Need an easy way to run a bunch of system enhancements? GameMode, originally made by developers at porting studio Feral Interactive has a new release out.
While all of the tweaks can be done by themselves, the point is to have an easy place for anyone and everyone to kick their Linux system into the highest performance possible. A great idea and it's getting quite featured-filled too.
The highlights of GameMode 1.6 include:
- Created a new manpages for gamemoderun and the example, now called gamemode-simulate-game
- Add ability to change lib directory of gamemoderun
- Add option to use elogind
- Copy default config file to the correct location
- Allow LD_PRELOAD to be overridden in $GAMEMODERUNEXEC
- Various minor bugfixes
- Improvements to dependency management
It's worth noting, that most of the work going into GameMode now appears to be from outside contributors, not Feral Interactive directly although they still maintain control over it and do the releases.
Games can actually integrate support for it directly, so that it all becomes automatic if you have GameMode installed. A bunch of Feral Interactive's own Linux ports have it like DiRT 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and multiple more recent Total War titles.
What can you actually do with GameMode? Some of the features currently include adjusting:
- CPU governor
- I/O priority
- Process niceness
- Kernel scheduler (SCHED_ISO)
- Screensaver inhibiting
- GPU performance mode (NVIDIA and AMD), GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)
- Custom scripts
See GameMode on GitHub.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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19 comments
This is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
0 Likes
This is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
Could that be a Manjaro specific thing? On my Ubuntu there is a brief popup every time Gamemode is enabled and disabled.
2 Likes, Who?
This is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
In case that you are using Gnome Shell, I'm using this extension https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1852/gamemode/ for exactly that purpose.
4 Likes, Who?
dziadulewicz Sep 12, 2020
There's no snap or a flatpak for it?
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This is cool and all but the lack of a notification that it started keeps me away from this.
Could that be a Manjaro specific thing? On my Ubuntu there is a brief popup every time Gamemode is enabled and disabled.
It's configurable, with a setting in the config file. It might be that Manjaro's config doesn't have that enabled, or KohlyKohl's DE uses a different command for notifications than what's specified in the config.
It's just a command run at gamemode start and a different command run at gamemode stop. I use the function to stop and start my conky, since sometimes that can cause frametime spikes.
Last edited by CatKiller on 12 September 2020 at 5:50 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
I hope the global enable for Steam library gets figured out and added.
Also one thing that bugs me that I never worked out how to work around are game launchers. I would prefer for game launchers such as Battle.net that gamemode isn't turned on, because I might want to leave it running in the background... And then when I go to launch a game it should activate. I've tried blacklisting Battle.net but that did nothing, of course I might be doing something wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Also one thing that bugs me that I never worked out how to work around are game launchers. I would prefer for game launchers such as Battle.net that gamemode isn't turned on, because I might want to leave it running in the background... And then when I go to launch a game it should activate. I've tried blacklisting Battle.net but that did nothing, of course I might be doing something wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
0 Likes
I think I had to disable it for Shadow of the Tomb Raider or the game wouldn’t run, so it hasn’t seemed very helpful so far 
Ultimately I have no idea what it does or why I would need it.
Ultimately I have no idea what it does or why I would need it.
0 Likes
good to see they didnt gave up on us...
now i just want to hear an new game announcement, pretty please? =\
now i just want to hear an new game announcement, pretty please? =\
1 Likes, Who?
I think I had to disable it for Shadow of the Tomb Raider or the game wouldn’t run, so it hasn’t seemed very helpful so far
Ultimately I have no idea what it does or why I would need it.
From the article:
the point is to have an easy place for anyone and everyone to kick their Linux system into the highest performance possible
Basically, it sets your processors into "performance" mode, and configures a few other settings to maximise the game's performance. Especially useful on laptops, since they might the use the "powersave" mode of the CPU (although most use "ondemand" these days).
This is actually pre-installed on Mint, although I don't get the notifications. I might look into enabling those, as sometimes I forget to add "gamemoderun %command%" in my Steam game's launch options.
Last edited by scaine on 13 September 2020 at 10:42 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
good to see they didnt gave up on us...Check the article:
now i just want to hear an new game announcement, pretty please? =\
It's worth noting, that most of the work going into GameMode now appears to be from outside contributors, not Feral Interactive directly although they still maintain control over it and do the releases.
2 Likes, Who?
DebianUser Sep 14, 2020
I'm wondering why there is not AMD overclocking, since its easyling tweakable from /sys/class/drm/ ?
0 Likes
I'm wondering why there is not AMD overclocking, since its easyling tweakable from /sys/class/drm/ ?
Overclocking should be up to the user.
0 Likes
It should be. But in /etc/gamemode.ini you'll find these lines:I'm wondering why there is not AMD overclocking, since its easyling tweakable from /sys/class/drm/ ?
Overclocking should be up to the user.
; Setting this to the keyphrase "accept-responsibility" will allow gamemode to apply GPU optimisations such as overclocks
;apply_gpu_optimisations=0No idea what it actually does, if anything at all.
1 Likes, Who?
DebianUser Sep 14, 2020
I'm wondering why there is not AMD overclocking, since its easyling tweakable from /sys/class/drm/ ?
Overclocking should be up to the user.
Yes, but the software can provide overclocking options, the user may activate it or not ;).
1 Likes, Who?
DebianUser Sep 14, 2020
It should be. But in /etc/gamemode.ini you'll find these lines:I'm wondering why there is not AMD overclocking, since its easyling tweakable from /sys/class/drm/ ?
Overclocking should be up to the user.
; Setting this to the keyphrase "accept-responsibility" will allow gamemode to apply GPU optimisations such as overclocks
;apply_gpu_optimisations=0
No idea what it actually does, if anything at all.
It seems that when you activate GPU optimisations, like overcloaking, the soft warn the user.
A flag is stored in config file to not warn again and again.
I think that since overcloaking is juste for NVIDIA, you will see this message only if you have a NVIDIA card ?
0 Likes
It seems that when you activate GPU optimisations, like overcloaking, the soft warn the user.What do you mean overclocking is just for Nvidia? I haven't overclocked an AMD GPU myself, but I did undervolt my old RX580 on Linux to deal with the crappy MSI card's overheating problem, and the same tools would have allowed overclocking as well.
A flag is stored in config file to not warn again and again.
I think that since overcloaking is juste for NVIDIA, you will see this message only if you have a NVIDIA card ?
Also, the comment above that setting pretty explicitly states that it'll be gamemode applying the overclocks, doesn't it? Maybe they haven't actually implemented overclocking, but I don't think the setting is supposed to be about notifications.
0 Likes
DebianUser Sep 14, 2020
It seems that when you activate GPU optimisations, like overcloaking, the soft warn the user.What do you mean overclocking is just for Nvidia? I haven't overclocked an AMD GPU myself, but I did undervolt my old RX580 on Linux to deal with the crappy MSI card's overheating problem, and the same tools would have allowed overclocking as well.
A flag is stored in config file to not warn again and again.
I think that since overcloaking is juste for NVIDIA, you will see this message only if you have a NVIDIA card ?
Also, the comment above that setting pretty explicitly states that it'll be gamemode applying the overclocks, doesn't it? Maybe they haven't actually implemented overclocking, but I don't think the setting is supposed to be about notifications.
I'm mean that is stated in the article.
Obviously you can overclock AMD cards if you want to.
From the article, it's seems that overclocking via GameMode is only for NVIDIA cards:
"GPU performance mode (NVIDIA and AMD), GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)"
The comment above just say there is a guardrail in gamemode if you want to overclock (you have to set the option manually in the ini file), and the article says overclock is just for NVIDIA :)
If we go deeper, maybe the article is wrong ?
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GameMode-GPU-Overclock
Here, we can see overclock is for NVIDIA *and* AMDGPU... seems pretty logical because it is trivial to overclock via /sys like i was saying before.
The option in the ini does not prove anything, but this (merged) PR does: https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode/pull/101 ;)
So we can wonder why Liam Dawe has witten "GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)" ? :s
Last edited by DebianUser on 14 September 2020 at 3:54 pm UTC
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So we can wonder why Liam Dawe has witten "GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)" ? :sSeems like a direct quote from the GitHub page. Maybe their Readme isn't up to date.
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Does anyone know how to update from 1.5.1 to 1.6 in terminal?
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