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Ars Technica recently ran a few Windows vs SteamOS benchmarks, and it shows what we here already know: A lot of ports have worse performance on SteamOS & Linux.
While the benchmark is limited in the selection, and it's only on one system, we've all seen this before ourselves. I would also like to point out SteamOS has a much older Nvidia driver version, and I doubt the Ars guy manually updated the SteamOS driver, so the Windows tests are done on a much newer driver.
It's a shame, but there's no point hiding from the facts. Right now most ports run worse on Linux, a lot of it is down to OpenGL, but porters are also to blame for not optimising enough. I get why porters can't spend all their time optimising, they have to make money after-all and ports need to be pushed out quickly, but it's still annoying.
Vulkan could be SteamOS & Linux only real chance at having a level playing field, I just hope it doesn't take too long for it to come out and be used in games for us.
In regards to the gaps in performance on Valve titles: I saw first-hand how big a performance jump Dota 2 gave with Source 2 having a fully native OpenGL implementation, so I hope Valve have plans to update their other titles.
This bit caught my attention, as it's not down to Valve or Linux developers. It's down to the game developers, the game porters, Nvidia and AMD pushing performance in their drivers and Vulkan coming along to help out too.
What are your thoughts? Personally, I know I'm going to get less performance, but I'm in it for the long-run here.
Windows has pretty much had a monopoly on PC gaming for how many years? It will take time for Linux performance to catch up. Not even getting into all the game-specific optimizations the driver vendors do on Windows. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
While the benchmark is limited in the selection, and it's only on one system, we've all seen this before ourselves. I would also like to point out SteamOS has a much older Nvidia driver version, and I doubt the Ars guy manually updated the SteamOS driver, so the Windows tests are done on a much newer driver.
It's a shame, but there's no point hiding from the facts. Right now most ports run worse on Linux, a lot of it is down to OpenGL, but porters are also to blame for not optimising enough. I get why porters can't spend all their time optimising, they have to make money after-all and ports need to be pushed out quickly, but it's still annoying.
Vulkan could be SteamOS & Linux only real chance at having a level playing field, I just hope it doesn't take too long for it to come out and be used in games for us.
In regards to the gaps in performance on Valve titles: I saw first-hand how big a performance jump Dota 2 gave with Source 2 having a fully native OpenGL implementation, so I hope Valve have plans to update their other titles.
QuoteHopefully, Valve and other Linux developers can continue improving SteamOS performance to the point where high-end games can be expected to at least run comparably between Linux and Windows. Until then, though, it's hard to recommend a SteamOS box to anyone who wants to get the best graphical performance out of their PC hardware.
This bit caught my attention, as it's not down to Valve or Linux developers. It's down to the game developers, the game porters, Nvidia and AMD pushing performance in their drivers and Vulkan coming along to help out too.
What are your thoughts? Personally, I know I'm going to get less performance, but I'm in it for the long-run here.
Windows has pretty much had a monopoly on PC gaming for how many years? It will take time for Linux performance to catch up. Not even getting into all the game-specific optimizations the driver vendors do on Windows. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI guess if I'm not with you, I'm against you?No, but you do have see who is using a group you belong to, you identify with, to justify doing harm. I do not want to stand idly by while someone who purports to speak for me does harm.
That's why I speak out against Richard Dawkins, despite identifying as an atheist. That's why I speak out against fefe, despite him being in similar computer-ish circles than me. That's why I take a hard stand against the crocodiles, despite being one of those geeks who enjoys the odd game or two.
I just have little patience left for people who so blatently throw in arguments that have been debunked so. many. times. That I have debated so. many. times. This whole blunderbuss boiled over a year ago, and by now, I nearly count people who still unreflectingly parrot the "collusion!" line as lost causes.
And yes, what is "doing harm" is subjective. I do have ideologies and biases -- and I'm quite open about them. And there are certainly issues that are important enough for me that I can't "agree to disagree".
My little digression about certain political issues here in Germany was quite overdrawn, yes. It's a thing that's been on my mind a lot lately, considering I live in the middle of it. There is a significant overlap between the crocs and several factions of neo-reactionaries and identitarians; you just have to look at what Breitbart otherwise publishes, for example.
I don't even mean to insult or implicate Nyamiou; I don't know the person enough to judge one way or another. I wanted them to see from what corner they get their arguments from, their views on culture. And I may have gone a bit overboard there.
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How about people focus on what's being said, rather than the author of the Ars piece eh.
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Is there anywhere a compilation of benchmark comparisons between Linux and Windows? I know I've seen some videos on youtube, but are the charts anywhere online? It would just be nice to compare, since from what I remember Shadow of Mordor has one of the largest discrepancies, while Witcher 2 has maybe 10% lower framerates on average (going by memory again).
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IMHO the impact of those articles, albeit partly or fully true, is huge!
We all know: "There is no second chance to make a first impression".
And this is exactly what I'm afraid of when it comes to the Steam Machines.
While *we* know that there is a good chance Vulkan and other improvements
of the environment might eventually lead to a very good and competitive platform,
most of those articles (maybe intentionally) don't make that clear.
Even worse, it feels like they want to prove that Steam Machines with SteamOS are crap.
And they're doing a damn fine job at this.
I'm really puzzled about Valve's PR department when it comes to the SteamOS.
I'd say they're doing a terrible job. Am I missing anything?
We all know: "There is no second chance to make a first impression".
And this is exactly what I'm afraid of when it comes to the Steam Machines.
While *we* know that there is a good chance Vulkan and other improvements
of the environment might eventually lead to a very good and competitive platform,
most of those articles (maybe intentionally) don't make that clear.
Even worse, it feels like they want to prove that Steam Machines with SteamOS are crap.
And they're doing a damn fine job at this.
I'm really puzzled about Valve's PR department when it comes to the SteamOS.
I'd say they're doing a terrible job. Am I missing anything?
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Quoting: linuxgamerQuoting: pete910Anyone know if the fact geekbench been compiled with clang 3.3(2013) would effect it with regards steamos using the 4xx kernel ? seem to remember reading some good gains in the last few versions of llvm/clang.Of the Top500 supercomputers only 1 uses Windows and 488 use Linux only (entire Top100) http://www.top500.org/statistics/sublist/ . If the floating points calculations would decrease by 10% when using Linux the owners would loose millions to dozens of millions.
I ran the geekbench mark on my own sys, both win and lin,
Don't get how mine got a better score in linux than windows going on what Ars got with the steam machine. Granted I've got win7. Others have done the same with win10 and there linux install has still beat it.
So I there's something going wrong in the current SteamOS build as like you said, The top 500 would be losing a fair chunk I would have thought.
Scores are here
[url=Linux]http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/4178169[/url]
[url=Windows]http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/4178315[/url]
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ElectricPrism Nov 14, 2015
This origin article is dumb. Steam Machines are competing against PS4 and XBONE, they're proven to generally run a higher FPS than those competitions - after all their competitiors cap at 30 FPS.
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Quoting: ElectricPrismThis origin article is dumb. Steam Machines are competing against PS4 and XBONE, they're proven to generally run a higher FPS than those competitions - after all their competitiors cap at 30 FPS.
Uhhh... Actually, most XBone and PS4 titles run at or get near to 60FPS @ 1080p. A few or even a lot don't, but no, the consoles are not capped at 30FPS.
Last edited by D34VA_ on 14 November 2015 at 2:40 am UTC
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Quoting: reaVerShe's known for sleeping with game journalists for promotion of her productsNo.
Quoting: reaVerAnita Sarkeesian who is known for being a manipulative liar.No.
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Quoting: DrMcCoyYes and yes. That is why they are both on the crosshairs, of both male and female gamers.Quoting: reaVerShe's known for sleeping with game journalists for promotion of her productsNo.
Quoting: reaVerAnita Sarkeesian who is known for being a manipulative liar.No.
Also Liam: the point is this: I do not think the numbers are realistic or that they really matter. They seem to have a rather big fps botch while my PC with similar stats (though obviously more cores, more memory and more raw power) but lesser graphics card has both dota and tf2 running at double the fps. Using the article as any form of conclusion is very bad and can have dire consequences to the linux gaming community as a whole. We should not be pushing companies to just 'do it better' or complain about how shitty our OS is, because that will just turn them away. We have made great strides and so have the developers that have tried. Performance will improve over time, as their skills get better and SteamOS gets more optimized.
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