Benchmarked: Linux vs Windows 3D gaming

[Rikard]

Hi,

With Steam announcing that they will soon give native support for Linux I tested running Minecraft in Ubuntu 12.04, 64-bit. To my surprise I got much higher FPS and smoother performance than in Windows 7. Now, unlike most games Minecraft is a Java program, so I decided to see if the same was true for a more representative test of the typical gaming scenario. Since Unigine supports Ubuntu out of the box I ran that on my PC with dual boot, using identical settings and hardware. To really challenge the graphics I used my old 9800GT card, with the i5-2500 at 4.3 GHz.

This is what I got from Linux, using OpenGL:

The same test on Windows 7, using OpenGL:

The same test on Windows 7, using direct3d11:

The OpenGL tests shows that the performance in Linux and Windows is the same for all practical purposes, though Linux wins by a tiny margin. Meanwhile direct3d11 performs better than OpenGL, but all three tests have the same (VERY) low minimum FPS with this setup. This really choked that old Nvidia card!

Not shown here, is the temperatures of the processor and GPU. Since I am regulating those by ASUS Fan Expert II in Windows I got better temps there than I did in Linux. The latter temps were never above 65 degrees Celsius, so that is more a detail to think about if using more demanding hardware.

All in all, I do not foresee any showstoppers for gaming with Steam on Linux, though I could not reproduce the huge performance gain I observed in Minecraft. With a larger consumer base I would expect OpenGL drivers to improve, and further reduce the small difference to direct3d11. With no large performance gain for either OS, gamers should be free to use whatever they like.

Once I get back from vacation, I can repeat this with a more modern AMD card, unless someone beats me to it.

Comments are of course welcome!

 

[BallaTheFeared]

All in all, I do not foresee any showstoppers for gaming with Steam on Linux

You mean of course, aside from the title selection?

 

[Lonyo]

You mean, aside from the crappy driver support?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Its quite obvious you would get same results in Linux and Windows. There is essentially no performance differences in the OSes. Its all down to running code.

 

[cmdrdredd]

And yet you have 3 runs with FPS numbers that would never be considered playable.

Also most titles are Direct3D only and good luck porting every one of them to OpenGL. That's pie in the sky thinking.

 

[Rikard]

You mean of course, aside from the title selection?

Yes of course. If Steam are serious about expanding to Linux we will get better title selection than we have today, but it will be very long time until we get to the selection available for Windows.

 

[Rikard]

Its quite obvious you would get same results in Linux and Windows. There is essentially no performance differences in the OSes. Its all down to running code.

Not so obvious if you read some things people write on forums. A lot of people claim that everything is way faster on Linux than Windows. I show it does not matter.

 

[Rikard]

And yet you have 3 runs with FPS numbers that would never be considered playable.

That was by construction. I can of course tune the settings or hardware so the tests are giving values around 60 FPS.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

 

[Kalessian]

Phoronix does windows vs linux tests regularly on all 3 gfx brands and also general cpu performance and power consumption in case you didn't know www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_gtx680_windows&num=1

I commend your efforts but this forum isn't exactly the best place for this stuff.

 

[thilanliyan]

Is a 9800GT even a DX11 card?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

No, it's DX10.

 

[Rikard]

Phoronix does windows vs linux tests regularly on all 3 gfx brands and also general cpu performance and power consumption in case you didn't know www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_gtx680_windows&num=1

Nope, I did not know about that site. It has quite some interesting articles. Thank you for the link. Their test using the much more recent 680 comes to pretty much the same conclusions as I did:

For the most part the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 performance between the two operating systems was more or less the same, which is to be expected when the driver code-base is largely shared on NVIDIA's end between Windows and Linux (and BSD and Solaris). For some OpenGL games, there were measurable differences, but nothing that would make or break your ability to run the game on the GK104 Kepler graphics card.

I commend your efforts but this forum isn't exactly the best place for this stuff.

Phoronix has quite a lot more muscle to put into these test than I can do here, so you are absolutely right. It is interesting though to see how what they write plays out in real life with my hardware!

 

[3DVagabond]

I predict M$ will squash this. They might have to throw some money around, or strong arm some people, or both, but they have the money and muscle to do it. They've enjoyed a virtual monopoly in desktops and I doubt they'll just allow that to change. I suppose Apple might be able to counter them, but we'll have to see.

 

[lamedude]

MS is probably more worried about Ouya. The 360 is more important than keeping a few PC gamers from defecting.

 

[Rikard]

I predict M$ will squash this. They might have to throw some money around, or strong arm some people, or both, but they have the money and muscle to do it. They've enjoyed a virtual monopoly in desktops and I doubt they'll just allow that to change. I suppose Apple might be able to counter them, but we'll have to see.

OK we are off on a tangent but... From what I gather from the limited facts there are about this move by Valve, it sounds as if M$ is the very reason for Valve investing in Linux. They talk down Win 8 as being a fiasko, while I think the real reason is that M$ will compete with Steam in a way that makes Origin look like a fart in space. The reason why I am not convinced that Valve are 100% serious about gaming on Linux is that I think the threat to pull a fraction of the gaming community from Windoze is used as a bargaining chip between Valve and MS. However, if they are serious about making gaming on Linux a reality, I think only Steam can pull it off, and M$ cannot stop them.

 

[3DVagabond]

OK we are off on a tangent but... From what I gather from the limited facts there are about this move by Valve, it sounds as if M$ is the very reason for Valve investing in Linux. They talk down Win 8 as being a fiasko, while I think the real reason is that M$ will compete with Steam in a way that makes Origin look like a fart in space. The reason why I am not convinced that Valve are 100% serious about gaming on Linux is that I think the threat to pull a fraction of the gaming community from Windoze is used as a bargaining chip between Valve and MS. However, if they are serious about making gaming on Linux a reality, I think only Steam can pull it off, and M$ cannot stop them.

I think everything you say here is correct. Except for possibly the bold part. What M$ might not be able to stop is the portable gaming market moving away from Windows and that could very easily spill over into the desktop market. If it comes to that we'll have to wait and see.

As far as what someone else said about M$ not caring about a few gamers, that couldn't be more wrong. Look at the effort and resources they have put into Windows gaming.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

OpenGL FTW !

 

[Red Hawk]

It's rather pointless to compare OpenGL numbers on Linux with Direct3D 10 (your graphics card is not DX11 capable) numbers on Windows; they're different renderers with different feature sets. The direct OpenGL comparison is nice though, but still, you're using dated hardware that isn't even compatible with the latest release of OpenGL (the 9800 GT is compatible with OGL 2.1; the latest release is 4.2)

And yet you have 3 runs with FPS numbers that would never be considered playable.

Also most titles are Direct3D only and good luck porting every one of them to OpenGL. That's pie in the sky thinking.

Valve has already ported a fair amount of games to OpenGL on Mac OS X, and that's a better starting point for getting them on Linux than just from Direct3D. Also idTech games (Rage, Brink, Quake, Prey, etc.) are made to run natively in OpenGL. World of Warcraft was ported to OpenGL on Mac OS X. Unreal Engine 3, the most popular third party engine currently (used by games such as the Batman Arkham series, Mass Effect series, Borderlands series, and the Bioshock series [well, technically Bioshock runs on UE2.5]), has a OpenGL version for Mac OS X that can be used as a starting point. It's not as difficult as you might think.

As far as what someone else said about M$ not caring about a few gamers, that couldn't be more wrong. Look at the effort and resources they have put into Windows gaming.

...is that supposed to be an ironic statement? Because it is. The past few years it seems like Microsoft has treated the PC market as a testbed for nifty new technology to put into the next Xbox, but haven't actually given the gamers much care. Just look at the farce that is Games for Windows Live.

Anyways, it it well within Microsoft's ability to retaliate and do things to attract gamers back to Windows if they start to leave. The question is whether or not Microsoft really has the motivation to do so.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/...-performance/1

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Its quite obvious you would get same results in Linux and Windows. There is essentially no performance differences in the OSes. Its all down to running code.

Depends on what you do. Thread switching and scheduling is still so horribly bad on Windows that if you want optimal results, you really want to have as many threads as there are cpus and deal with actual task scheduling yourself. On Linux, you can just spawn as many threads as you have tasks, set priorities for them, and forget about the rest. The os will manage thousands of threads per cpu just as well as it manages one thread per cpu.

Also, modern Linux transparently uses huge pages -- this means that software that does a lot of random access into it's memory can optimally be up to 3 times faster than it is on windows, without having to fiddle with large page sizes manually.

This thread of thinking also works for a lot of other stuff too -- you *can* get the same performance out of both systems, but on Windows, you have to do everything by yourself, whereas on Linux the OS is smart enough to do it's part. Linux is the OS supercomputers use, and there's a reason for that.

MS is probably more worried about Ouya. The 360 is more important than keeping a few PC gamers from defecting.

MS makes practically no money out of XBOX. The business unit is now profitable, but it really doesn't "move the needle" as far as the whole company is concerned. They could scrap it today and the only real effect would be the loss of prestige. It's just that irrelevant.

Incidentally, so's consumer desktop. In the past few years, Microsoft has really become a B2B company. Their main product line isn't Windows, it's Office. And even the tools & servers unit brings in more revenue today than the Windows unit.

 

[Rikard]

It's rather pointless to compare OpenGL numbers on Linux with Direct3D 10 (your graphics card is not DX11 capable) numbers on Windows; they're different renderers with different feature sets.

That is something I meant to discuss in the first post but forgot to include it. Yes the card only supports Direct3D 10, yet the Unigine claims it runs in 11. Surely it is Unigine which is wrong, but this cast a doubt on the benchmark application. E.g. what settings were actually used, since we cannot trust that it reports the correct settings.

the 9800 GT is compatible with OGL 2.1

You mean 3.0, don't you?

The crowd catered by Steam on Linux falls in two general categories, simplified:

• Enthusiast gamers looking to get the very best FPS for upcoming titles.
• Linux users who might jump on some F2P game like TF2.

The first group is better covered by the Phoronix reviews linked above. The test I show here represents the second group better though, since you wont see many 7970 GE in that market segment. The most representative test for that group would probably be integrated 3000 or 4000 graphics, but I have no access to that hardware.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Ah I remember back in the days of the original Unreal engine, running UT99 and being able to select your preference of OpenGL or D3D rendering, In fact I think the original HL engine had it as well.

The computer world has changed, a lot...the age old days of linux being more efficient and customizable has become completely irrelevant even in servers, the desktop processing power we have now is completely ridiculous and minor differences is resource management between the different OS's are too small to even notice much less care about.

OpenGL used to have some nice benefits over D3D but the fact is that D3D is more supported and right now even Carmack is saying that D3D is really in a better position technically than OpenGL is, he covers this in his Quakecon 2012 keynote speech.

You wont ever get the Linux techies to admit it but basically there's little reason to actually bother switching to Linux, security and performance of windows is fine these days. There is a lot of elitism amongst the linux fanboys especially when it comes to open "source" and "free" which is partly why making things like games for linux is a waste of time. I can't help but think the community and the way they tend to behave just shoot themselves in the foot, even our linux sys ads in our business still refer to windows and windoze, makes me roll my eyes whenever I read it.

 

[Spjut]

That is something I meant to discuss in the first post but forgot to include it. Yes the card only supports Direct3D 10, yet the Unigine claims it runs in 11. Surely it is Unigine which is wrong, but this cast a doubt on the benchmark application. E.g. what settings were actually used, since we cannot trust that it reports the correct settings.

I don't think anything is wrong, the DX11 API can target DX9, DX10/10.1 and DX11 hardware.
Of course, you don't get tessellation and other specific features only supported on DX11 hw.

 

[Arzachel]

You wont ever get the Linux techies to admit it but basically there's little reason to actually bother switching to Linux, security and performance of windows is fine these days. There is a lot of elitism amongst the linux fanboys especially when it comes to open "source" and "free" which is partly why making things like games for linux is a waste of time. I can't help but think the community and the way they tend to behave just shoot themselves in the foot, even our linux sys ads in our business still refer to windows and windoze, makes me roll my eyes whenever I read it.

I've never used Linux even once in my life, but I'd drop Windows in a heartbeat if more games would run natively on Linux. The main distros are nearly as user friendly as Windows, have software for everything need, provide more customization and are free to boot. Games are the only reason left for me to pay the Windows tax.