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Nvidia Doubles Linux Driver Performance, Slips Steam Release Date
leppi writes "Nvidia has announced a huge increase in Linux gaming performance for their GeForce R310 drivers after almost a year of development alongside Valve and other game developer partners. Nvidia's announcement also indicated the Steam beta for Linux should be out today. Quoting: 'Available for download at www.geforce.com, the new R310 drivers were also thoroughly tested with Steam for Linux, the extension of Valve's phenomenally popular Steam gaming platform that officially opened to gamers starting today. ... Comparing 304.51 driver performance of 142.7 fps versus 310.14 driver performance of 301.4 fps in beta build of Left for Dead 2. All tests run on the same system using Intel Core i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz with 8 GB memory, GeForce GTX 680 and Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit.'"
Update: 11/06 21:00 GMT by S : Valve has gone ahead and announced the Steam for Linux Beta. They've sent invites to a number of people who filled out the application, and they'll be inviting more as the test goes along. The beta test is available for installation on Ubuntu 12.04, with support for other distros to come: "We intend to support additional popular distros in the future; we’ll prioritize development for these based on user feedback."
Hardcore video games have traditionally been one of the sticking points against getting PC users to adopt GNU/Linux. But with big companies (Valve and NVIDIA) committed to bringing hardcore video games to the GNU/Linux platform, what else is in the way of making 2013 the year of the Linux desktop?
Is it measured in Valve Time?
I'm sure everyone is also interested in seeing how the performance compares to drivers on other operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X). Is there a link to such a comparison? It helps to put things into perspective. (I'm too lazy to google it =)
Since Steam now provides programs, including one that updates your drivers, why not release the major drivers on the platform directly? Take advantage of the Steam (torrent hybrid) distribution method and get auto updates. - HEX
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Nvidia's announcement also indicated the Steam beta for Linux should be out today
I think Valve's announcement kinda indicated that too.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This event marks a new dawn of popularity for Linux. This is awesome. So sorry to see you go M$. You have been resigned to the bone-yard of has-been techology companies. Say Hi to IBM for me.
Sent from my ENIAC
the year of Linux on desktop?
Will the evil Microsoftians interfere?
Will the diablolical Appleites unleash the dooms day Software and Plastic part patents?
????
Stay tuned!
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Music to my ears, baby! :)
How nice except that 304.10 won't compile against the 3.7 kernel source and nVidia says it will try to get that working by the next release...
I wish nVidia would stop being so protective about it's API's and just work with nouveau. If there's a few bits here or there that must remain proprietary, they could release those with a nonfree license and make the rest open...I refuse to use something with no support for a framebuffer console.
I've been running 64-bit Windows and Linux since 2007. Where is this suck you speak of?
I suppose you could have been one of the sad few who used a Pentium 4 instead of the much better Athlon 64 chip.
Will programs using the CUDA libraries have increased performance as well?
Nvidia needs to get their shit together and at least put some of the driver in the mainline kernel.
At least all the Source games should run fine on the intel driver.
Really - 150 FPS versus 300? No one could ever tell the difference - not even your monitor! I don't get this whole obsession with FPS, especially when monitors can't even do it this fast.
This is the linux crowd we are talking about here...
Ubuntu 12 is such an arbitrary term for a "typical" linux user.
How about, naming compatibility with kernels and hardware? Anyone could make their 10.10 (with gnome) install appear to be 12.whatever
3.7 is not out of RC yet, Im pretty sure the nvidia driver has never worked for me without hand fixing build issues on RC kernels. distro's wont adopt 3.7 until a few months later too. Bleeding edge usually involves some pain and tinkering now and again
the Nvidia driver is available as 64 bit (listed under legacy and beta drivers)
Steam has previously said they're starting with 32 bit, and will get 64 bit out later. Hey, its beta. Nothing should be considered final.
1) high frame rates in a basic game imply better frame rates in a more complicated game, or at higher resolution
2) high max frame rates imply a higher minimum frame rate, which is actually noticeable if it drops too low
Considering Prescott introduced X86-64 to the P4 in September of 2005 and Cedar Mills made it universal in 1H 2006 I fail to see how your bragging about an Athlon 64 is 2007 has any relevance.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Assuming you install the 32bit libs, seems like it should not be any issue to run 32bit steam on a 64bit OS.
This means that it was running that crappy PAE kernel.
Far better to test on a 64 bit OS instead.
10 % better than Windows if the numbers at
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/geforce-gtx-670_4.html
can be used straight away (which they possibly can to some extent as Left for Dead 2 probably isn't CPU bound) for GTX 680
Windows - 276 fps
Linux - 301.4 fps
Quite an improvement anyhow!
Congratulations to all involved!!!
"All tests run on the same system using Intel Core i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz with 8 GB memory, GeForce GTX 680 and Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit."
8 GB of RAM, and they're using the 32 bit version of Ubuntu ?
I know it's what Ubuntu is recommending by default, but come on, with the rig they have, why go for 32 bit?
Does this mean the mobile chips will see an improvement as well? It sure would be nice to watch HD video without huge amounts of page tearing.
It's gotten better of the years, but it's still a rather large and annoying issue with these chips. Though it could be worse, I could be stuck with an AMD (ati) chipset.
I think he meant AMD64, which is what x86-64 is more properly called.
64 bit opertons were available in 2003. Intel back then was still touting Itanic.
Can any driver developers comment on how this was achieved? I know I haven't been programming OpenGL for very long, but all I see it doing is writing the data to the card and running the shaders on that data. Data transfers should already be going at full speed, so I don't see much possible improvement there. I also can't see how shader compiler improvements could result in doubled performance. Typically, compiler changes speed things up by a few percent and I don't believe that nVidia's compiler was that bad before. So what was sped up exactly? And frankly, aside from compiling the shaders and memcpying data to the card, I'm puzzled what the driver is doing anyway?
How many more clues do you guys want? The Steam Game Console is coming!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
My ISP makes downloading warez a PITA. For example they ban bittorrent entirely
What does your ISP's representative say when paying subscribers complain about not being able to update World of Warcraft?
AMD made their graphics drivers open source. This allowed Valve to put in more debug messages and benchmarks into them for testing purposes. This is just as important as the new drivers from nVidia.
You appear to claim that "reality" will continue to keep the GNU/Linux environment from becoming a compelling choice for home use after the games obstacle is removed, especially now that Windows 8 is starting to look more like a tablet environment than like the desktop environment that people are used to. Exactly what aspect of reality are you talking about?
Gnome? I won't let a lawn ornament stand in the way of my clean PC. I just did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and set it up the way I wanted.
Why you would want the non-linux users opinion on linux I don't know.
Perhaps they think that if they ask "When you tried Linux, why did you abandon it?", they can squeeze some insights out of the answers about how to improve the Linux user experience.
The first Athlon64 and Opteron series were released in 2003.
It took intel 2 years to release a cpu with AMD64 support, and those P4s were dog slow in 64 bit mode.
Why? Because intel was still trying to push Itanium.
I believe Cedega died because Wine was beating it out in terms of maturity/compatibility. Near the end, many games worked fine on Wine but still had issues in Cedega, so all it had going was a GUI.
DRM used to be an issue with Wine but most of the games I have that used to have DRM issues work fine now.
I totally agree with that sentiment. If the kernel boys aren't going to offer some binary compatibility between versions then Nvidia should just write a wrapper for the kernel that calls into the proprietary driver internals.
Like ndiswrapper but for graphics.
What is the face of linux on the desktop to the casual user?
For anyone whom I introduce to GNU/Linux nowadays, the face of GNU/Linux is Xubuntu, whose Xfce desktop you called "resurgent".
cellphone-derived hardware
You didn't tell me it was a wireless ISP. In that case, I wouldn't be surprised if the answer were "if you want to update WoW, bring your computer to the nearest coffee shop." And in fact, this does happen in Panera and elsewhere.
It's good that performance has increased by greater than 100%, but it does no good if I can't see the difference on my 60 fps monitors, nor anybody elses the top-of-the-line 120 fps monitors.
:-(
Note how the press release didn't state what resolution the game was running at? Was it running at 640x480? (useless, but quite likely) or 2560x1600? (impressive if it were true, but highly unlikely). What were the quality settings?
Both AMD and NVIDIA play this "numbers" game... whenever a new "performance" driver comes out, and claims "25%" gains for a certain game, it usually means 25% in one specific instance that nobody uses, but you'll probably get 2-5% if you're lucky.
Some of us were running 64bit systems in the 90s...
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Hai guys can I play in the ancient processor epenne waving contest?
:-)
You know back in 1999 the IBM PPC 7400 "G4" series had 128 bit command extensions so I figure that beats your 64 bit processors twice over!!!
All my Linux machines have 64bit installed. There's no lack of availability for drivers or applications for 64bit in Linux.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
You can get nvidia 64bit drivers from their site. The web page will automatically know you are using a 64bit Linux and offer that version. You can override it and download any version you wish.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
CPU arch aside, you make a game with opengl and it will work on pc, mac, linux, windows, tablets, phones..... can't say that about DX.
Make a game with DirectX and it'll work on Windows. If your company is big enough and its previous games have sold well,* it'll work on Xbox 360 too. In genres traditionally associated with gamepads, Xbox 360 compatibility is a big plus because as I understand it, not a lot of people are willing to buy gamepads for use with PCs, tablets, or phones.
* I intended this as an approximation of the criteria to become licensed to develop for consoles.
Have they changed their stance on their Optimus feature that they infamously said "would never be supported under linux"? For those unaware of it, laptops now ship with 2 GPUs : a small one, low performance and low conso, usually an Intel one, and a high-end one, that is started when GPU intensive tasks are started. Optimus is the undocumented feature that allows to switch between these two.
It is not supported in the linux nVidia driver, it was said by nvidia official they would never support it and they didn't even give the OSS developers the little hints they need to make a workaround.
Unless this silliness (that made Linus call them many names) is solved, I am unlikely to buy any laptop with a nVidia board.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I hope this means Valve is also working on their own distro of Linux. (And hopefully it's 64-bit...) In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they already have something in Alpha.
Another alternative is to buy Linux pre-installed.
I would, but I don't know of any dealers with showrooms in Fort Wayne, Indiana, so that I can try out a laptop's keyboard and screen before I buy. Mail ordering is fine for desktop PCs, but it has its drawbacks for laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
And there are also plenty of binaries out there that do come from trusted sources, Opera for example
So what should a software publisher do to prove its trustworthiness, especially if the publisher is a startup that hasn't been operating long enough to draw the attention of a major distributor like Valve?
Or because Windows works fine for us and the alternatives lack significant features (like a 20 year library of AAA games) that are important.
A 20-year library would include DOS games and Windows 3.1 games, and 64-bit Windows can't run those without an emulator. On the other hand, Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel has the Virtual Console categories with officially emulated games dating back to the fourth quarter of 1985 when the NES was released.
As humans take back ownership of their content consumption and creation environments enabled by these fully mobile devices
Creation? Good luck entering large amounts of text or drawing things with pixel precision using only a capacitive multitouch screen. Even what some people call "consumption" (which makes me think of TB) is crippled on a completely flat sheet of glass; it's hard to control a character in a platform game without being able to feel where the on-screen buttons are. I'm working on an essay about the implications of using a touch screen as a device's only input device.
until eventually I wean him off the crippled system his mother insisted we get for him.
Until companies start selling devices that are crippled in another way: they use cryptography to block execution of software that the device's manufacturer doesn't approve. This is already the case with phones and tablets by Apple and Microsoft, and if they wanted, they could wipe Android off the map of this country with patent lawsuits.
NVidia does have a wrapper. (They had to, to comply with the GPL.) They still can't make a driver that'll work.
Rethinking email
I totally agree with that sentiment. If the kernel boys aren't going to offer some binary compatibility between versions then Nvidia should just write a wrapper for the kernel that calls into the proprietary driver internals.
Guess how the Nvidia driver already works. AFAIK it has always worked that way. The shim will never be accepted upstream though.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I'm always amused by this concept of "Hardcore Gaming"! It's just gaming. There isn't anything hard-core about it. All the wannabee soldiers etc that think they are playing "Hardcore" need to man up and join the military and get off the couch!
By "casual" games, I was referring to games comparable in complexity to the sort of Flash games seen on Kongregate, Newgrounds, and the like. I may have committed a misnomer. What's the appropriate term for that level of complexity?
I have acquired three Windows cloud desktops through services like OnLive. Through Citrix and VMWare View I have access to an unlimited number of desktops with this tablet. [...] My phone has LTE and hotspot
Can you use these desktops while you have zero bars? I can use my 10" laptop while riding the city bus without needing to spend hundreds of dollars per year on a cellular data plan. How much do you pay the telco per month for a cellular plan that includes "LTE and hotspot", and how much more rent do you pay per month to live in a major city that has LTE compared to a smaller city that lacks it? And what do you do when you run out of LTE data allowance for the month?
My tablet has the dock, so I can attach Wacom tablets, keyboards, mice, trackballs, and even Microsoft's Kinect if I want to.
Keyboards, mice, and trackballs I'll grant because those devices use class drivers that I know are in Android. But I wasn't aware that tablets came with drivers for Wacom tablets or Kinect sensors. Even the driver for USB flash drives requires rooting on a Nexus 7, and I was under the impression that things like Netflix would refuse to run on rooted devices.
Nobody in their right mind would pay more for a Surface intending to defang the prevention of choice implicit in it when they could just buy a Nexus 10
Unless they don't want to have to buy, carry, keep charged, and buy data plans for both a Surface to run Windows RT-exclusive applications and a Nexus 10 to run Android-exclusive applications.
With not nearly as much software as you have on it now on Windows 7 64-bit nor as likely well-done versions, considering most software gets better as it matures and with as much time for improvement in that timeframe (where on Windows 7 I can run my 32-bit wares 'seamlessly' ala Os/2 Warp-style from way back when, also/to boot, perfectly).
Yeah all those 64 bit installs back in 2005 really sucked for performance.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Lets hope that they can improve the performance of the Tegra drivers used on Linux/Android.
There have been big improvements in drivers between android releases despite the same hardware.. my guess is that there is still a fair bit of room for improvement.
3) high frame rates on high end hardware (and the listed testbed is bleeding edge) imply that it is possible to get reasonable framerates on lesser equipment..
But I may buy and play a few games to show my support for the Linux desktop - next us a witch hunt against Ubuntu however.
I only have various incarnations of ATI/AMD video cards in my laptops and desktops. I have just installed the Steam beta on one of them, running Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit and the latest fglrx proprietary Radeon driver. It's horrible. The Steam window has a really bad flickering, which makes it unusable. I managed to get some games installed by creative guess-and-click to hit the right buttons, but then none of the games run; they give me some error, but I can't read the box because of the flickering.
So it looks that so far this is compatible with nvidia only. No luck for Radeon users.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
What is surprising is that 64-bit is clearly better than 32-bit for performance, and the whole point of the exercise seems to be to get higher performance.
Neither can Nintendo, without an emulator.
I was under the impression that Nintendo tended to avoid "emulation" in marketing materials for Virtual Console so as to distance Virtual Console from community-made emulators that rely on (usually illegally traded) ROM images.
Use a USB controller adapter to enhance the experience with your actual contollers.
Emulators can't tell in general which button is in which position on each brand of controller or adapter. This means the user has to set up the button mappings for each PC game or emulator. I'm told people don't have much patience to set up in every single game or every single emulator, and that's why they use official emulators on consoles. In addition, a console is more likely to have a case designed to fit in well next to a television (as opposed to a typical tower PC case), which is important if a game uses offline multiplayer.
Big endorsement by Steam for Ubuntu distro. This could be the start of the "Year of the Linux Desktop", and it has a name: Ubuntu.
Seriously, the number 1 problem with Linux was it doesn't support games made for Windows (very well anyway). Ease of use it still a bit of an issue, but it has largely been solved over the years. Linux is easier than ever, and people are more technological savvy (well some more are anyway).
The fact that so many indie game makers use Steam, makes me wonde if those most agile companies won't try to take this market in a big way. I mean it is one thing if you have to compete with the big boys, but if given a distrabution system into a whole new market, where they big guys basically gave up on? Just the compitition it will bring, will make it interesting.
Anyway I hope it does launch, and is good, as it can only mean better outcomes for all gamers. Imagine if MS actually had to compete for buisness?!
It would be if they at least put all the 2D stuff in the shim. What exactly is so interesting about 2D?
Things would proceed as normal in every other country that doesn't have that artificial economic millstone around their neck.
So how would "every other country that doesn't have that artificial economic millstone around their neck" deal with millions of applicants for a work visa?
You don't have to use KDE. This isn't Windows or Apple. You can use a different WM.
And SuSE, RH and Mandriva all have a control panel that deals with that themselves. You don't even have to use the KDE supplied tools.
If not, then Steam is restricting the game's use. DRM.
Implied, but not guaranteed. Show the benchmark with lower end GPUs where it might matter if that's what you're looking for.
I see this nonsense on all the "enthusiast" review sites as well. "LOLLOLO OMGG!1!! AMD CPU gets only 120FPS while Intel gets 170FPS!!111 AMD is teh suxors 4 games!!!111"
It is relevant because in 2007 running 64-bit didn't suck. The operating systems and drivers were all in good shape by then.
Unless of course you were using a Pentium 4 in which case most 64-bit operations were the same speed or slower than 32-bit.
Ubuntu has become too bloated and suffers from regressions and breakages whilst android is now a malware magnet thanks to Google's ineptness at anything other than search products.
I personally use Debian Sid and it's been immensely stable and reliable. Nothing compares to a free OS that works the way one customizes it.
Fortunately one doesn't need to keep remapping things per game, once configured for the emulator the profile works for all games loaded.
So one profile per emulator, which as I understand it means one profile per emulated platform unless you consider variants of a single platform (such as Sega Master System and Game Gear or Game Boy and Game Boy Color) or platforms commonly included in a multi-console emulator (such as VisualBoyAdvance, which emulates both the Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance) to make up one emulated platform. If you have games for several different emulated platforms, each emulator will need it set up once. In addition, each native PC game supporting gamepads will need it set up once.
For newer titles Xinput handles things automagically.
XInput works only with the Xbox 360 Controller on Windows operating systems, not with controllers other than the Xbox 360 Controller (such as original console controllers through adapters), and not on non-Windows operating systems (such as the operating system that is the subject of this Slashdot story). From the page you linked: "By supporting XInput only, your game will not work with legacy DirectInput devices. XInput will not recognize these devices." I own an Xbox 360 Controller and have found its directional pad imprecise compared to Nintendo 64 and PlayStation controllers run through adapters, and I seem to remember other reviewers agreeing with me.
and no out of pocket for titles. People seem to like "free."
Did the defendants in Sony v. Tenenbaum and Capitol v. Thomas-Rasset like free?
I'd recommend something like an old modded XBOX
I was under the impression that building a business around providing "an old modded XBOX" to customers would get one arrested under anti-circumvention statutes.
It wouldn't be hard.
Oftimes, when you have to find a new - more profitable - direction, it's because you're not very competitive/good at what you're currently doing.
When most people can get what they need from a regular Wine install (or sometimes more than Cedega), why buy the subscription?
What a joke. I can't even login. I rebooted to Win7 just be sure the user name and passwd were correct. It worked with Win7 not Fedora 16. They have a long way to go.