies that the problem only occurs on some hardware setups but not others. Right now we have no reason to think that's the case. Where are the hardware setups where all is great? It's more likely that this is a widespread problem.
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"certain hardware configurations" implies that the problem only occurs on some hardware setups but not others. Right now we have no reason to think that's the case. Where are the hardware setups where all is great? It's more likely that this is a widespread problem.
It would be a more interesting test to take an actual steam machine, test the games on that hardware and then dual boot to windows on the same machine.
Welcome! (Score:2)
"Welcome, stranger! Come, sit by our hearth and tell us of this distant strange land you come from!"
Nvidia the the best-case for Linux, currently. (Score:2)
On an absolute scale, probably not as well-optimized as the Windows one. But Nvidia's Linux drivers [phoronix.com] have consistently been better-performing than AMD's versions [phoronix.com]. Intel's Linux drivers [phoronix.com] have had problems, too, and their dependence on Mesa has meant that a lot of recent OpenGL features haven't been exposed. Plus Intel's hardware is significantly slower than AMD or Nvidia's offerings.
Re:sample... (Score:4, Informative)
One of my primary suspects for the difference is the video card - how well optimized are the Linux drivers?
Actually, it is has been shown that on the same hardware (with NVidia card) for Metrox Redux it is just a question of SSAA [youtu.be] being on or off.
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To be fair, SLI is a massive failure on Windows too.
No it isn't. [babeltechreviews.com]
It's a real crapshoot that very few games support and even fewer support well.
No, games don't need to "support" it.
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Steam OS performance may be worse than Windows 10 performance in some games on certain hardware configurations.
This is exactly the sort of thing that gamers shouldn't have to worry about.
Linux OS gaming performance lags well behind... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that is too hard for Slashdot editors to write.
Nothing new here, but at least things seem to be changing, even if it's slow going. Who really expected the same or better performance at this point? Until Linux becomes mainstream (and by that, I mean holds at least 15% of the desktops), it will always be a "back burner" kind of thing for GPU manufacturers; not to mention the fractious bickering (usually over nitpicky crap) that pelts anybody who steps in to try and improve the situation.
This article's headline kind of exemplifies some of the problem - directing scorn and criticism on those who are trying to make things better.
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Macs have similar gaming performance and they're somewhat more mainstream.
Re:Linux OS gaming performance lags well behind... (Score:5, Informative)
Who really expected the same or better performance at this point?
I do. [zdnet.com]
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I kinda did, the Linux drivers is decent and I kinda felt one of the reasons for them to try to sell Steam on Linux would be "even better performance!" (but it's likely just more a way to protect against a Microsoft Xbox game store on Windows.)
Hands up anyone who's surprised (Score:1)
I keep saying this, every time SteamOS is mentioned. I would love it to work, I would love it to take off, and I would absolutely LOVE to be wrong about this, but performance is only one of the ways this thing is going to lag behind Windows. No way is Valve getting all the major studios to port their main games to Linux. SteamOS is going to be fine if you just need to have games and you don't really care which ones they are, and Steam does have a plethora of small/cheap games. But if you want Fallout 4, sor
Re:Hands up anyone who's surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
It has little to do with the games. Waiting for some magical moment where everything happens and AAA games come out on stable, fast drivers is insanity.
What happens is you get a field-leader, like Steam. They start down the road of Linux. They get several HUNDREDS of games that weren't on Linux onto Linux by encouraging it. This now prompts stories like this where performance OF THE PROPRIETARY AND FREE GRAPHICS DRIVERS is brought to the fore.
The games aren't slow. The OS isn't slow. It's the graphics drivers. Now nVidia are shown up - pushing out flagship products from a major player but let down by the quality of Linux drivers. So they are now encouraged / bullied into making those drivers the equivalent of the Windows drivers. This makes those drivers more popular. More people are going to have cards that use them (even if just Steam Boxes). Now there's slightly more of an excuse for games developers to target Linux too. So now the quality of the drivers matters that little bit more. So nVidia/AMD improve the drivers a little more. Which encourages more benchmarks to show the leaps and bounds. So they get press from it. Which means more developers target SteamOS as part of their engines and platforms. And so on... ad infinitum.
We waited ten years for something to "Just Happen" in terms of graphic driver quality - both free and proprietary - to bring Linux drivers up to par with Windows. It didn't happen. So Valve are breaking the deadlock, removing the stalemate and saying "Your move, nVidia" - one of their partners, who is going to get bad press for having crap Linux drivers. nVidia will respond in time. And, incrementally, things will start to improve.
Good on Valve I say. Good for Linux. Probably not so good for nVidia et al but they've been dragging their feet anyway. And, ultimately, good for the consumer. But if we only used the one thing that worked and is top-speed and competitive and expensive, ATI/AMD wouldn't exist, Windows and nVidia would be on every console, and the situation would be even worse because of the lack of competition. Now that someone's seriously pushing gaming on Linux, and shows these shortfalls to the people SELLING PARTS OF THIS HARDWARE, there might well be a push to get more optimised drivers running on Linux for that hardware.
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Like I said, I'd love to be wrong, and I'd LOVE my gaming PC to be running SteamOS instead of Windows. But I want to play Mass Effect and Fallout and Skyrim and Tomb Raider and Battlefronts and Uncharted and Assassin's Creed.
That's MY definition of a Casual Gamer - I get a relatively low number of games, but I play the hell out of them. I switched to PC because consoles became a really unfriendly environment for people like me, and Steam is just way the heck off. To play the games I want on PC right now I n
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The Nvidia drivers are fine. We don't have the performance issues with them over here on FreeBSD that people on Linux do. Graphics have honestly been very consistently better and smoother on FreeBSD than Linux for the most part.
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It'd be a little more convincing if nVidia wasn't the only game in town Valve has. They don't care if they sell you a graphics card for a Windows or SteamOS box. AMD is too economically crippled to make a strategic investment and Intel still isn't what I'd put in a game console. In short, Steam boxes could flop and it'd be a much bigger deal for Valve than nVidia. So I guess we'll see, it might light a fire under their feet but I wouldn't bet on it.
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The games aren't slow. The OS isn't slow. It's the graphics drivers.
No, it is a combination of all of those things as has been explained many times before. Like here [extremetech.com] for instance.
Why not use an actual Steam Machine? (Score:3)
He used some machine he had in the corner. How about using an actual Steam Machine?
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He used some machine he had in the corner.
They used a machine that they built recently for the purpose of demonstrating dual-booting, which included an nVidia-based video card and other hardware selected for Linux compatibility. While using an actual Steam Machine would be interesting, there are far more Windows users who are contemplating their next OS decision than probably Steam Machine customers. It's kind of spendy.
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They used a machine that they built recently for the purpose of demonstrating dual-booting
He used a computer set up two years ago which isn't that recent.
While using an actual Steam Machine would be interesting, there are far more Windows users who are contemplating their next OS decision than probably Steam Machine customers. It's kind of spendy.
I disagree. This is more like a console and I think most people interested in the SteamOS will be those buying it prebuilt.
I see it as an amazing show of goodwill by Steam that they released it and made it "easy" for those that like using linux to install.
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Mod Parent up.
Cost adjusted performance? (Score:2)
If spend the cost of a Windows licence on better hardware how does the performance compare?
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If spend the cost of a Windows licence on better hardware how does the performance compare?
That depends. How much did you spend on your video card? You can get a Windows 7 Pro license for a hundred bucks, I did. I spent two hundred on my card. Another hundred wouldn't really improve things that much. If I'd only spent a hundred, then I think I'd come to another conclusion. But then there would still be the many, many games which you can't run on Linux at all.
If you compare to a full-retail copy of Windows 7 Pro from the store at $199, then you get a substantially better video card for your money,
Nothing earth shattering or new here (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as I saw the headline I was curious which games they had tested with. As soon as I saw Shadow of Mordor I cringed. It is well known that its Linux performance is extremely subpar. The fact of the matter is that Linux ports and drivers have seen nowhere near the time and effort put into performance tuning as their Windows counterparts. Until Vulkan gears up and SteamOS gains more inertia, I don't expect any different.
For the record, though, Shadow of Mordor is the only Linux game I have not been able to play on max settings with my GTX 970; and despite having to crank it down a bit, it still works flawlessly. As a Linux gamer I am more than content with how fast things are progressing. Why rate and comment on the runners' performance when they haven't even finished warming up?
Exclusive titles? (Score:1)
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Valve's half-assed approach to SteamOS has pretty much ensured its failure from day one. If they had released ONE Steambox with a set configuration (like other console manufacturers), than maybe it would have had a chance. As it was, they just took the laziest possible approach, passing it off to other hardware manufacturers and letting them assume all the risks (and giving them freedom to produce a slew of confusing options). In essence, Steamboxes have the worst faults of both the PC and console worlds (a
Mods and exit to GNOME (Score:2)
You get the lower power and lack of versatility of consoles
I was under the impression that SteamOS supported community-created mods, unlike consoles, and had an Exit to GNOME option [howtogeek.com] unlike consoles since the release of PlayStation 3 system software 3.21.
Apples to apples please (Score:3)
I believe many if not most games on Steam For Linux are actually windows versions literally wrapped in what amounts to their propriety/in-house branch of the wine environment.
In this case it seems both unrealistic and unfair to make performance comparisons between running what a windows-native app on Windows, and then on Linux where it requires an extra significant overhead of API translation because the app itself was never designed or built to run on Linux-native APIs.
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I believe many if not most games on Steam For Linux are actually windows versions literally wrapped in what amounts to their propriety/in-house branch of the wine environment.
AFAIK I don't think any Linux games are based on wine (I'm assuming you mean TransGaming?, but don't know of any reason why anyone would target Wine emulation. Some developers or published admitted their titles worked under Wine but make no effort to target or support it), but most are more likely to be based on OpenGL porting for Mac or OpenGL ES porting for mobile targets (phones and tablets).
A number of major and minor game and graphic engines include Linux targets (Unity, Torque, Unreal - with caveats,
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Sorry if I wasn't being clear. I didn't mean to imply that game developers would ever target Wine, that would be wierd.
I meant that as a quick way to get a large number of games onto Steam for Linux, Valve developed a wine-like wrapper so they could just wrap existing windows versions (i.e. already compiled) and run that on Linux, rather than have to port the source code and make native versions.
Their approach was a quick solution but one that will never be perfect compared to a native version. The obvious
My sample size is small... (Score:4, Informative)
...but I got the sense that Ars Technica pretty much sucks Microsoft cock all day long.
This is based mainly on their attitude toward the privacy issues related to Windows 10, but I noticed other corroborating data points.
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They suck Microsoft's left testicle, jiggle and lick Google's right testicle all the while stroking the entire shaft of that Apple dong. But then again, that's what certain Ars writers tend to do, fanboy/girl the shit out of their favorites.
A temporary problem (Score:2)
There are now a larger number of eyes on the problem. I expect there will be a significant performance improvement over the next few months as the causes for the delays are isolated.
linux gaming = infancy (Score:2)
Linux gaming is in it's infancy, but in a short time things have already improved a lot.
I remember a time when windows was starting to get games, and performance was just horrible. Together with my friends we just laughed about the idea of windows as a viable gaming platform, it couldn't even touch DOS. Look at where we are now.
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Riveting tale chap.
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Ugh, you grammar nazis. I really couldn't care fewer.