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Since Feral Interactive have fixed up the OpenGL renderer in the Mad Max [Steam] Beta, here are some fresh OpenGL vs Vulkan tests.
I already cleared up the issue before and included some manual testing, see here.
These new tests are re-done using their benchmark feature, which is unique to the Linux version. This should now give a much more accurate look at how OpenGL fares against Vulkan in some heavy areas of the game.
Also, Feral have now made public how they have worked around a Linux performance issue. You might remember my post about tuning your CPU performance governor for Vulkan games, well this is partly where that came from (as well as Serious Sam). Essentially, to prevent the CPU performance being reduced due to less CPU use with Vulkan, Feral are spinning their rendering thread while waiting for the GPU (see here).
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) +6% to +15% when using Vulkan.
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) -20% to +45% when using Vulkan. Looks like there's an odd issue with Vulkan performance there, but I'm not the only one who has seen Vulkan sometimes do a little worse.
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) +3% to +11% when using Vulkan.
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) +1% to +6% when using Vulkan.
Some thoughts: A fair amount of their time during the Beta so far has likely been spent fixing up the regressed OpenGL side and when taking into consideration Vulkan is considered "Beta", it's likely Feral has optimizations left to do with Vulkan.
You might not think much of a 5% increase, but for people on lower-end hardware a 5% increase can mean a world of difference. I've seen a few people on GOL and Reddit say Vulkan has made it go from sluggish to smooth, which is a clear win.
We also have to consider that the OpenGL renderer in the Mad Max beta has also seen some optimizations since the original release. The original release doesn't have the benchmark mode, so we can't test that in the same way along side the beta.
Then there's also the drivers, Vulkan drivers are new and evolving and likely have their own sets of issues to be fixed. Some of which could affect performance. Sure Vulkan is supposed to have smaller drivers, but with so few Vulkan games out no driver has truly been tested.
Be sure to share your latest results in the comments, I'm keen to see what it's like on your systems too.
Finally, Feral are keen for feedback, email them direct here: [email protected] Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I already cleared up the issue before and included some manual testing, see here.
These new tests are re-done using their benchmark feature, which is unique to the Linux version. This should now give a much more accurate look at how OpenGL fares against Vulkan in some heavy areas of the game.
Also, Feral have now made public how they have worked around a Linux performance issue. You might remember my post about tuning your CPU performance governor for Vulkan games, well this is partly where that came from (as well as Serious Sam). Essentially, to prevent the CPU performance being reduced due to less CPU use with Vulkan, Feral are spinning their rendering thread while waiting for the GPU (see here).
Benchmarks
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) +6% to +15% when using Vulkan.
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) -20% to +45% when using Vulkan. Looks like there's an odd issue with Vulkan performance there, but I'm not the only one who has seen Vulkan sometimes do a little worse.
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) +3% to +11% when using Vulkan.
Here we have a performance difference of between (approx) +1% to +6% when using Vulkan.
Some thoughts: A fair amount of their time during the Beta so far has likely been spent fixing up the regressed OpenGL side and when taking into consideration Vulkan is considered "Beta", it's likely Feral has optimizations left to do with Vulkan.
You might not think much of a 5% increase, but for people on lower-end hardware a 5% increase can mean a world of difference. I've seen a few people on GOL and Reddit say Vulkan has made it go from sluggish to smooth, which is a clear win.
We also have to consider that the OpenGL renderer in the Mad Max beta has also seen some optimizations since the original release. The original release doesn't have the benchmark mode, so we can't test that in the same way along side the beta.
Then there's also the drivers, Vulkan drivers are new and evolving and likely have their own sets of issues to be fixed. Some of which could affect performance. Sure Vulkan is supposed to have smaller drivers, but with so few Vulkan games out no driver has truly been tested.
Be sure to share your latest results in the comments, I'm keen to see what it's like on your systems too.
Finally, Feral are keen for feedback, email them direct here: [email protected] Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I'd like to confirm that on i5 6600 with gtx 970, the performance gain is enormous, from like 55-60 fps on OpenGL (original 1.0) on a very high preset to a constant 90+ fps which almost catches up with the dx11 version performance (approximately 105fps on average)
So in other words, worse the CPU, bigger the gain from vulkan :P
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 5 April 2017 at 8:12 am UTC
So in other words, worse the CPU, bigger the gain from vulkan :P
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 5 April 2017 at 8:12 am UTC
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Kuduzkehpan Apr 5, 2017
keep in mind beta stage of vulkan drivers and unmature vulkan coding + porting from directx codebase
this resaults are promising for future. just think about native vulkan coding and resaults.
it will be amazing.
this resaults are promising for future. just think about native vulkan coding and resaults.
it will be amazing.
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It's hard to hit Windows levels with games that were never designed with Linux or anything but DirectX in mind.i know this, but the reasons dont matter, what matter is the facts.
linux is better, that is a fact, but the games run worse on it because porting without an major shift in the code (like rewrite from scratch in gl) will cost performance.
the end user will not care the reason the game run slow, if he can play the game on windows and cant on linux he will blame the system, or even if he understand, he will not use it.
gamecube was more powerfull than ps2, that didn't matter because ps2 got all the 3rd party games.
its very unlikely some one will give up on windows for linux or even dualboot, if they have 0 reasons to do it.
Any work they do on their Vulkan rendering will get it ready for future ports I'm sure.i understand what you mean, you mean those parsers that translate Dx into Vulkan (like indirectX that translate Dx to GL, or rewriters...)
i dont know how feral do their job, maybe they can comment on it.
i hope you're right.
i guess they use some kind of auto translation tool, then futher improve it by tweeking the code by hand, starting by profiling it to see what functions take more time to complete or run more often...
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Hm, the old OpenGL version is still faster than the new one, and in some places faster than Vulkan.you can drive at 50Mp/h (80hm/h) to go faster.
/joke
As with Rise of the Tomb Raider on DX12, the difference is not going to be as noticeable on brute-force CPUs or GPUs as it is with older, lower-performing multi-cores.we dont have rise of tombraider, we have tombraider 2013.
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It would be nice to see the same benchmarks for a system with a less powerful CPU. No offence to Liam here the benchmarks are nice to see but his CPU is a beefy one and thus was probably less affected by the CPU bound issue when using OpenGL than someone using an i5 say, I think that could show even better gains as the benefit will release the GPU more from bottlenecks.so you can donate am weak cpu to liam, so he can test it...
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this improvment is not enough to make the performance better than windows, so no one will install linux just to play an game that he/she cant play on windows due to weak hardware.
and feral could have spent this time porting other games, sure, it cost more, but they will not make many extra sales from improving the performance on this one, porting others they will...
I'm pretty sure that Feral people are smart enough to decide what to do next for themselves. If I was in Feral's position this patronizing would drive me mad.
1 Likes, Who?
Facts stained posting incoming...It's hard to hit Windows levels with games that were never designed with Linux or anything but DirectX in mind.i know this, but the reasons dont matter, what matter is the facts.
linux is better, that is a fact, but the games run worse on it because porting without an major shift in the code (like rewrite from scratch in gl) will cost performance.
the end user will not care the reason the game run slow, if he can play the game on windows and cant on linux he will blame the system, or even if he understand, he will not use it.
And your point is? What do you expect? There is a certain market share of people who (solely) use Linux for whatever reason (attitude, ecosystem, tools, tasks, ...) Quite a few people also like to play games. They are served. Period. I don't expect people to switch to Linux because here "the games run just as fast as on Windows". The vendor lock-in is impossible to break for an open source operating system. (That doesn't mean a desktop OS can not successfully replaced by OSes on other devices - see Android.)
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And your point is? What do you expect?
It would be nice to have new reasons to switch to Linux to show to Windows users.
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And your point is? What do you expect? There is a certain market share of people who (solely) use Linux for whatever reason (attitude, ecosystem, tools, tasks, ...) Quite a few people also like to play games. They are served. Period. I don't expect people to switch to Linux because here "the games run just as fast as on Windows". The vendor lock-in is impossible to break for an open source operating system. (That doesn't mean a desktop OS can not successfully replaced by OSes on other devices - see Android.)
None of the things that you mentioned drives me to use linux... it's just that there is no better alternative on the market, Windows 10 and all its' bad aspects like privacy concerns, closing things up, consolizing PC gaming and service OS is the future of Windows which is incredibly dangerous for users because MS can do anything with it once they get the marketshare... who knows push their Store even further, push proprietary standards and DX12, push their own shitty ecosystem (like Skype, OneDrive, Bing...), mess with your computer settings without your knowledge with ads and similar and users can literally do nothing but watch when it is too late. MS has lately become that one company without which computing would be a better place, instead of making it better they actually started holding things back just to keep their monopoly and expand their ecosystem.
Having that said it is important for Feral, Valve, Aspyr and other companies that develop software to embrace open standards, to prove people that Vulkan can be compared to DX12 and embrace the cross-platform availibility because Windows users do need a backup plan if things get too messy there just like I needed it back when I switched to linux (things were a lot buggier then though, now things are getting pretty serious and stable). And there is no better place where to embrace the open standards than linux, because it is beyond MS's reach.
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It's hard to hit Windows levels with games that were never designed with Linux or anything but DirectX in mind.The biggest thing Linux excels in (according to a windows game player/linux for work user) is disk I/O. He said that pressing quicksave is not noticable on linux (using wine), while on windows the whole system freezes during the save.
All my encounters with windows confirm this: disk I/O, swap and network I/O is what linux excels in. Any windows virtual machine on a linux system (using KVM) is also pretty fast. Windows native usually needs a few gig's extra RAM to cope with bad design.
The bad swapping behaviour can be handy in loading. Although a good mmap should work wonders.
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Mohandevir Apr 5, 2017
I'd like to confirm that on i5 6600 with gtx 970, the performance gain is enormous, from like 55-60 fps on OpenGL (original 1.0) on a very high preset to a constant 90+ fps which almost catches up with the dx11 version performance (approximately 105fps on average)
So in other words, worse the CPU, bigger the gain from vulkan :P
I see something taking shape here...
Speculation alert!
Vulkan becomes the defacto solution giving Linux a lot more support from game studios and modern i3 cpus able to handle older titles... We will see a new generation of i3 gaming rigs thus lowering the costs and giving better competition to traditional consoles... Linux SteamVR in thee pipeline... Steam Machine 2.0 confirmed!
Just the wishfull thinking of a Linux fanboy. :)
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edddeduck_feral Apr 5, 2017
We will see a new generation of i3 gaming rigs thus lowering the costs and giving better competition to traditional consoles
Or (more likely?) developers will think we have all these unused CPU cycles now, lets increase the complexity and make use of them! ;) History shows if you have spare cycles people don't make lower powered devices they make more complex games :)
Last edited by edddeduck_feral on 5 April 2017 at 4:20 pm UTC
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Mohandevir Apr 5, 2017
We will see a new generation of i3 gaming rigs thus lowering the costs and giving better competition to traditional consoles
Or (more likely?) developers will think we have all these unused CPU cycles now lets push up the complexity some more make use of them! ;) History shows is you have spare cycles people don't make lower powered devices they make more complex games :)
For sure, but isn't it going to be handled by the gpu?
I see some kind of Nvidia Tegra (Nintendo switch, Nvidia Shield) pattern being replicated in the PC space, in that case. Big GPU, small cpu.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 April 2017 at 4:22 pm UTC
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Or (more likely?) developers will think we have all these unused CPU cycles now, lets increase the complexity and make use of them! ;) History shows if you have spare cycles people don't make lower powered devices they make more complex games :)
... or just less optimization.
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edddeduck_feral Apr 5, 2017
We will see a new generation of i3 gaming rigs thus lowering the costs and giving better competition to traditional consoles
Or (more likely?) developers will think we have all these unused CPU cycles now lets push up the complexity some more make use of them! ;) History shows is you have spare cycles people don't make lower powered devices they make more complex games :)
For sure, but isn't it going to be handled by the gpu?
If you have lots of free resources you can always find something for them to do. I also guess the point is games don't ever go backwards in terms of resource demands only forwards. Finally i3 CPUs are already underpowered for certain games (even with Vulkan) so I can't see low powered CPUs suddenly playing high end games at high settings. It will make certain games with certain limitations more playable but it won't suddenly change everything and make an i3 a gaming CPU. The lack of cores for one is a big factor on i3 CPUs.
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Mohandevir Apr 5, 2017
We will see a new generation of i3 gaming rigs thus lowering the costs and giving better competition to traditional consoles
Or (more likely?) developers will think we have all these unused CPU cycles now lets push up the complexity some more make use of them! ;) History shows is you have spare cycles people don't make lower powered devices they make more complex games :)
For sure, but isn't it going to be handled by the gpu?
If you have lots of free resources you can always find something for them to do. I also guess the point is games don't ever go backwards in terms of resource demands only forwards. Finally i3 CPUs are already underpowered for certain games (even with Vulkan) so I can't see low powered CPUs suddenly playing high end games at high settings. It will make certain games with certain limitations more playable but it won't suddenly change everything and make an i3 a gaming CPU. The lack of cores for one is a big factor on i3 CPUs.
Thanks for your insight.
Still the Mad Max experience seem to demonstrate that lower end cpu gains a lot more from Vulkan than i7 cpus. I'm not saying that i3s are going to dethrone i5 or i7. I just think that it will make them valuable entry gaming rigs when it was nearly unplayable not log ago. Also, I have in mind the i3-7320 or i3-7350k and futur iterations with High clock frequencies.
But I'm probably wrong.
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edddeduck_feral Apr 5, 2017
Thanks for your insight.
Still the Mad Max experience seem to demonstrate that lower end cpu gains a lot more from Vulkan than i7 cpus. I'm not saying that i3s are going to dethrone i5 or i7. I just think that it will make them valuable entry gaming rigs when it was nearly unplayable not log ago.
It'll certainly help for quite a few games.
Also, I have in mind the i3-7320 or i3-7350k and futur iterations with High clock frequencies.
But I'm probably wrong.
We'll see :) I'm just guessing too. Check back in a year and you can tell me if you were right :D
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Mohandevir Apr 5, 2017
Thanks for your insight.
Still the Mad Max experience seem to demonstrate that lower end cpu gains a lot more from Vulkan than i7 cpus. I'm not saying that i3s are going to dethrone i5 or i7. I just think that it will make them valuable entry gaming rigs when it was nearly unplayable not log ago.
It'll certainly help for quite a few games.
Also, I have in mind the i3-7320 or i3-7350k and futur iterations with High clock frequencies.
But I'm probably wrong.
We'll see :) I'm just guessing too. Check back in a year and you can tell me if you were right :D
Lol!
That's why I wrote: "Speculation Alert!"
Thanks, I totally respect your inputs, you have much more knowledge than I do about game development. :)
Edit: Btw, keep doing your awesome work! With the exception of strategy games, I bought all the one you ported. The next and only one on my wishlist, atm, is Dirt Rally. It's just a matter of time. My backlog is full! #Thumbsup.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 April 2017 at 5:03 pm UTC
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I was wondering why there was still one core with 100% on Vulkan. That explains it.
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Tomorrow Unigine Superposition will be released. This will show us all that we desperately need new hardware. We'll be ready for the next generation of games. :D
Probably because Mad Max in itself is not a game well optimised for using all cores. Vulkan can reduce the port overhead, it cannot make a game better.
I was wondering why there was still one core with 100% on Vulkan. That explains it.
Probably because Mad Max in itself is not a game well optimised for using all cores. Vulkan can reduce the port overhead, it cannot make a game better.
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