NVIDIA did a big splash at Computex 2021 with the expected announcement of two new top-end GPUs and quite a big surprise for Linux gaming with the official inclusion of NVIDIA DLSS for Proton. Don't know what Proton is? Check out our dedicated Steam Play Proton section.
They said in their official email press release that this is a collaboration between "NVIDIA, Valve, and the Linux gaming community". Currently DLSS is already in the NVIDIA Linux driver (since July 2020) but it doesn't work with Proton right now but that's about to change, so you'll be able to use "the dedicated AI cores on GeForce RTX GPUs to boost frame rates for their favorite Windows Games running on the Linux operating system". NVIDIA said support for Vulkan games is coming this month, with DirectX titles coming "in the Fall".
An NVIDIA engineer also sent us over the links to the freshly squeezed and juicy Pull Requests to get things moving for Proton and Wine:
- dxvk-nvapi: Add to Proton #4877
- loader: Set default regkey for NVIDIA NGX FullPath #111
- proton: Copy DLLs provided by the NVIDIA driver into prefix #4878
So the upcoming NVIDIA 470 driver series should not only have the Wayland support work in, to allow for hardware accelerated GL and Vulkan rendering with Xwayland but also to extend DLSS on Linux to Proton too. That's going to be their biggest driver release for some time.
As for the new GPUs, their new top of the line gaming flagship is the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti which isn't quite as expensive as the 3090 while still offering up some ridiculous performance.
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti - it will be available June 3rd starting at $1199. Here's a comparison:
| RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3080 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA CUDA Cores | 10496 | 10240 | 8704 |
| Boost Clock | 1.70 GHz | 1.67 GHz | 1.71 GHz |
| Memory Size | 24 GB | 12 GB | 10 GB |
| Memory Type | GDDR6X | GDDR6X | GDDR6X |
RTX 3070 Ti - it will be available June 10th starting at $599. NVIDIA said the 3070 has been their most popular of the Ampere line so they've decided to turbo charge it too.
Here's another comparison:
| RTX 3070 Ti | RTX 3070 | |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA CUDA Cores | 6144 | 5888 |
| Boost Clock | 1.77 GHz | 1.73 GHz |
| Memory Size | 8 GB | 8 GB |
| Memory Type | GDDR6X | GDDR6 |
While they both look and sound amazing, the question is: will there be any stock? We're fully expecting them to completely sell out in minutes just like everything else over the last year. NVIDIA announced that both cards will be shipping with a "reduced Ethereum hash rate" to make them less desirable to miners. Will it be enough though?
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Quoting: toojaysHopefully this means Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition will be playable soon. Although I only have a 2060 so maybe it's irrelevant.
Don't think that it has much to do with that. For that vkd3d just needs more complete DXR support than it has now.
fearnflavio Jun 1, 2021
Since most games don't run at 100% (sometimes even not 50% for dx12) compared to windows, that will make Linux gaming more competitive.
Right now I'm playing Nioh 2 and DLSS makes a huge difference.
Control as well and Cyberpunk could get some great benefits from it.
Quoting: toojaysHopefully this means Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition will be playable soon. Although I only have a 2060 so maybe it's irrelevant.Me too and I think for us is even more relevant, since we can get more juice from it. :)
Last edited by fearnflavio on 1 June 2021 at 9:08 am UTC
Just wish you could buy some RTX cards... There are hints it's becoming easier, especially with the low hash rate tweaks to help gamers being leached by miners
I'd always prefer native ports of games as these
give a lot more to quality of life as games are not what I generally do much so I prefer no hussle runs to some real/imaginary benefits from running windows builds...
Last edited by slapin on 1 June 2021 at 1:49 pm UTC
Quoting: slapinWill DLSS work fine for native games/applications?
DLSS 2.0 is already supported in the driver, but the Linux is SDK has not been properly released it seems ... But will all open sourcing work on NVAPI and co, I guess this will come soon.
Very good news since first images of Fidelity FX look fairly blury ... Seems it is just a slightly softened upscaling and nothing more in the end. Plus, considering AMD did not deem necessary to proprely support VK ray tracing on Linux, no reason to think any kind of linux support will come for Fidelity FX anytime soon either.
Wayland support is coming too, which seems like a very good news. That, plus the noise of a big open source driver coming ... who knows, we may yet see the light.
Nvidia also properly enabled virtual gpu support on linux for those who have passtru, seems they are really coming along on properly supporting us. If the Valve handheld uses Nvidia in the end, it would be very fun in fact.
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