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Shadow of Mordor on HD6850 with MESA
ZodiacMentor Oct 22, 2016
Hey, already wrote this post once, but GOL forum decided I'm not worthy of posting. I'll try again.

Hardware: HD6850, Athlon II X4 645, 4GB RAM.
Software: Linux Mint 18 64-bit, MESA 12.1 git (Padoka PPA), kernel 4.8.2-xanmod3

Had the missing geometry, fixed it with "force_glsl_extensions_warn=true MESA_EXTENSION_OVERRIDE=GL_ARB_arrays_of_arrays %command%". However, it seems to have come with an fps drop (either the increased geometry that was supposed to be there in the first place, or something else entirely)

Tried __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1, didn't see any noticeable effect.

So, yeah, my setup is VERY outdated, but I've been able to get games running at least at 720p30, which I'm okay with it - I'm used to living with a very outdated tech. However, the framerate in Shadow of Mordor is unbearable, even for me. With the lowest settings I get avg ~10 FPS, min ~4 FPS.

After some testing it seems that my CPU shouldn't be bottlenecking here (~20% load on all cores), memory should be enough (well under 4 G memory usage). GPU on the other hand is putting out 100% usage stats throughout.

There's something odd though: I get the same FPS results regardless of resolution. 20% (384x216) I get avg 11FPS, min 4FPS, with 100% (1920x1080) I get avg 10FPS, min 4FPS, and with 200% (3840x2160) I get avg 8 FPS, min 3 FPS. I'm getting the feeling there might be something unimplemented in the driver or something.

Any ideas how to workaround this? Any magical MESA switch that would get me at least 10FPS more? To be honest, I could probably play the game even with 384x216 at 20fps. Or do the official drivers work better? (Wouldn't actually want to install them, for reason. Is fglrx/catalyst even a thing anymore?) Could I get more FPS by changing distros? I was thinking about changing to Xubuntu.
MaCroX95 Oct 22, 2016
I've noticed that OpenGL games for some reason do not scale well with FPS when lowering the resolutions or minimizing the graphics' settings... This might be an optimization problem since OpenGL perhaps doesn't provide the same scaling as DirectX does...

Regarding your problem I cannot help you since I'm Intel & Nvidia user :)
Liam Dawe Oct 22, 2016
It's probably quite likely that the FPS drop is as a result of the game actually loading everything it needs to. A game not displaying everything will obviously perform better.
crt0mega Oct 24, 2016
You could try to add some of the other environment variables Paulo Dias is recommending here. Skip "sisched" – it only works with Southern Island GPUs.
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