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SteamOS Gaming Performance Lags Well Behind Windows (arstechnica.com)
New submitter NotDrWho writes: As reported by Ars Technica: "With this week's official launch of Valve's Linux-based Steam Machine line (for non-pre-orders), we decided to see if the new OS could stand up to the established Windows standard when running games on the same hardware. Unfortunately for open source gaming supporters, it looks like SteamOS gaming comes with a significant performance hit on a number of benchmarks." They tested with two graphically intensive titles from 2014, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux. They say, "we got anywhere from 21- to 58-percent fewer frames per second, depending on the graphical settings. On our hardware running Shadow of Mordor at Ultra settings and HD resolution, the OS change alone was the difference between a playable 34.5 fps average on Windows and a stuttering 14.6 fps mess on SteamOS." Even most of Valve's own games took big performance hits when running under SteamOS.
.. is the extra $199 you save by not having to buy a Windows license enough to make up for the frame rate difference if you divert that cash to your video card fund?
Most people don't make their choice of OS based on any sort of relevant information, including benchmarks. Windows fanboys will shout "I told you Windows was better!" FOSS evangelists will claim it's good enough, and worth it to 1) not have to pay for an OS and 2) not have to support a corrupt corporation. MAC fanboys will say "You two and your little fight are cute. I'm going to go pay a lot of money to purchase something that's exactly the same as the last one I purchased". Technology holy wars are no better than politics. Vet all data against your preexisting beliefs, and ignore everything that doesn't match them.
Probably drivers, I imagine, or is the OS architecture a limitation by itself?
These tests were done on their own custom built steam machine from 2 years ago. (Mentioned in article)
They have an older video card and older CPU than any of the steam machines for sale.
I'm guessing most optimization work has gone into the latest nVidia series rather than 1-2 previous ones.
On one machine, in two games.
I recognize that testing this sort of stuff on a wide variety of hardware and with many games is hard, and that they haven't had the time yet to put together a thorough analysis. But you should really qualify your results, like "preliminary testing has indicated that Steam OS performance may be worse than Windows 10 performance in some games on certain hardware configurations."
But that makes for a terrible headline :p
One of my primary suspects for the difference is the video card - how well optimized are the Linux drivers?
I guess that is too hard for Slashdot editors to write.
Nothing new here, but at least things seem to be changing, even if it's slow going. Who really expected the same or better performance at this point? Until Linux becomes mainstream (and by that, I mean holds at least 15% of the desktops), it will always be a "back burner" kind of thing for GPU manufacturers; not to mention the fractious bickering (usually over nitpicky crap) that pelts anybody who steps in to try and improve the situation.
This article's headline kind of exemplifies some of the problem - directing scorn and criticism on those who are trying to make things better.
He used some machine he had in the corner. How about using an actual Steam Machine?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
It has little to do with the games. Waiting for some magical moment where everything happens and AAA games come out on stable, fast drivers is insanity.
What happens is you get a field-leader, like Steam. They start down the road of Linux. They get several HUNDREDS of games that weren't on Linux onto Linux by encouraging it. This now prompts stories like this where performance OF THE PROPRIETARY AND FREE GRAPHICS DRIVERS is brought to the fore.
The games aren't slow. The OS isn't slow. It's the graphics drivers. Now nVidia are shown up - pushing out flagship products from a major player but let down by the quality of Linux drivers. So they are now encouraged / bullied into making those drivers the equivalent of the Windows drivers. This makes those drivers more popular. More people are going to have cards that use them (even if just Steam Boxes). Now there's slightly more of an excuse for games developers to target Linux too. So now the quality of the drivers matters that little bit more. So nVidia/AMD improve the drivers a little more. Which encourages more benchmarks to show the leaps and bounds. So they get press from it. Which means more developers target SteamOS as part of their engines and platforms. And so on... ad infinitum.
We waited ten years for something to "Just Happen" in terms of graphic driver quality - both free and proprietary - to bring Linux drivers up to par with Windows. It didn't happen. So Valve are breaking the deadlock, removing the stalemate and saying "Your move, nVidia" - one of their partners, who is going to get bad press for having crap Linux drivers. nVidia will respond in time. And, incrementally, things will start to improve.
Good on Valve I say. Good for Linux. Probably not so good for nVidia et al but they've been dragging their feet anyway. And, ultimately, good for the consumer. But if we only used the one thing that worked and is top-speed and competitive and expensive, ATI/AMD wouldn't exist, Windows and nVidia would be on every console, and the situation would be even worse because of the lack of competition. Now that someone's seriously pushing gaming on Linux, and shows these shortfalls to the people SELLING PARTS OF THIS HARDWARE, there might well be a push to get more optimised drivers running on Linux for that hardware.
As soon as I saw the headline I was curious which games they had tested with. As soon as I saw Shadow of Mordor I cringed. It is well known that its Linux performance is extremely subpar. The fact of the matter is that Linux ports and drivers have seen nowhere near the time and effort put into performance tuning as their Windows counterparts. Until Vulkan gears up and SteamOS gains more inertia, I don't expect any different.
For the record, though, Shadow of Mordor is the only Linux game I have not been able to play on max settings with my GTX 970; and despite having to crank it down a bit, it still works flawlessly. As a Linux gamer I am more than content with how fast things are progressing. Why rate and comment on the runners' performance when they haven't even finished warming up?
Not true - in fact, Nvidia's Linux driver is quite good. The issue is that 'important' games get special attention from the graphics companies, who special-case things in their drivers - replacing whole shaders, etc. That doesn't happen in Linux. It winds up being necessary because OpenGL has grown so complex that it's incredibly hard to write fast code for it.
Vuikan is liable to change that considerably - a much lower-level API, that engines can interface with more directly and consistently. The drivers won't have be huge tangles of special-case code, and will be much simpler to implement on multiple operating systems because they are called upon to do far less.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I believe many if not most games on Steam For Linux are actually windows versions literally wrapped in what amounts to their propriety/in-house branch of the wine environment.
In this case it seems both unrealistic and unfair to make performance comparisons between running what a windows-native app on Windows, and then on Linux where it requires an extra significant overhead of API translation because the app itself was never designed or built to run on Linux-native APIs.
Who the heck orders an OS box shipped these days instead of instant download?
People behind metered Internet access, for one. See a story a couple months ago about surprise overages caused by Microsoft preing an instant Windows download.
...but I got the sense that Ars Technica pretty much sucks Microsoft cock all day long.
This is based mainly on their attitude toward the privacy issues related to Windows 10, but I noticed other corroborating data points.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.