Valve: L4D2 runs 20% faster on Ubuntu than Windows 7

Windows 7 has higher system requirements, it uses more resources is that what you all mean by overhead?


1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Ubuntu Desktop Edition

700 MHz processor (about Intel Celeron or better)
512 MiB RAM (system memory)
5 GB of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach)
 
I wager that in 2 years you'll still be wrong. Linux has never been and will never be a viable gaming platform. Game makers follow the money and since Linux will never be a mainstream OS there will never be a market for Linux gaming. /thread
I'm sure that's what people used to say about Linux in the mobile platform as well. Then Google stepped in. They had great resources, bank account and a vision. Look how it is now. Of course Chrome OS didn't do so well (and I doubt it ever will in its current form).

So 2 years? Not a chance. Never? We'll see.
 
"There is also no talk regarding visual fidelity. Even small differences in visual quality can produce 20 percent performance gains..."

That's a good point Rick!

I would like to see video captures to ensure that they game is rendering correctly on both platforms. If I'm getting better shadows or textures, for example, under Direct3D I would be happy to lose the 20% performance given that 270 FPS is an average and not a single burst. Once I get minimum FPS over 60, I start to turn up quality settings any way.

"Now that we know the hardware is capable of more performance, we will go back and figure out how to mitigate this effect under Direct3D."

It seems that once performance is adequate, we stop optimizing. Its funny that there appears to be room to improve the FPS of this title even further, assuming that we're comparing the hardware as it appears to be. I wonder how many current/modern games could benefit from such performance analysis?
 
Despite having been a fan of Windows OS (W7 being my favorite, but I hate W8), I've figured for some time it'd be obvious that a lot of application software, especially related to video games, would operate better with Linux/OpenGL than Windows/DirectX.

Now if only more big game publishers would realize not only that but that it'd potentially make more money for them to slowly push away from Windows while supporting Linux. After all, $100~$200 individually for an OS is quite a bit of money that can potentially add up to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into video games.
 
Well to say the least even though opengl is faster. The point is im glad anyway lol Id rather much game on linux than on windows lol Since windows 8 has been out valve has decided to create games for linux and even blizzard is thinking the same way saying that, linux has got DirectX support anyway if we needed it and we have the ability thanks to Mono to use .net framework and much much more. I think it's time microsoft is going to start losing customers. It was all a matter of time.
 
More companies need to look at optimizing their products to run better on current hardware/technology.

Look at the amount of games (and even desktop software) today that run as poorly as they do compared to games of old. The excuse usually is "Oh, the hardware is a lot more powerful today so we don't have to do a good optimization code for people to run our games".

In the end, this shafts the consumer, no matter what type of hardware you have; especially if the game is moddable. Developers don't know what people will do with their game/game engine in the future, and great optimization would solve a lot of issues that the community has, if not now, then later down the line.
 
[FONT=Helvetica]Obvious troll.[/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica]This is superb news, and I'm really glad Valve are porting their games to Linux.
Valve has demonstrated that Linux gives you a 20% performance improvement over Windows.
Gamers notoriously tinker with overclocking to get their FPS up.
I'll wager that within 2 years, Linux will be the preferred platform for hardcore gamers.
[/FONT]
I wager that in 2 years you'll still be wrong. Linux has never been and will never be a viable gaming platform. Game makers follow the money and since Linux will never be a mainstream OS there will never be a market for Linux gaming. /thread

This is probably what people were saying about Apple a few years back...
 
I thought their beef was with Windows 8. Shouldn't they be comparing Ubuntu to Win8? That would be more interesting to me. Valve needs to be careful. They may piss off more people than they gain with all this Ubuntu talk and Windows bashing.
 
I wager that in 2 years you'll still be wrong. Linux has never been and will never be a viable gaming platform. Game makers follow the money and since Linux will never be a mainstream OS there will never be a market for Linux gaming. /thread
I'm sure that's what people used to say about Linux in the mobile platform as well. Then Google stepped in. They had great resources, bank account and a vision. Look how it is now. Of course Chrome OS didn't do so well (and I doubt it ever will in its current form).

So 2 years? Not a chance. Never? We'll see.

I agree with Guest. Linux is only viable if everyone are onboard. At the moment, it's only Valve and Valve's own back-library. Where are Rockstar, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Bioware, Blizzard, Eidos, THQ, Capcom, Square-Enix, 2K Games, Codemasters ?

Unless these companies join up then gaming on Linux will be limited to Valve, Indie, and the free stuff.

Other things that will never happen include,

Valve open-sourcing their client - I doubt this is ever going to happen, Valve will lose control of their own client, DRM will be stripped from it, and a myriad of different versions will be out there. How many game companies will hop on-board a open-sourced client without even a single layer of DRM ?

Free games - Lets face it, you are going to have to start paying for your games because never in a million years will these companies adapt a different strategy and give their games away. Not going to happen. Indie or Kickstarter, perhaps, but not the top Rockstars, Epics, Ubisofts. etc..

Open-sourcing their games - Again, never going to happen. Plus, to me anyway, I don't see how it benefits anyone, but the ones who want this. Oh but were told that the community can improve the engines, fix bugs,and add improvements, well if you could do all that then surely you would be working for them, would you not? I mean, these top companies don't hire anybody, they hire the best.

No DRM - Again, I really don't see this happening. Game companies need a layer of protection, even if one layer from Valve's own client gives them that 1-day protection from piracy, DRM is still going to be required if you want the top companies on-board.
 
[FONT=Helvetica]Obvious troll.[/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica]This is superb news, and I'm really glad Valve are porting their games to Linux.
Valve has demonstrated that Linux gives you a 20% performance improvement over Windows.
Gamers notoriously tinker with overclocking to get their FPS up.
I'll wager that within 2 years, Linux will be the preferred platform for hardcore gamers.
[/FONT]
I wager that in 2 years you'll still be wrong. Linux has never been and will never be a viable gaming platform. Game makers follow the money and since Linux will never be a mainstream OS there will never be a market for Linux gaming. /thread

This is probably what people were saying about Apple a few years back...

No comparison. Linux suffer from fragmentation of too many random distros and it does not embrace DRM, the two main complaints that game developers had about Linux.

Until Linux address those two issues (most likely never), Windows will remain the dominant OS for gaming.
 
No comparison. Linux suffer from fragmentation of too many random distros and it does not embrace DRM, the two main complaints that game developers had about Linux.

Until Linux address those two issues (most likely never), Windows will remain the dominant OS for gaming.

I'll confess, I don't know a huge amount about linux, however I think it would be wrong to write them off in terms of gaming for all of time. Things change. This could very well be the catalyst for a change.
 
Back