TheBoss has done his initial port reports and such so it's my turn to feed you some information. I'm once again putting my GTX 760 against the R7 370 to see what kind of performance we can expect from Company of Heroes 2.
Let's start with the Nvidia results since Nvidia is officially supported and Feral recommends 760 or higher for Company of Heroes 2. The game doesn't have setting presets so I tested on three different setting combinations: one with everything on minimum, one where settings were on medium and one where everything was maxed out. Anti-aliasing was disabled in all three test cases. Keep in mind that the performance test is a stress test meant to demonstrate the worst case scenario. Normally the game will run better than it does in these tests.
The testing was conducted on the same system with Intel i5-2500k clocked at 3.3 GHZ and 8GB of RAM.
The results look quite reasonable considering Liam's benchmarking on his 970. Average framerates stay above 30 though the game doesn't reach a stable 60 FPS ever. It might quickly touch the 60 FPS line but it will quickly go back to around the averages. For an RTS framerates like these are fairly reasonable but they are neither mind-blowing nor something to brag about.
Let's move on to the other contender of this fine duel: the R7 370 with 4GB of VRAM. It's worth noting that Feral doesn't officially support AMD GPUs for Company of Heroes 2 and the game will even have a pop up telling you so. I tried using the Catalyst 15.7 driver but it's been broken for my distribution (Xubuntu 15.04) for a while now and I couldn't utilize it. 15.3 worked but proved to work very poorly. The performance was unplayable levels of bad and it even crashed my OS when I attempted to play the campaign. Thus I was left with the RadeonSI driver. Surprisingly enough, RadeonSI was nearly 2x faster than Catalyst in the performance test. Testing was done with the latest Mesa drivers from the Oibaf repository.
So there are the results from the R7 370 with RadeonSI. You don't need to be a genius to see that something is very wrong here. I'm also feeling a slight déjà vu…
Yeah, like I thought. Just like with Shadow of Mordor on AMD, the performance drop-off is very minimal but the performance itself is quite poor. The game reaches a maximum of 30 FPS but most of the time it runs worse than that. Averages are quite horrifying to look at with them being around 20 FPS. However, like I already mentioned, the game does run better in the campaign. There I was able to maintain a playable 30 FPS or thereabouts most of the time. That is, until the game froze and locked up. On Nvidia side the game is quite robust and stable but the AMD side saw crashes nearly constantly. The game simply locks up and will have to be forced to close. On Catalyst similar things happened but there instead of just the game locking up, my whole system froze.
It seems that Feral's latest port is once again quite exclusive to the Nvidia-using population of Linux gamers. Intel Iris Pro is mentioned as the minimum on the Steam store page but I doubt that setup would run this game at a reasonable speed. Unless something drastic has happened, an Iris Pro is slower than my R7 370 and both are running on Mesa, though they do have their differences. I was hoping that Iris Pro being there would mean wider Mesa-compatibility but that doesn't seem to be the case. Well, maybe the next port will work better. For now I recommend the AMD users to look elsewhere for their entertainment. Nvidia people are better off but the game could still be too cinematic for those that demand constant 60 FPS output. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Let's start with the Nvidia results since Nvidia is officially supported and Feral recommends 760 or higher for Company of Heroes 2. The game doesn't have setting presets so I tested on three different setting combinations: one with everything on minimum, one where settings were on medium and one where everything was maxed out. Anti-aliasing was disabled in all three test cases. Keep in mind that the performance test is a stress test meant to demonstrate the worst case scenario. Normally the game will run better than it does in these tests.
The testing was conducted on the same system with Intel i5-2500k clocked at 3.3 GHZ and 8GB of RAM.
The results look quite reasonable considering Liam's benchmarking on his 970. Average framerates stay above 30 though the game doesn't reach a stable 60 FPS ever. It might quickly touch the 60 FPS line but it will quickly go back to around the averages. For an RTS framerates like these are fairly reasonable but they are neither mind-blowing nor something to brag about.
Let's move on to the other contender of this fine duel: the R7 370 with 4GB of VRAM. It's worth noting that Feral doesn't officially support AMD GPUs for Company of Heroes 2 and the game will even have a pop up telling you so. I tried using the Catalyst 15.7 driver but it's been broken for my distribution (Xubuntu 15.04) for a while now and I couldn't utilize it. 15.3 worked but proved to work very poorly. The performance was unplayable levels of bad and it even crashed my OS when I attempted to play the campaign. Thus I was left with the RadeonSI driver. Surprisingly enough, RadeonSI was nearly 2x faster than Catalyst in the performance test. Testing was done with the latest Mesa drivers from the Oibaf repository.
So there are the results from the R7 370 with RadeonSI. You don't need to be a genius to see that something is very wrong here. I'm also feeling a slight déjà vu…
Yeah, like I thought. Just like with Shadow of Mordor on AMD, the performance drop-off is very minimal but the performance itself is quite poor. The game reaches a maximum of 30 FPS but most of the time it runs worse than that. Averages are quite horrifying to look at with them being around 20 FPS. However, like I already mentioned, the game does run better in the campaign. There I was able to maintain a playable 30 FPS or thereabouts most of the time. That is, until the game froze and locked up. On Nvidia side the game is quite robust and stable but the AMD side saw crashes nearly constantly. The game simply locks up and will have to be forced to close. On Catalyst similar things happened but there instead of just the game locking up, my whole system froze.
It seems that Feral's latest port is once again quite exclusive to the Nvidia-using population of Linux gamers. Intel Iris Pro is mentioned as the minimum on the Steam store page but I doubt that setup would run this game at a reasonable speed. Unless something drastic has happened, an Iris Pro is slower than my R7 370 and both are running on Mesa, though they do have their differences. I was hoping that Iris Pro being there would mean wider Mesa-compatibility but that doesn't seem to be the case. Well, maybe the next port will work better. For now I recommend the AMD users to look elsewhere for their entertainment. Nvidia people are better off but the game could still be too cinematic for those that demand constant 60 FPS output. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I tried to run the game on my MSI R9 280 3G and Catalyst 15.2 drivers. The game started and I was able to play for a minute before it froze my system.
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Quoting: GuestJust a note: I have this game running with a radeonHD 6950, and Mesa 10.6 (I'll try 11 soon enough). I say running. It displays things. At similar frame rates to above. I'll look into it more tonight.
Does Mesa 11 give us something (same GPU here)? I mean the R600 doesn't implement any new features, does it? Oh, maybe some minor things that are not yet in Mesa 10.6, but nothing major. That's all just in RadeonSI :(
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Mountain Man Aug 28, 2015
Performance with the 760 looks pretty darn good to me. It's not the fastest card on the market, but I've found it a very capable performer. I don't see myself needing to upgrade for at least another year.
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Quoting: Mountain ManPerformance with the 760 looks pretty darn good to me. It's not the fastest card on the market, but I've found it a very capable performer. I don't see myself needing to upgrade for at least another year.
A wise decision. If I was in your shoes, I'd wait until the new generation of cards after the 900 series. A new die shrink and HBM are already more compelling reasons to wait rather than jump ship to 900 series from 700 series.
Samsai, thanks for the performance comparison. From AMD's Bridgman comment on Phoronix, I would have expected the RadeonSI driver to work better but it looks like there's still performance and stability issues (I was kind of hoping for a cool miracle too, but alas).
Would you say the CPU usage when using Nvidia blob VS RadeonSI was similar? I'm curious.
EDIT: No response? I was truly curious. Guess I'll have to try and find out myself.
Last edited by Sabun on 29 August 2015 at 11:27 am UTC
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Personally I really think Feral just fucked up on this one. I think they only ever tested this on nvidia to begin with.
I've already developed a 3D-game engine for an university course once and albeit it was of course on a much smaller scale we had issues too. All students working on the same engine only had access to AMD cards and we always had problems with the nvidia ones (where we needed to present our work).
And that was although we were sticking to standard OpenGL... but by no means we were experts and some things just behave differently in a state-machine on different hardware.
Anyway, what I want to say is: I too think that the open source drivers (e.g. RadeonSI) are much stricter than the nvidia-binary-blob. So if you fuck up, it will show.
And boy, you can fuck up in OpenGL so easily. (I have no experience with DX ;))
I've already developed a 3D-game engine for an university course once and albeit it was of course on a much smaller scale we had issues too. All students working on the same engine only had access to AMD cards and we always had problems with the nvidia ones (where we needed to present our work).
And that was although we were sticking to standard OpenGL... but by no means we were experts and some things just behave differently in a state-machine on different hardware.
Anyway, what I want to say is: I too think that the open source drivers (e.g. RadeonSI) are much stricter than the nvidia-binary-blob. So if you fuck up, it will show.
And boy, you can fuck up in OpenGL so easily. (I have no experience with DX ;))
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R7 260x with mesa 11.0 somewhat playable framerate of 20-30. I haven't experienced any crashes after 3 scenarios and one AI scirmish match.
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: jamespelleranoI tried to run the game on my MSI R9 280 3G and Catalyst 15.2 drivers. The game started and I was able to play for a minute before it froze my system.
You should really update those drivers.
Updated to 15.7 and the same thing happened...
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Quoting: SabunQuoting: Mountain ManPerformance with the 760 looks pretty darn good to me. It's not the fastest card on the market, but I've found it a very capable performer. I don't see myself needing to upgrade for at least another year.
A wise decision. If I was in your shoes, I'd wait until the new generation of cards after the 900 series. A new die shrink and HBM are already more compelling reasons to wait rather than jump ship to 900 series from 700 series.
Samsai, thanks for the performance comparison. From AMD's Bridgman comment on Phoronix, I would have expected the RadeonSI driver to work better but it looks like there's still performance and stability issues (I was kind of hoping for a cool miracle too, but alas).
Would you say the CPU usage when using Nvidia blob VS RadeonSI was similar? I'm curious.
I beg to disagree - the benchamarks I've see show that the Fury's 4 gigs of HBM are not always enough at 4K. For all it's bandwidth it get's outperformed by the GDDR5 Nvidias because when you need 6GB for ultra HD textures - you need 6GB, not 4 :))). Don't get me wrong - stacked memory is a good thing and will enable single card 4K gaming, eventually, but the GPUs themselves are still the bottleneck. My prediction is that will be the case with at least the next generation of cards. Plus - there is always some better hardware just a few months away.
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On the topic - as the proud owner of two 290x's set in Crossfire, you can understand me pain when I see them outperformed by something like a 760 (although I imagine a 750 too). However, in this case, I find it highly suspicious that it's not just the AMD driver. They do not officially support AMD hardware and obviously the game was never optimized for it. I'm not blaming Feral (too much) - we're less than 20% of the overall GPU market and probably much less among Linux users.
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ZekThePenguin Aug 29, 2015
Yeah.... I'm guessing this is more of a driver issue than a hardware issue. Sad because AMD has fallen short on drivers for a while now. (They make nice hardware, but if a system can't use it, what's the point?)
I'm using an A10-7850k for now. I like AMD, but they really need to step up their game when an old low-end Nvidia card beats their brand new one. (Again, probably not because of the hardware.)
I'm using an A10-7850k for now. I like AMD, but they really need to step up their game when an old low-end Nvidia card beats their brand new one. (Again, probably not because of the hardware.)
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Looking at recent DirectX12 benchmarks I am starting to think that it isn't only the AMD drivers but also the way the hardware is set up. AMD seems to have optimized for Mantle early (and CoH is a prime example of a game that would benefit from it) and are now cought in the painful transition period were its hardware is not optimized for current generation graphics APIs but the new ones are not utilized yet.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3hpdj5/amd_wins_nvidia_on_directx_12_benchmarks/
Of course their drivers are still way too buggy... but that's another story.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3hpdj5/amd_wins_nvidia_on_directx_12_benchmarks/
Of course their drivers are still way too buggy... but that's another story.
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kernel.havok Aug 29, 2015
Although I do sympathise with those who buy AMD hardware -- I think you have to accept the fact that we all know, and have for a few years now, that buying AMD hardware often leads to pain and misery for linux desktop, essp. one used for 3D and gaming.
So if you continue to buy AMD hardware, as it is generally cheaper, and knowing the last few years of poor AMD prop-driver implementations -- then you really only have yourselves to blame.
I'm not saying Feral and other companies should get away with claims that it works on all hardware but as far as I am aware the requirements section of Steam only listed Nvidia and not AMD gfx.
P.S. Thanks go out to Feral for bothering to go to the trouble of supporting such a small segment of the gaming OS market.
So if you continue to buy AMD hardware, as it is generally cheaper, and knowing the last few years of poor AMD prop-driver implementations -- then you really only have yourselves to blame.
I'm not saying Feral and other companies should get away with claims that it works on all hardware but as far as I am aware the requirements section of Steam only listed Nvidia and not AMD gfx.
P.S. Thanks go out to Feral for bothering to go to the trouble of supporting such a small segment of the gaming OS market.
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Using Catalyst 15.7, I get an error message on launch telling me AMD cards not supported and that I should update to AMD's Catalyst 15.7 drivers (the same driver I have installed)
If I click 'Continue Anyway' it creates a full screen window and Displays the Company Of Heroes 2 Logo/Title but nothing else, it just freezes there indefinitely.
I'm disappointed, I wanted to check the game out before free day expires on Steam.
If I click 'Continue Anyway' it creates a full screen window and Displays the Company Of Heroes 2 Logo/Title but nothing else, it just freezes there indefinitely.
I'm disappointed, I wanted to check the game out before free day expires on Steam.
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Quoting: kernelhavokSo if you continue to buy AMD hardware, as it is generally cheaper, and knowing the last few years of poor AMD prop-driver implementations -- then you really only have yourselves to blame.
And if nvidia will have a monopoly one day and I have to do my daily work with a proprietary driver (which will be a huge pain in the ass and a lot of monetary loss for me) I know who to blame :)
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Quoting: kernelhavokAlthough I do sympathise with those who buy AMD hardware -- I think you have to accept the fact that we all know, and have for a few years now, that buying AMD hardware often leads to pain and misery for linux desktop, essp. one used for 3D and gaming.
So if you continue to buy AMD hardware, as it is generally cheaper, and knowing the last few years of poor AMD prop-driver implementations -- then you really only have yourselves to blame.
Spoiler, click me
Are you an Nvidia fanboy or employee?
AMD's proprietary driver for Linux is actually pretty decent at this point with performance closing in on their Windows drivers (not saying it shouldn't be optimized further or anything). I couldn't say the same thing 6 - 12 months ago due to the fact that it used to break boot post install for me, but now it installs easily for me. No more messing with xorg.conf afterward to get the OS to boot properly and there's also not really much to configure once it's installed. The open source drivers seem to be making good progress as well. I'll probably switch to the open source drivers when they become as fast as the proprietary drivers or at least very close.
Hopefully Feral steps up their game with AMD since they recently mentioned that they were building AMD machines.
Last edited by g0rg0r on 29 August 2015 at 7:55 am UTC
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kernel.havok Aug 29, 2015
Quoting: MaelraneAnd if nvidia will have a monopoly one day and I have to do my daily work with a proprietary driver (which will be a huge pain in the ass and a lot of monetary loss for me) I know who to blame :)
haha, ya ya. I'm not unsympathetic but that's a slippery slope argument, monopoly, considering how small a percentage that Linux gamers make up of the gaming ecosystem. By all means buy AMD on a Windows platform (as I used to) but, for the time being, if you intend to play AAA then Nvidia are the only game in town on Linux systems.
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kernel.havok Aug 29, 2015
Quoting: g0rg0rAre you an Nvidia fanboy or employee?
No, just realistic. AMD do not produce as good a hardware, grunt, as Nvidia (trawl through any open-source dev convos on trying to implement gfx between ATI and Nvidia hardware of the same generation). ATI also have suffered lackluster prop-driver development over the last 5 years. Open source implementation has gotten a lot better but far from where it needs to be.
I was originally a big supporter of ATI/AMD before moving to Linux (during high school,like, 2006) so I can understand if new users of linux are upset but if you've been using linux for years now and continue to buy poorly supported or implemented hardware, for specific purposes like 3D and gaming, then you can only blame yourself.
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Quoting: kernelhavokQuoting: g0rg0rAre you an Nvidia fanboy or employee?
No, just realistic. AMD do not produce as good a hardware, grunt, as Nvidia (trawl through any open-source dev convos on trying to implement gfx between ATI and Nvidia hardware of the same generation). ATI also have suffered lackluster prop-driver development over the last 5 years. Open source implementation has gotten a lot better but far from where it needs to be.
I was originally a big supporter of ATI/AMD before moving to Linux (during high school,like, 2006) so I can understand if new users of linux are upset but if you've been using linux for years now and continue to buy poorly supported or implemented hardware, for specific purposes like 3D and gaming, then you can only blame yourself.
I don't really know about graphics programming, but I thought libraries like opengl and openal and other such things were there specifically for abstracting away the differences between different hardware?
You'd think open source devs would have a harder time with Nvidia cards considering the fact that they actually have to reverse engineer the proprietary drivers and analyze hardware dumps to write the open source driver for them as far as I know.
Spoiler, click me
I don't know much. :D
Last edited by g0rg0r on 29 August 2015 at 10:00 am UTC
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View video on youtube.com
Spoiler, click me
Nvidia has also been the single worst company I have ever dealt with! :p
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psycho_driver Aug 29, 2015
Quoting: MaelraneQuoting: kernelhavokSo if you continue to buy AMD hardware, as it is generally cheaper, and knowing the last few years of poor AMD prop-driver implementations -- then you really only have yourselves to blame.
And if nvidia will have a monopoly one day and I have to do my daily work with a proprietary driver (which will be a huge pain in the ass and a lot of monetary loss for me) I know who to blame :)
AMD for failing to compete properly in either of their major markets? I *like* AMD. I have invested in their stock before (and fortunately gotten out while still on the plus side each time). Right now their CPUs are a joke compared to Intel and their graphics products are very under-supported on linux (by AMD, not by developers). I have one computer left with an AMD processor (a heartily overclockable old AII x4 620). It's the next to get retired in favor of an intel setup unless Zen offers a compelling bang for the buck.
I will support the underdog if they're doing a bare minimum to deserve that support. Right now (and for a while) AMD is falling below that bare minimum.
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