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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.
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?
Its nothing to do with the OS, its either drivers *or* the ports, but often a combination of both. AMD's video card drivers are plagued by serious performance issues on Linux (even worse than their Windows offerings) while in most cases the Nvidia Linux drivers are much closer in performance to the Windows ones. Throwing "Shadow of Mordor" in there for this test really skews the whole average performance comparison off badly, to a degree that is not representative of Steam's Linux catalog as a whole, because SoM Linux is in fact an atrociously badly done port with performance issues that largely have absolutely nothing to do with hardware or drivers, but really just a ham-fisted sloppy amateur port attempt.
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!
Who really expected the same or better performance at this point?
I do.
"If that's true, then why aren't game developers focusing on OpenGL instead of DirectX then?"
Because they already know direct x and probably don't know opengl. Because direct x is what is primarily targeted and optimized by graphics card drivers with opengl a secondary consideration. And lastly because sound is then organized into the same library whereas with opengl they would then need to pick a secondary sound library.
OpenGL is an api, it has no performance characteristics, those all come down to the implementation.
"Are you saying that every developer in the industry is in a mass conspiracy with Microsoft"
No conspiracy needed. Microsoft has no interest in opengl performing well on windows therefore they don't expend any effort to make it perform well and thereby cripple it relative to their own library. Manufacturers target Direct X because game developers do, game developers target Direct X because manufacturers do.
In almost every case the "ridiculous big conspiracy" argument is a false dichotomy, you don't need active conspiracy for individuals industry wide to create the same result active conspiracy and collusion would. In most places this occurs out of lots of individuals working out of self interest. The same is true of widescale consumer screwing in industry, if all the major competitors engage in the same practice the consumer can't vote with their dollar, the major competitors don't actually need to agree though. The same things are profitable for all of them, if they all pursue what is most profitable for themselves the result will be all of them engaging in the same practice and screwing the consumer.
...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.