Linux GPU Performance

Kristopher Kubicki by TheReckoning · 2004-10-04 06:42 · Score: 5, Funny

Get that man on the KDE team IMMEDIATELY! His parents obviously had a grasp of the KDE naming convention long ago.

It's funny. Laugh.

Penguin-flavored? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-04 06:42 · Score: 4, Funny

Umm, you're supposed to be putting the Linux CDs into the CD drive, not taste-testing them... ;)

What does a penguin taste like, anyhow?

Re:Penguin-flavored? by temojen · 2004-10-04 06:51 · Score: 5, Funny

Herring, probably.
Re:Penguin-flavored? by kfg · 2004-10-04 06:53 · Score: 5, Funny

What does a penguin taste like, anyhow?

Fat chicken.

KFG

ATI vs nVidia by Eeknay · 2004-10-04 06:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wow, this is very surprising. One would expect with similar Windows benchmarks for the X800 to be matching or beating the 6800 Ultra (depending on drivers of course), so these low X800 scores in Linux really are quite a shock.

Re:ATI vs nVidia by Tumbleweed · 2004-10-04 06:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

If low-performing Linux ATI drivers are a shock to you, you haven't been paying attention for a few years. :(
Re:ATI vs nVidia by tempmpi · 2004-10-04 06:53 · Score: 5, Informative

Not really, it is common knowledge that Nvidia's linux binary drivers are much better than Ati's. Not only the performance is better in Nvidia's drivers but they are also more compatible. People often had problems getting ATI's binary drivers working, while Nvidia's drivers are working without problem in most configurations and even problems like 4k stacks were fixed withhin a reasonable time.

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Jan

...vs. same cards with Windows? by TrollBridge · 2004-10-04 06:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

Those numbers are all well and good, but I'd be interested in seeing them side-by-side with the same tests performed (on the same machines, of course) running Windows.

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There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.

Re:...vs. same cards with Windows? by DeckerEgo · 2004-10-04 07:05 · Score: 5, Informative

Here's what they noticed (more of a summary than a benchmarking):
Although this analysis did draw some pretty strong lines as to where each card stand, we were more interested in how each game performed compared to their Windows counterparts. We drew a lot of conclusions from one of our more recent video card analyses from July. Surprisingly, most of our NVIDIA video cards scaled very similarly. Wine games like Jedi Knight took a 10% to 15% hit in performance compared to the Windows tests that we did just a few weeks ago. Other games like Unreal Tournament 2004 actually showed mild signs of an increase in frame rate on the NVIDIA graphics cards. Wolfenstein: ET generally performed with similar average FPS to our video cards from 2003. However, keep in mind that the drivers used then were almost a year old.

My linux GPUbreakdown from independant tests: by stratjakt · 2004-10-04 06:48 · Score: 5, Funny

NVidia: Sort-of

ATI: Kind-of

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I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!

Are you saying by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-04 06:50 · Score: 3, Funny

We can run Linux on a GPU now?

Better drivers and licensing please by Handbrewer · 2004-10-04 06:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

The situation right now is quite frustrating - all distributions should be able to ship the binary drivers for the vendor kernel. It would make it so much easier, than having to get the kernel source and headers before building the module on your own. Thats an unneccesary burden only placed on our shoulders because of some paperwork. 2nd, id like some better drivers please, the ATI drivers are terrible, please stop treating me as a second rank costumer. My money is as good as anybody elses. Thanks so far NVIDIA, now we just need a better license.

Re:Better drivers and licensing please by danheskett · 2004-10-04 07:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Your money is not as good as everyone elses.

90%+ of the market is Windows. To support your 10% slice of the market is vastly more expensive per sale.

Look at this way. If developing, optimizing, and supporting the drivers for a new line of cards was equally as expensive for Linux as for Windows, at say, $1M USD, and the card was expected to sell 10M units, and 90% of the customers are Windows users or OEMS who sell only Windows, then you are looking at a per-unit cost to develop that Windows driver of about $0.11 USD. For the 10% of Linux users, the cost per unit-sold is $1 USD.

Those are assuming all things are equal. I'd wager that for any given company, developing the Windows drivers, including packaging, tweaking, etc is much easier. Add in that Microsoft through its Windows Harward Quality Labs (WHQL or whatever they call it now) basically will subsidize your development costs, I'd imagine that the cost ratio is not 1:1 but much leaner in favor of developing Windows drivers.

So the bottom line is that, in any company, you try to maximize your profitable customers and ditch your unprotifable customers. If the Linux drivers cost only $2 per unit in volume for each sale generated where as the Windows drivers cost only pennies on that dollar, you have a big problem. Over time ATI and nVIDIA sell an awful lot of chips to OEMs and other re-branders who pay very little for hardware. If you are selling chips at $40 (my guess is that this is a high number.. your typical 800-1000 laptop doesn't cost more than 500-600 to build, and most of that goes to Intel/AMD, Micron for RAM and Samsung for LCDs) a unit that $2 cost is suddenely a huge, huge problem.

Of course these numbers are made-up out of broad cloth. But the ratios are real. Linux drivers would have to cost 10 times less to develop to make you an "equal" customer as a Windows customer.

In fact, you are lucky to get anything from nVIDIA or ATI.
Re:Better drivers and licensing please by Handbrewer · 2004-10-04 07:24 · Score: 3, Informative

Well the NVIDIA driver installer does build a module that matches your kernel. I run Debian, and i had to apt-get the kernel source and headers, not a terrible task to do, but should not be necessary to do, just to get the newest driver. I dident say the kernel need recompilation. And you need to modify the XF86Config-4 file from "nv" to "nvidia" in the driver section and thats about it. 30 seconds is about the time yes, but only after i got the kernel headers and source, some 30-40 mbs of source, not that it matters on 10mbit, but for dialups, that would kinda suck i guess :).

Linux Gaming, In Summary by TrollBridge · 2004-10-04 06:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

From TFA:

"High performance gaming on Linux certainly isn't for everyone. We spent weeks preparing for this analysis and we still ran into problems that we could not correct. So many times, we came to a solution for a problem only to find our Linux distribution had some files in a slightly different place or our file dependency tree was completely broken. These are the things that scare away people from Linux."

That is the 100% gospel truth. I couldn't have said it better myself. How then will the Linux community and game publishers overcome this (IMHO) enormous obstacle?

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There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.

Re:Linux Gaming, In Summary by danheskett · 2004-10-04 06:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

Part of the problem is the flexibility that Linux affords.

A highly-componentized system is great for flexibility, but a nightmare for usability and developers.

Microsoft's big-man has a penchant for screaming "Developers Developers Developers", but's he right. Developing a graphics intensive app on the Microsoft platform is a different ball of wax completely from developing on a *nix machine. DirectX works well enough that the developer is able to focus on developing things that add value to their product. There is a lot of that coming from the SDL camp, but truth be told DirectX is a success in the Windows world because of the underlying architectural differences: DirectX being install is a boolean operation: installed or not. (Well, now actually its actually a matter of versions.. all Windows distros have it.. so its just a matter of what version you want to deal with).

Windows has a great success at offering games and graphics heavy packages because of the broad hardware support, the straightforward development model for drivers and the resources MS provides for brand-name developers, and the unified relentless promoting and development of DirectX as a platform.
Re:Linux Gaming, In Summary by Atzanteol · 2004-10-04 08:56 · Score: 3, Informative

I believe that's what the Linux Standards Base people are trying to fix. I've spoken to them at Linux world. Their goal is to eventually be able to have developers say "This program can run on any distro LSB1.0 compliant."

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

- Charles Darwin
Re:Linux Gaming, In Summary by Kethinov · 2004-10-04 09:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

First off, a wide range of apps already runs on Linux. I don't have a problem using it as my desktop OS, nor does anyone else I know once you factor out the difficulty of installing, which is negligible. In fact, my computer illiterate anti-technology parents don't have a single issue using pre installed Linux. It's all the same to them. Click icon here, browse web. Click icon there, read email. Click icon up there, play solitaire.

"Oh, but you maintain it for them!"
Sure I do. But I'd be doing the same damn thing if they ran Windows. Except then I'd be scanning for viruses, removing spyware, etc. There's really no difference.

As for consistency, that's a mute point. There already is a huge number of statically compiled apps which run in any distro. And apps that aren't are provided by your distro's package manager. Why is consistency even an issue at this point? Because you want a ubiquitous distro? Sure, that'd be nice but the world doesn't work that way atm.

If you're talking about ease of use and installation, I'll have sympathy for you. But once installed, the Quake3 tastes just as sweet. All it needs is a little popularity and the real world performance materializes nicely. Stuff like that is proof that Linux IS ready for the desktop and that people are just unwilling to change due to some legacy nonported application or just their unwillingness to learn something new.

To such people I say "what do you really need windows for?" In most cases the answer is nothing except proprietary games. In which case I convince them that games are not as important as running a proper and moral OS (in the sense of free and open as well as unpirated), or I at least encourage them to dual boot. (Even I do that.)

Besides, Linux gets more games all the time. There are only TWO games left that necessitates my windows install. When I stop playing them or they are ported, I will never maintain a windows install again.

You say Linux needs consistency to be a successful desktop OS and I say it needs time. I'm switching people. Friends of mine are switching people. Convincing people to drop the MS monopoly like the bad habit it is is a painfully one-person-at-a-time process.

But each person is worth it.

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You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!

It's all Mesa's fault! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-04 06:52 · Score: 4, Interesting

If it weren't for the spinless Mesa developer for switching away from LGPL licence just to please the incompetent xfree crew, we would have major companies contributing open codes, instead of having them taking stuff and releasing slower, buggy, proprietary drivers.

Remember ALSA? It sticks its gun to GPL right down to the driver, and Creative actually donate SBLive driver for it, when the company was already crushing everyone else (Aureal included) sound card market! This should be how Mesa license the code, not the lame, bogus, xfree licence.

Re:Indeed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-04 06:57 · Score: 5, Informative

For Windows users not familiar with the process, the kernel must be completely recompiled for ATI or NVIDIA drivers to work.

I don't know about the ATI drivers, but this isn't true for the NVIDIA drivers. You can download an installer from NVIDIA that will create a kernel module for you and places it with the other modules. No need to recompile the kernel at all. Just load the module (if the installer doesn't do this for you) and restart your X server.

Lots of good uses for GPUs by temojen · 2004-10-04 06:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

see gpgpu.org for more information.

No Americas Army? by planckscale · 2004-10-04 07:06 · Score: 3, Informative

I've only played 2 games on Linux, America's Army and Postal2. Postal2 looked pretty good but torching people gets boring.

On an nVidia MX 400 card, AA is playable and actually pretty fun online, but shadows are mostly chunks of squares on the ground. Otherwise, rpg's and smoke grenades look fantastic. I wonder why they didn't do comparisons of at least AA? I would think that's one of the first games people download for Linux especially because it's free.

Oh yeah, I had some original difficulty installing the nvidia drivers on a knoppix hd install with the 2.6 kernel, but I finally got it running well and documented the installation here: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10314 &highlight=

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Namaste

What about DRI? by lspd · 2004-10-04 07:10 · Score: 4, Informative

You can find my benchmarks of DRI compatible cards here. They're a first attempt at benchmarking DRI and still need some tweaking.

Eric Anholt's benchmarks of DRI on FreeBSD are here.

Roland Scheidegger's comparison of the three drivers available for the Radeon 9000 (DRI, FGLRX, XIG) is here.

It's a bit surprising that the Radeon 8500 series is completly absent from this comparison. The 8500 and FireGL 8800 are still remarkable video cards.

Proprietary driver hell by freelunch · 2004-10-04 07:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

I have an Nforce2 based MB with built-in video..

For a few months I ran Nvidia's proprietary driver but found that their support was poor. Countless people would report the same problem and Nvidia would basically just shrug and not even reply to the postings on their website. Stuff like "not our problem". They were very slow to support 2.6.

And as a gentoo user, I hated the binary installation program.

I finally dumped their stuff and went to the OSS driver. It is much slower, even when just opening new browser windows or xterms. But not having to mess with nvidia installer hell each time I gen a new kernel (which is pretty rare, actually) makes it worth it.

This was a great article, however, because it shows just how much chance and luck there is in getting these drivers to work. Buying the latest and greatest MB and CPU for use with Linux is still a huge unknown for the novice and experienced Linux user alike. And then there is the very real fear of whether it will work after you upgrade your kernel, etc.

Sad to see that Nvidia is the most Linux friendly vendor??

Re:Proprietary driver hell by cowbutt · 2004-10-04 08:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

I still don't understand why people bash Nvidia because of the binary drivers they provide. In spite of Linux being low on the desktop count, Nvidia is nice enought to provide current drivers for all of their latest cards. They were quick to support the 2.6 kernel. If the driver works and works well why does it matter whether it's open or not?
Oh, little things, like the reassurance of being able to continue to use the hardware I've paid for even if nVidia don't feel like continuing to develop the drivers if-and-when the kernel API changes - like with the recent 4k stacks issue. That, and Free drivers are more stable that proprietary drivers in my experience, and when they aren't, you can look at the code to try to figure out why, rather than crossing your fingers and waiting for a driver update that may never come.
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Re:Proprietary driver hell by brunes69 · 2004-10-04 08:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Oh, little things, like the reassurance of being able to continue to use the hardware I've paid for even if nVidia don't feel like continuing to develop the drivers if-and-when the kernel API changes
Yeah. You mean like my Zoran TV tuner card that hasnt worked since the 2.2 series, despite their being public specs and sources for it? Drivers are only maintained as long as the developer is around. And unless you have the skills to write your own drivers (and most of us, including large numbers of application developers, *don't*), the having specs/source or not is irrelevant.
...like with the recent 4k stacks issue...
You mean the "issue" that nvidia had *working drivers* for within weeks after it was *even an option* in the kernel? You mean the "issue" that "open" drivers like *ahem* ATI have and NVidia does not?
That, and Free drivers are more stable that proprietary drivers in my experience, and when they aren't, you can look at the code to try to figure out why
Again. you are in the vast minority in being able to do this. So don't bash NVidia for catering to the rest of us.

Standardization by acherrington · 2004-10-04 07:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

In my opinion this is the best thing to happen to linux in some time. Any time that you can develop standards for an industry, you can finally give a target for competitors to aim at (e.g. each other). This will drive competition and really drive the market forward. I would consider this a first step forward.

After both ATI and nVidia clobber each other with better framerates and better overall performance, I think that a new competitive advantage will develop... perhaps this may be better graphics quality or easier installs.

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Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.

Re:Indeed by prisen · 2004-10-04 07:11 · Score: 3, Informative

No need to recompile the kernel, true - but you'll have to have your kernel's source installed in order for NVIDIA's installer to compile a custom module on the spot.

All in all, it does work really well...until you upgrade or replace your kernel, and then X of course won't work. Many times you can run the installer again, though. Simple enough!

The real question is by IceFox · 2004-10-04 07:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Planning to plunk down some money soon and what I want to know is: What is the best video card you can get that works in Linux that *doesn't* require binary drivers? I don't perticularly care to be locked into one kernel if given the option. -Benjamin Meyer

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Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?

Re:The real question is by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-04 07:58 · Score: 3, Informative

OEM Radeon 8500 based cards are cheap and are among the fastest cards with open source 3D drivers.

What's the beef with rebooting? by poohsuntzu · 2004-10-04 07:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't get why some users complain about rebooting, linux and windows alike. In a company/mission critical server type situation I could see it, but for home use? My Windows XP machine takes a total of 20 seconds to shut down, pass BIOS, reboot, and hit the desktop ready to work. In that twenty seconds (which mind you, isn't very long to begin with) I can actually do that thing we forget to do, and stretch my legs and arms. Grab a cup of water, hell.. even look out the window.

The same with my slackware machine. About 25-30 seconds for a reboot. None of that bothers me because I -know- 30 seconds on my home machine doesn't mean a damn thing. I'll enjoy that time to rub my eyes, refresh myself with maybe spending that 30 seconds taking all the dishes out of the room back up to the kitchen.

Don't treat 30 seconds as a long and unbearable time unless you want to start complaining about having a manually flushing toliet in your home, followed by hands that can't wash themselves.

--
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"

Why Linux sucks by Animats · 2004-10-04 07:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

Enabling 3D acceleration (DRI) still needs to be done manually by editing the /etc/X11/XF86Config file after running the SaX2 utility. Enabling FSAA must be done by editing the XF86Config file by hand as well (see our AA/AF section for details). After a little more than 8 hours of playing with configurations, we hit paydirt.

Any questions?

This binary driver thing has got to go. As Linux gains desktop market share, pressure will increase to open up the hardware interface to the driver. It's not like hooking OpenGL to the card involves any technology that isn't well known in the industry.

Re:Except by jejones · 2004-10-04 07:24 · Score: 3, Informative

It took nVidia a while to get around to releasing a driver that could deal with 4K stacks, which more recent kernels have switched to from 8K. It was a pain in the posterior for Fedora Core 2 for a while, but no longer. Maybe that's what you're referring to?

nvidia by poohsuntzu · 2004-10-04 07:25 · Score: 3, Informative

There are OpenSource drivers for Nvidia video cards, however they are no where near as fast as the official binaries and can't preform 3d worth a damn.

You have to realise what you are asking here. The binary drivers that you are mentioning (which, by the way, never lock you to a certain kernel) are using the code made by ATI/NVIDIA to take advantage of their hardware's features. PixelShading, 3d processing. Each have their own way for their hardware to preform 3d functioning. This is not something they are going to disclose (they are a buisness too, remember?) and thus the open source drivers for video cards are always going to be horrid compared to the avalaible binaries.

Seriously though. Get a card that works great on linux despite the binary packaging. And I still don't see how it locks you into one kernel? Could you explain further in depth what you mean for me? Because upgrading nvidia (which must be done each time you update/replace your kernel) is as simple as shutting down the X server, rerunning the nvidia binary, and then rebooting the X server.

--
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"

Re:nvidia by erikharrison · 2004-10-04 08:02 · Score: 4, Informative

Have you tried to run multiple kernels with the Nvidia drivers? Everytime I booted into a different kernel, I had to uninstall and reinstall the driver. And what about 4k stacks?

Besides, you didn't answer his question - he said "What's a good card with solid open source drivers?" You said "Nvidia has open source drivers but they suck, you shouldn't care about the binary only drivers."

I'd still advocate a Nvidia or ATI card. ATI makes regular code drops to the DRI and Mesa projects, and the open source drivers are of reasonable quality, and the nv drivers are high profile, with lots of work going into them. These cards are the most likely to see solid render acceleration in the future as XAA is replaced with a new acceleration architecture, so even with the Open Source drivers you'll see best performance with stuff like Composite (the basis of much of the X11 6.8.0 eye candy) with these cards.

Of the two, ATI and Nvidia, the open source drivers seem to be of roughly the same quality in my experience, but the Nvidia binary driver is far superiour to the ATI binary driver. ATI has got more bang for your buck, the GATOS project is working to support a lot of ATI's extra features, and ATI seems minimally more involved in the community with an eye to becoming moreso.

I think that pushes things solidly in ATI's favor if you're absolutely commited to the open source driver. If you're willing to use the binary driver, things become more even - it's ATI's price versus Nvidia's better support for the card under Linux/BSD

Not quite. by temojen · 2004-10-04 07:56 · Score: 3, Informative

DRI lets X communicate with the hardware faster. X acceleration works without it, but not as well.

The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (dri.sourceforge.net), also known as the DRI, is a framework for allowing direct access to graphics hardware in a safe and efficient manner. It includes changes to the X server, to several client libraries and to the kernel. The first major use for the DRI is to create fast OpenGL implementations.

from Gentoo Hardware 3D Acceleration Guide.

Re:Odd by Synn · 2004-10-04 08:07 · Score: 3, Informative

That's the difference between a vendors that supports you and one that doesn't.

NVidia isn't a problem under Linux because they actually put out decent drivers for it. But ATI support is horrid, because the company barely puts any effort into Linux drivers.

Re:plea for help.... by plcurechax · 2004-10-04 08:17 · Score: 3, Informative

I played around with the xfree86.conf (I think that's the name) file, switching "nv" with "nvidia" and back again.

The binary driver is called nvidia. So switch it to that, and leave it.

Read the log file (/var/log/XFree86.0.log), look for lines with (WW) and (EE). This will go a long way to track down your problems.

the DVI output on my card wouldn't work.

Do you mean a second video port? Under Linux the second port (video output) is independent of the first in the XFree86 configuration, so you have to configure it to use it explicitly. Something like 'Screen 1' or 'Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP" ' in the Section 'Device' should do it.

The ATI drivers are bad, but not *that* bad by gotan · 2004-10-04 08:45 · Score: 3, Informative

I gathered some experience with the ATI drivers on Suse 9.1 recently and i too think that they're bad, but it got a little better lately.

While there *is* an "auto-installing" driver-package from ATI you'd better avoid that (unless they fixed a good number of bugs). Just running the package resulted in an error for me, googling around i found some hints and managed to install them: run the package in extract-mode, make manually, ignore error, make install accompanied by some messing with /usr/src/linux/.config.

there is also (for Suse 9.1) an rpm-package. Following the README in that path closely will get the video driver installed. Like nvidia ATIs driver combo too consists of a kernel driver and a n X-driver, and as usual the kernel-driver is a little fiddly to install. There is *no* (longer?) need to compile a custom kernel, you need to install the kernel source though (and really, read the README!).

Be careful though when configuring the XF86config. fglrxconfig is *not* a good idea since it asks you about mouse settings, monitor modes and whatnot, things that are running perfectly well and shouldn't be touched anyway. NVIDIA does a much better job just telling you the few lines you have to change in the config, fglrxconfig produces an XF86config-4 that is mostly useless and contains heaps of garbage.

To make the kernelmodule load automatically add two lines to the "modprobe.conf.local" (i think the first is unnecessary):

install fglrx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install fglrx && { /sbin /modprobe nvidia_agp; /bin/true; } alias char-major-226-0 fglrx

In XF86config load "glx" and "dri" in the Modules sections and put
Driver "fglrx"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
in the device section. If you've got access problems put:

Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0666
EndSection

After restarting the X-server (twice to be sure, and check if the kernel module loaded) "fglrxinfo" should tell you something about ATI (and not Mesa), if that works do a "sync" for good measure and try tuxracer.

In my experience the nvidia-drivers are definitely easier to install, but it's really not impossible to get the ATI-stuff running.

--
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks

Open your wallet by anti-NAT · 2004-10-04 11:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

You mean like my Zoran TV tuner card that hasnt worked since the 2.2 series, despite their being public specs and sources for it? Drivers are only maintained as long as the developer is around. And unless you have the skills to write your own drivers (and most of us, including large numbers of application developers, *don't*), the having specs/source or not is irrelevant.

Why not offer to pay an open source developer to update it ? At least you have that option, independent of the manufacturer's support for doing so.

You going to have the same problem with Linux kernel version 4.0, when Nvidia don't provide a driver for their XYZ card in 2010. Problem is, at that time, you won't have access to the specs, so you won't even have the option of paying an open source developer to update the driver for you.

--
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf

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