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I decided to do a bit of a learning exercise today and do my first ever video comparison between two platforms. I picked Tomb Raider since that's what's hot right now. The performance difference between Windows 10 and Linux is quite large in Tomb Raider.

This is my first ever attempt, but I think it turned out reasonably well. The problem I've found is getting a smooth video of the benchmark on Linux, as all recording software made it slightly stutter (with no effect on actual FPS, tested against my previous results). This happens in some games, others are fine.

The second issue is the Tomb Raider benchmark is actually a little different each time with the animations that happen and their timings. Even in this video the timing of the animations at one point is different, but the rest is fine.

To note: This was on the exact same settings, double checked. High preset, motion blur off.

Tested on
Linux Mint 17.3
Intel i7-5960X
Nvidia 980ti
16GB RAM

Also, the game is actually heavier than the benchmark as I noted in my port report.

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The performance difference is quite striking, and quite sad to see such a major difference in performance when testing it myself. Considering the power of my test rig, I do expect better.

I have no doubt Feral Interactive will push out future patches to improve things. They do support their titles very well, but it's still sad to see such a massive difference. I didn't even realize the difference was so large until I performed these tests. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Benchmark, Video
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54 comments
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Saladien May 1, 2016
quite sad that they released something so unoptimized.
spamatica May 1, 2016
They have ported it to Mac also, right? It would be interesting to know what kind of hardware is necessary there to drive this.
neowiz73 May 1, 2016
it's to be expected though, since the game was originally developed for directx and not opengl.
as long as mid-range hardware gets 60fps roughly as average then that's good to me. as long as there aren't major frame spikes, then the gameplay should be smooth.
GustyGhost May 1, 2016
On the bright side, there's nowhere to go but up! :D

Right now I'm running an unoptimized Tomb Raider port, on unoptimized and world-renowned crappy AMD Linux drivers, all the while using the unoptimal state-machine design OpenGL. I can't wait for AAA games to start picking up Vulkan.
Segata Sanshiro May 1, 2016
Loving the benchmarks and videos making their way onto GOL recently!
Liam Dawe May 1, 2016
it's to be expected though, since the game was originally developed for directx and not opengl.

I tried explaining that to someone, and it descended into hell.
rkfg May 1, 2016
I have no doubt Feral Interactive will push out future patches to improve things.
Yeah, just remember Shadow of Mordor and XCOM 2, how improved they were after the initial Linux release. Hint: just a little, nowhere near the Windows performance and sometimes by downgrading the settings like in XCOM 2.

It's pretty sad to admit but "semi-native" ports from eON perform much better, sometimes even better than the original (ARMA 3). They suffer from stuttering on shader compilation, they crash or freeze from time to time (BS:I wasn't fixed if I'm not mistaken) but when they work, they're better than fully native ports from Feral.

Don't get me wrong, I love Feral and their work, they've already brought several AAA titles to Linux which aren't available via Wine or otherwise. And I don't care much about Windows and FPS there as I don't have Windows for 8 years now. Those are just facts about optimization that probably could be improved further. I'd like to read some technical insights from the Feral programmers, how they do their ports, what challenges they meet, how they profile the game and fix the bottlenecks etc. Maybe knowing the technical difficulties and that some things are just plain impossible to implement fast enough would spice it up a bit.
ziabice May 1, 2016
I uninstalled it.
Mblackwell May 1, 2016
Too bad you can't go back in time and install whatever driver version was out right before the release of the game on Windows. I wonder how many driver specific performance hacks there are for this game by now.
legluondunet May 1, 2016
61 to 154 fps it is enough to have a good gameplay isn't it?


Last edited by legluondunet on 1 May 2016 at 5:43 pm UTC
manus76 May 1, 2016
61 to 154 fps it is enough to have a good gampleay isn't it?

only in the benchmark, the actual game can go into low 20s or even 10s at times. That can be nasty and for some people unplayable.
Guest May 1, 2016
Throw some vulkan on that shit!
Snowdrake May 1, 2016
Can you post your hardware setup ? I'm getting similar results than you (amd fx8150, Nvidia GTX 770) while some people are reporting better framerate under linux.
Liam Dawe May 1, 2016
Can you post your hardware setup ? I'm getting similar results than you (amd fx8150, Nvidia GTX 770) while some people are reporting better framerate under linux.
The setup was in the article but maybe it wasn't clear enough, have tried to make it clearer now.
pedrojmartm May 1, 2016
quite sad that they released something so unoptimized.

So unoptimized you say. I think is very well optimized, it is a Dx game that now runs on OpenGL.
pete910 May 1, 2016
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quite sad that they released something so unoptimized.

So unoptimized you say. I think is very well optimized, it is a Dx game that now runs on OpenGL.

Even on AMD :D
rkfg May 1, 2016
So unoptimized you say. I think is very well optimized, it is a Dx game that now runs on OpenGL.
Look at the link Liam provided, it shows that even Wine is better and, being a brilliant piece of software, it's still not a sentient programmer that's able to debug and optimize the game code. It just translates D3D calls to OpenGL and performs much better than the OpenGL version of the engine written (presumably) from scratch. Why is it so?
manus76 May 1, 2016
Calling it 'very well optimized' is an overstatement. Let's just say it runs and is playable.
The issues have to be named and called out directly so that progress could be made - hopefully this stuff can be patched, regardless of whether it's port or driver problem.
edo May 1, 2016
It doesnt look exactly the same, the color is a bit more bright on the windows side. Its still sad to see than linux only get around 40 - 50% the windows performance, this definitely sucks, there is no other way to say that. Its probably the linux game where I have seen the biggest difference, maybe on windows it was just too optimized.

it's to be expected though, since the game was originally developed for directx and not opengl.

I tried explaining that to someone, and it descended into hell.

I can't blame him, because he has a hardware than its over the recommended settings, and he still get very bad performance. Being rude is never justifiable (as he was), but he has a fair point.

Still, I think we should blame the drivers on this game, (and afaik feral is working with them to improve the performance and bugs) I guess than coming releases will make it run better. I will still play it on linux, since I should get good fps on my machine, but trolls will use cases like this to show why linux gaming must die, that sucks


Last edited by edo on 1 May 2016 at 6:48 pm UTC
scujas May 1, 2016
I am running this game on a alienware steam machine and I am pretty happy with the performance set with good settings.
I dont care about FPS if the game runs fine and I can enjoy it.
You are more likly comparing DirectX with OpenGL and not Linux with Windows and that on a port. What do people expect? I am happy the game is here and I can play it (No Windows household) .
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