NVIDIA, AMD, Intel Explain How OpenGL Can Unlock 15x Performance Gains, With Slides

OMG what the fuck is wrong with AMD... They keep talking about how to improve performance and stuff but just take a look at their shitty fucked up driver. It is so awful in fact this summer it will be time for me to upgrade GPU and it will be nVidia.

Just wondering Liam what GPU have you got and how is it in Linux?

Just wondering Liam what GPU have you got and how is it in Linux?

Nvidia 560ti and it's fine :)

Just wondering Liam what GPU have you got and how is it in Linux?

Nvidia 560ti and it's fine :)

Lucky :P Sorry for my rant earlier on. Just bit fed up with AMD linux support that all.

Do you get any issues with binary driver at all? Would you say the performance is same as Windows (If you ever tested it lol)

Thanks :)

Sorry for my rant earlier on. Just bit fed up with AMD linux support that all.

I can't blame you for feeling that way, 2012 was probably the worst year for AMD's Catalyst driver in Linux. It got so bad, that my desktop became unusable and I went with Nvidia for 2013 (only ever owned one Nvidia card before that in my lifetime).

I will say this though, I have setup a small SteamOS machine and it's running with an AMD HD 5750. I thought it wouldn't work at all after my experience with the HD6850, but to my surprise the AMD driver that comes with SteamOS is actually performance worthy. No tears, no evil sudden drops in FPS, no weird nasty glitches in graphics, it's actually ok. I don't know though if this reflects other Linux distros.

I'm not Liam, but just to chip in, Nvidia's binary driver almost has no real issues and performs very closely to that of the Windows driver (at least in my experience over the past year and a half). It's currently the only real deal if you want the best performance in gaming on Linux, from my perspective.

As for DX12, I suspect that's basically Mantle in disguise.

DirectX12 scares me, as the thought of it coming out now would mean that Wine is getting further and further away from being able to support most Windows-only games. It also means Microsoft doesn't want anyone touching it's piece of the pie, so it's going brute force.

Wine definitely isn't the solution to bringing games to Linux, thankfully we have Unity3D and what looks to be like Godot + CryEngine 4 + Unreal Engine 4 + Leadwerks for that exact purpose.

It just seems sad that Wine is still only in DirectX 9 land (not undermining their work though!). With how DX10 and DX11 were pretty much ignored, I can safely assume DX12 will be as well. It was always cool to show off games running in Wine when there wasn't a native version. It's becoming harder to do that.

I'm not Liam, but just to chip in, Nvidia's binary driver almost has no real issues and performs very closely to that of the Windows driver (at least in my experience over the past year and a half). It's currently the only real deal if you want the best performance in gaming on Linux, from my perspective.

Hm I see thanks :) What nVidia GPU have you got?

I would have thought the AMD bashing to take a little longer. AMD support the FOSS driver, which last I checked was pretty damned awesome for stability, and for older cards has basically caught up with performance.

Yeah AMD FOSS driver are awesome and I am using it because it actually got less issues than catalyst but unfortunately it still not maxing my card potential :( However I do appreciate the fact that FOSS developers are working hard at it :)

Intel I haven't tried, but I've not heard good things about their drivers.

The Intel drivers are fantastic, their hardware is the bottleneck. They're only just starting to squeeze in at the low-end of their competitors with their best offering when it comes to performance.

AMD is so bad. No support for TrueHD or DTS-Hd over HDMI with Catalyst.

Have FOSS driver support for this? Or i must change from AMD to Nvidia?

I have a HD 6850.

It's funny how there's all this business and hype about low level GFX API with Mantle and DX12 while OpenGL already has low level stuff if you want it.
The benchmarks at Phoronix.com are great and do show you how well the nVidia binary blobs perform (and how crap the FOSS nVidia drivers are, unfortunately). AMD's Catalyst and FOSS drivers sit somewhere in the middle, although I think the FOSS drivers are better than Catalyst at times, and I remember one of the game devs on steam recommended the FOSS drivers over the Catalyst ones after recommending the Catalyst ones first. At least AMD is working on the FOSS drivers as well whereas nVidia only wants to work on the binary blobs.

But like Valve and GabeN said (check the recent AMA on reddit and Steam Dev Days 2014 on youtube), the solution to crappy Windows and D3D is not WINE (although that's great for legacy stuff) but encouraging developers to go Linux native, which is gaining traction with all the game engines coming to Linux now, and OpenGL being pretty cool in general. Valve - leading the way in Linux gaming by at least 1 year =P.

Just wondering Liam what GPU have you got and how is it in Linux?

Nvidia 560ti and it's fine :)

Lucky :P Sorry for my rant earlier on. Just bit fed up with AMD linux support that all.

Hey, friend; I know exactly how you feel. I got a rig with a GTX 645 a month or so to replace my AMD computer and I haven't looked back. :)

is it just me or no one noticed this? there is much more important news here than x* speed. the 3 big companies seem to be openly collaborating instead of competing for the first time with huge improvement

AMD RadeonSI is coming along it performs well at this point, everything older is doing really well. Some graphical error but no more than the opensource intel driver. Very smooth gameplay for it's lack of raw FPS.
AMD catalyst is running great. No more giant memory leaks and performances is damn good. GPU lock ups using things like wine are also vanishing. Higher fps and lower power consumption than the opensauce one.
Intel does pretty good, unlike what most people say I think the driver lags behind Windows by some margin (this is true for all Linux drivers). Some graphical errors but for the most part one of the better Linux experiences.
Nvidia Their binary is top notch, it has been slipping as of late and there is a performance impact in some games (e.g. MLL) vs Windows despite what phoronix may say. Again it lags behind it's Windows counterpart but mostly in utility and features as the performances is very acceptable.


I own all the cards, I use them all. I love everyone parroting things they don't know anything about.
Go NVIDIA! unless you want to use the latest xorgserver and kernel because they have been lagging.
Go Intel! Wintel is a thing. Intel supports Linux but are they themselves becoming more DRM friendly and lest not forget how evil this corp is and has been.
Go AMD! Support?... Support?... Support?... Bueller?

Seriously people, all your parroting without owning products you're talking about is mind numbingly awful. STFU unless you OWN/currently use them.

What nVidia GPU have you got?

I have an Nvidia GTX 680 running the Nvidia 334 drivers on Ubuntu 13.10 currently :)

The Intel drivers are fantastic, their hardware is the bottleneck.

I agree with you on the hardware being a bottleneck, but the drivers aren't that good yet. I just recently tried running Portal 2 on my Intel HD4600 2 days ago, and can barely keep 20 fps at 1920x1080 with everything else set to maximum low or off. Yet, in Dota 2 with the same settings I can reach 120 fps. There isn't a proper consistency in the Intel driver yet (at least not on Ubuntu in my test runs). Still leaves a lot left to be desired in terms of performance.

STFU unless you OWN/currently use them.

I'm pretty certain we're all speaking from personal experience with our own hardware here. Don't rush to assumptions too fast.

[...]the solution to crappy Windows and D3D is not WINE[...]

Moreover there is the Oracle v. Google appeal ruling still in the air (maybe this summer?). I'm not competent in legislation but if API will be considered covered by copyright law (most likely reading about the appeal) and a different implementation isn't fair use (this is the answer I'm nervous about), anyone using WINE could be easily targeted by Microsoft, and Valve, as a Microsoft competitor, would have an hard time defending.

Seriously people, all your parroting without owning products you're talking about is mind numbingly awful. STFU unless you OWN/currently use them.

Well, Intel works fine in my brother's laptop for the admittedly low-intensity gaming he does, and I love the Radeon HD 4670 with R600g that I have in my machine. Handles all the gaming I want to do with decent performance and good thermal output, especially when considering all the driver improvements that have happened over the past year. The Radeon HD 5750 that I recommended to my other brother has also been running really well, except for a few minor issues regarding HyperZ.

At this point I would never touch a blob driver - it is just too difficult to maintain, especially since I use either Arch or Fedora which tend to operate fairly close to upstream.

This is wonderful news. Now if more developers would get on ship with OpenGL and Valve would get it's steam os out things will really start rolling. I think all PC gamer's are sick of the control M$ has held for way to long with it's DX. And I am not convinced that AMD's mantle is the true answer to DX as well. I just hope Nvidia keeps their word about how strong they are working with OpenGL and they do not bail out on it when DX12 does hit the market.