Slashdot Mirror
S3 Linux Driver Outperforms Its Windows Twin In Nexuiz
An anonymous reader writes "Chrome Center has done some benchmarks with the proprietary S3 Chrome 400/500 Driver on Linux and Windows. They compared Nexuiz frame rates on a Phenom II system with a S3 430 GT — the surprising result: The Linux driver outperforms its Windows equivalent, offering frame rates about twice as high on average. The question now: Is the Linux driver that good or the Windows driver that bad?"
What is curious is that only the minimum framerate seems to change (which bumps up the average). The max remains the same, which may indicate that the benchmark is CPU bound.
BBH
Oh FP?
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Perhaps the windows driver has some graphic features enabled and the linux one does not (like trlinear filtering, shaders, etc). Not enough tech output to make a good conclusion.
way back in Quake 3 days I thought Linux was running Quake3 faster than Windows on my nvidia card, only to realize the linux driver did not have one of the graphics features turned on, which caused it to run faster with the same in game settings.
There should be benchmarks for how other cards perform as well. It could just be Nexuiz isn't performant under load on windows.
I note that the tests were done using windows vista. I wonder if this could have anything to do with the encrypted video path.
Having never heard of this game I checked out the webpage. I see it's based on the Darkplaces engine, which is based on the Quake engine open sourced by ID Software back in the day.
The game's screenshots reminds me more of Unreal Tournament than Quake though. Has anyone here played it? What does it play like?
And in this case we are entitled to it.
Apparently, the drivers are supposed to be GPL, but no actual source was released.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
yet another meaningless statistic of "Program X runs better on System Y because driver Z is faster on said system"..
portfolio
You mean it's 2fps instead of 1fps?
This is S3 we're talking about right?
That's just a matter of less people working on the open source driver than the closed source one. If we had all of those people who are working on the proprietary driver work on the open source driver instead, I'm sure that the open source driver would be better than the proprietary one currently is. Likely, the main reason they aren't doing this is to avoid letting NVidia in on all their implementation secrets. Even if they GPL it, NVidia could still grab some ideas without actually stealing the source.
The responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the FOSS community to convince ATI that GPLing proprietary driver source code is a smart decision in the long run (and actually releasing that source code, unlike S3). In addition to their current software engineers, they'll receive free help from FOSS enthusiasts in the community - finding and fixing driver bugs should become a lot faster. Plus, they'll have a lot of people switch to their graphics cards out of support. This should outweigh any intelligence NVidia could gain on them from the source.
So the main reason the open source drivers suck is that they have barely any people working on them, compared to the proprietary drivers. ATI's making a slightly larger step than NVidia, but they're not exactly making a lot of effort if seen in absolute terms.
By analogy, if S3 releases their source like it promised by saying their drivers are GPL, it should also do better.
Member of the 7 Digit UID Club
The S3 drivers for Windows and Linux are like a Ferrari and Lamborghini. Pretty close by themselves. But the Ferrari (Windows driver) is hitched to a trailer loaded with a backhoe (Windows).
Have gnu, will travel.
It's funny you mention Nvidia since the open source version of the NFORCE drivers were so good that Nvidia tells people to use the in-kernel drivers.
Well if they have any sense, they'll realise that their products are more suited for nettops and netbook (lapbook?) type products, and a lot of these are using Linux because they're cheap devices that Windows adds too much cost to. So it's +$50 for XP, or $0 + desktop effects in Linux.
Of course a lot of this is dependent on their parent company VIA actually releasing Nano in meaningful quantities, and the current S3 graphics core getting into VIA chipsets (I think the chipsets are stuck at Chrome 3).
Why should that surprise anyone? They are two OSes. Of course one is going to have better drivers in some cases, worse in other cases. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's intelligent to overlook fundamental differences that can contribute to those differences though, and certainly in comparing the whole OSes against each other, Linux is leaner (yaya it's a kernel I know, shyaddup), so better performance here shouldn't be shocking to anyone. Even some Windows games seem faster in Wine on Linux, but I don't have any frame rate evidence to back that up, plus you have to make sure the game looks identical (same game feature set on both systems).
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Quake style bunny jumping is so off putting
Would it be as off-putting if the character models looked like cartoon rabbits or hares?
The question now: Is the Linux driver that good or the Windows driver that bad?
Wrong question. In fact, that's not even a real question; it's just two sides of the same coin. The real question is whether the Linux driver performs better because it's coded better than the Windows driver, or whether it's because of some deficiencies in the Windows driver architecture, Windows graphics stack or the Windows OS itself. In other words, is this truly a case where Linux is better than Windows? Or is this just a case of one driver being better than another. If it's the latter (as the "question" above implies), they could just write a better Windows driver. Not all that interesting in that case.