Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Linux Gaming Performance
We'll start with a look at games where we were actually able to get results from all three Wine projects. This was no small task, as numerous games worked under one or two options but not all three. We confined our testing to games that were at least rated Bronze (although as noted that doesn't necessarily guarantee success).
We begin with some very interesting and somewhat unexpected results with Team Fortress 2. Here we see an actual performance improvement over Windows with Cedega. Although all of the FPS reported are well above the minimum necessary to play TF2, functionality of play within Wine was not good. We experienced frequent FPS drops and stuttering with Wine when we tested overall functionality. Cedega, Crossover, and Windows all ran smoothly during the functionality testing.
Moving to Unreal Tournament 3, again all the frame rates are well above playable. We did find that on the Linux side, Crossover provided the best in-game experience with no glitches or stutter. Windows worked as expected with no issues to report.
Windows easily beats our Wine projects for overall FPS in TrackMania. Both Windows and Wine projects play this game flawlessly with no graphical glitches or stuttering. This is a case where if you have sufficiently fast hardware, you can run this game on either Linux or Windows without issues.
The results in Eve Online are very interesting. During all our previous benchmarks the Wine projects have been competitive with windows, but Eve Online shows a huge gap. I re-ran all these tests twice to ensure all settings were set exactly the same across tests and came up with the same results. Windows and Linux gameplay ran smoothly with no noticeable stuttering or graphical glitches, though, so this is another game that runs on all platforms. The difference here is that you can potentially run at higher resolutions/settings under Windows and get better performance.
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haplo602 - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
why that's easy, just compile them under windows and you are ready to run ....ChristopherRice - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
Reading through the comments you will see part two will include some native games and ati.This will give us the full gamut of what Linux can do native or not between the two parts.flywheeldk - Friday, January 1, 2010 - link
And in part three we will run native Linux games on Windows, just to even the score ?Or perhaps we are content with declaring one contender as the looser before the match begins.
Zap - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
Props to someone making the move from reader to contributor!hechacker1 - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
So what configuration settings and tweaks were required to make these games run?As somebody who absolutely loves linux for its superior speed and stability, as an ATI user I know it is almost impossible to get any DX9 game going with all the features. Nvidia does much better with wine.
So for TF2 were you able to run with DX9 and all highest quality settings? For the hardware you benchmarked I would expect nothing less.
Furthermore, you show average FPS? I am more interested in the minimum and average, especially when it comes to a FPS.
If you visit the TF2 wine page, it recommends DX8 mode, which makes the game run faster, but with such poor quality you'd be missing out on a lot, especially with such powerful hardware.
I tried switching to linux completely at one point, hence why I bought an ATI card that theoretically has open specs and drivers. Eventually I suspect ATI would be a better choice because of their openness.
But the last time I checked, it's just better to use Windows 7 if your a gamer. It is so easy to virtualize linux (even with 3D for compiz) it just makes sense to have WIndows as the host OS.
I think the details would help show if it is really practical. Hey if TF2 and other source engine games run (L4D, L4D2) with highest quality setting, I would go back to linux full time.
jmurbank - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
ATI is not open as you might thought. There are two drivers for ATI graphic cards. One is proprietary and other is open sourced. The driver that is proprietary comes from ATI and written by them. The open source drivers comes from Xorg or freedesktop.org. ATI may answer questions that the open source community have, but they are basically not helping with the coding. AMD has provided documentation on how to access the microcode that is stored in the graphic card BIOS or AtomBIOS, but this does not mean they are completely open. Though even if you use ATI's proprietary Linux drivers, 3D support is mostly there compared to Windows.I do not recommend using Compiz or Beryl on a daily basis. You can use it to show off what Linux can do and brag that Linux is the first to implement this fancy feature, but it comes back to haunt you on its compatibility. Flash does not work well with it and not all programs in Linux are compatible with it. Again it is a good feature to show off, but not a feature to use on a daily basis.
Team Fortress 2 should work in Cedega 7.3. Just make sure to update Xorg to the latest stable version for your distribution. If possible change graphics rendering in the game from DirectX to OpenGL. Left 4 Dead should be able to play in Cedega 7.3, but Left 4 Dead 2 can not. Like what the author of this article said older games are more supported than the latest games.
I am a user of both ATI and nVidia graphics. I found nVidia is the best on terms of support for any operating system. nVidia's GeForce8 and above provides OpenGL 3 in Linux while other graphic brands and Xorg are stuck on OpenGL 1 (best support). The quality you are looking for is for OpenGL 3. Sure Xorg has support for OpenGL 2, but it is only mostly supported, so DirectX 8 is the highest it can go.
Veerappan - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
"ATI may answer questions that the open source community have, but they are basically not helping with the coding."This is not true.
AMD has multiple employees on their payroll who contribute code to the open-source Radeon drivers. Off the top of my head, both Cooper Yuan and Alex Deucher are both paid by AMD to develop the open-source Radeon drivers. And John Bridgman, while he doesn't commit much/any code for the Radeon drivers is indispensable for PR purposes and community relations.
ChristopherRice - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
Send me an email and I can give you additional information on my setup.hechacker1 - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
I am most interested your TF2 configuration, as it relates to other popular source engine games.How about it? I think posting it here would be best to get the info out to people with similar questions. Frankly, your article isn't really useful without this info.
*If* TF2 requires all sorts of quality lowering hacks, it is just not comparable to Windows. Though I would say it is playable and fun either way.
ravaneli - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
I know Wine supports Company of Heroes, but the 64b version would not install on my computer at all. I have a 3-way RAID0. Then my video card is 9800GX2, which requires SLI to operate optimally. I love the Ubuntu on my laptop, and I want it on my desktop now, but only if I can play company of heroes.Can it be done, or should I give up? I am not dismantling my RAID.
Any advice appreciated. Anand, I would love to hear from you too.