are AMD and nVidia ready for SteamOS launch? phoronix tested 22 video cards

[Bob Jim]

People on LTT community are surprised because they do not usually follow openGL benchmarking and driver developments. So they go in expecting results to mirror directX performance. The reality is these results have little to do with what the hardware is capable of and all to do with openGL drivers and applications.

I don't expect it to MIRROR DX12 performance. But there is absolutely no way that AMD's top-of-the-line current GPU is beaten by a 5 year old Nvidia card, and a current budget card. It makes no sense. It also makes no sense how a 290 beats the Fury. Also has anyone even heard of that source before

[Humbug]

Tbh i'm not that suprised. I mean DX12 for windows 10 will probably be a bigger deal than this, and as far as we know AMD cards like DX12 very much compared to Nvidia. So if AMD needs to choose between steamOS or DX12, you probably know where their focus is on.

Actually Vulkan will be on Linux / SteamOS as well as windows. So from the near future onwards all AAA Linux games will use Vulkan and it will perform like DX12 on AMD and Nvidia. OpenGL seems to be dead in the water as far as AAA games go. It's used now because there is no alternative and devs are familiar with it.

[samcool55]

Actually Vulkan will be on Linux / SteamOS as well as windows. So from the near future onwards all AAA Linux games will use Vulkan and it will perform like DX12 on AMD and Nvidia. OpenGL seems to be dead in the water as far as AAA games go. It's used now because there is no alternative and devs are familiar with it.

Yes vulkan will be available on pretty much everyting but there isn't enough known about vulkan to know for sure it's a worthy alternative to DX12, i mean we don't even know how well dx12 actually performs about from a handful of benchmarks that' don't really fully utilize everything that DX12 has to offer. At this moment we just have to wait and see how it will go.

[Humbug]

Yes vulkan will be available on pretty much everyting but there isn't enough known about vulkan to know for sure it's a worthy alternative to DX12, i mean we don't even know how well dx12 actually performs about from a handful of benchmarks that' don't really fully utilize everything that DX12 has to offer. At this moment we just have to wait and see how it will go.

Anything's better than openGL LOL.

Vulkan will be out within the next 2 months so let's see...

[Sauron]

Dman, amd is all over the place

[samcool55]

Anything's better than openGL LOL.

Vulkan will be out within the next 2 months so let's see...

openGL wasn't great true, but Vulkan is actually a new version of openGL with a new name, let's hope it's worth the name change!

[Notional]

openGL wasn't great true, but Vulkan is actually a new version of openGL with a new name, let's hope it's worth the name change!

 

OpenGL is a clusterfrack. Vulkan is new from the ground up, so it has little to nothing to do with OpenGL that is out now.

[Humbug]

openGL wasn't great true, but Vulkan is actually a new version of openGL with a new name, let's hope it's worth the name change!

Nope as Notional said Vulkan is built from the ground up. It's closer to Mantle and DX12 than it is to anything on Linux atm. And they are correcting a lot of openGL's shortcomings. Documentation, tools, conformance testing, multi-threading. It's influenced largely by game devs and modern GPUs this time. OpenGL was born in a different era and for non-gaming applications.

[Misanthrope]

Actually Vulkan will be on Linux / SteamOS as well as windows. So from the near future onwards all AAA Linux games will use Vulkan and it will perform like DX12 on AMD and Nvidia. OpenGL seems to be dead in the water as far as AAA games go. It's used now because there is no alternative and devs are familiar with it.

 

Here are my thoughts on Vulkan: Yes it will help but not really for AAA gaming: that battle will most likely be won by DX12. First because the alternative being Steam OS will not have that much traction for the aforementioned reasons (Valve took too long, didn't ensure proper driver support, etc.) 

 

Vulkan impact will be mainly due to the fact that it's multi platform, so non-aaa games like those found simultaneously on mobiles and PCs (indies and freemium stuff) will adopt Vulkan. Some fringe indie devs like Projek Red will probably use Vulkan and really showcase it's true potential but for the most part, smaller, simpler multi platform games will be the ones thoroughly supported. AAA gaming on the PC (something I don't think will be around for much longer mind you) will remain basically a Windows/DX12 proposition.

[Humbug]

Snip

I was talking specifically about AAA gaming on Linux. Not comparing to DX12 overall.

Right now all the AAA games on Linux all port to openGL. And all these devs struggle with the openGL ecosystem and performance, drivers, non-conformance, toolsets etc. It has made Linux game development a pain. Vulkan solves all those problems. I am not saying it will defeat DX12 adoption overall. I am saying that it will be the first choice for AAA devs porting to Linux. The fact that it is so similar to DX12 also makes it a easier choice for those porting in future. Chris Roberts said that the cryengine refactoring work they are doing was common for DX12 and Vulkan even though the APIs are different. Add to that support in engines like Unreal4, Unity, Source2, Nitrous etc. I am not saying Vulkan will overtake DX, I am saying it will overtake openGL easily in AAA Linux games. Partly because the devs are so fed up with openGL. Not saying Linux will start getting more games but now it gets at least a decent number compared to the past and that will probably continue, obviously not competing with Windows but still...

It's the smaller devs and indie guys some of whom use their own in-house engines that I expect not to adopt Vulkan on Linux. These guys just don't have the resources or man hours to learn things like DX12 and Vulkan or modify their engines. They would rather stick to what they know. And some of these games are so simple that there may be not much benefit anyway.

[Burusutazu]

Curious why they did not test Intel graphics. Intel has excellent Linux drivers. The results don't really surprise me either, because only recently some of these Nvidia cards even got support for easy driver instillation. (is AMD drivers even worth talking about? they are pretty much trash.)

[jaggysnake57]

I just don't get steam os why not stick with Windows

[Nena Trinity]

And this is why I buy Nvidia cards...

 

I just don't get steam os why not stick with Windows

Because it is more reliable, faster, very virus proof, uses less CPU & RAM and its not a spy! 

[SteveGrabowski0]

People on LTT community are surprised because they do not usually follow openGL benchmarking and driver developments. So they go in expecting results to mirror directX performance. The reality is these results have little to do with what the hardware is capable of and all to do with openGL drivers and applications.

 

AMD is definitely spread way too thin to care about OpenGL performance right now. Which is why I really hope Vulkan takes off, to give us some choice in operating system. It's too bad we're not at the beginning of a console generation so that AMD could have made Vulkan something everyone would program to when writing for the consoles.

[Humbug]

I just don't get steam os why not stick with Windows

it's not a windows competitor anyway, it's just something to put on steam machines.

not a desktop OS.

[Bob Jim]

And this is why I buy Nvidia cards...

 

Because it is more reliable, faster, very virus proof, uses less CPU & RAM and its not a spy! 

You buy Nvidia cards so that you can perform better on one outdated platform that will be gone a couple years after Vulcan arrives? Ok... Also these graphs are absolute bs, don't trust them. Even if we ignore Nvidia for a second, the 290 and 285 beat the fury in various games which make no sense. The CPU is a 5960X so no CPU bottlenecking yet the 680 and Titan X tie. Even if there was a MASSIVE amount of CPU overheard the 980 and I think 970 should still beat it by a tiny bit. Also the is one way that the 5 year old 480 beats a fury.

[jaggysnake57]

it's not a windows competitor anyway, it's just something to put on steam machines.

not a desktop OS.

 

of corse its a windows competitor its an OS for PCs.. a shit one at that, its ok if all you do is play games and steam ones at that but wat about origin uplay and battlenet or GOG? what about kodi/plex?

[Bouzoo]

of corse its a windows competitor its an OS for PCs.. a shit one at that, its ok if all you do is play games and steam ones at that but wat about origin uplay and battlenet or GOG? what about kodi/plex?

 

I think he means that it's not a windows competitor for everyday usage, it's only for games. You won't be writing anything in Word or talk with your family on Skype on Steam OS, and I agree. This is more of a console competitor. There's why the simplified OS. 

[jaggysnake57]

I think he means that it's not a windows competitor for everyday usage, it's only for games. You won't be writing anything in Word or talk with your family on Skype on Steam OS, and I agree. This is more of a console competitor. There's why the simplified OS. 

 

you but my original point still stands even in your living room, no media and steam games only

[Humbug]

of corse its a windows competitor its an OS for PCs.. a shit one at that, its ok if all you do is play games and steam ones at that but wat about origin uplay and battlenet or GOG? what about kodi/plex?

You can open a browser and download a game from gog. As for Origin and gog galaxy they do not have Linux clients, that's something you will have to check with EA and CD Projekt.

Anyway the steamOS use case is for Steam Machines. So that prebuilt PCs can be sold as pseudo consoles. I.e providing an interface which can be navigated from the couch with a controller and handling things like GPU driver updates and other maintenance stuff in background.

It's not a windows competitor. Check Valve's own words on this

"Users should not consider SteamOS as a replacement for their desktop operating system"

http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/

Now it is still Linux and valve haven't locked it down so you can indeed access the desktop, the terminal and install other applications and set it up as a normal PC with office applications etc if you really want to but that is not it's goal or it's default config.

If you are looking for windows competitors in the Linux world there are plenty of other options such as Linix Mint,Ubuntu, Debian etc which give you an out of the box experience for desktop and office use. You can install steam on top of these if you need to play steam linux games (same ones available for steamOS).

[Humbug]

you but my original point still stands even in your living room, no media and steam games only

If you're saying steamOS beta lacks features ok.

I simply said it isn't a windows competitor anymore than the PS4 OS is a windows competitor.

[jaggysnake57]

If you're saying steamOS beta lacks features ok.

I simply said it isn't a windows competitor anymore than the PS4 OS is a windows competitor.

 

but it is. put it like this, at the price point steam machines are selling for who are they in compertition? consoles? not at that price. pcgamers? most build there own so why buy pre built. it just makes no sense and i have thought that right from the get go

[Humbug]

but it is. put it like this, at the price point steam machines are selling for who are they in compertition? consoles? not at that price. pcgamers? most build there own so why buy pre built. it just makes no sense and i have thought that right from the get go

Ok, but the fact that steam machines are priced like a PC doesn't make steamOS a windows competitor. They are going to sell steam machines as living room pseudo-consoles to be fully operated with a gamepad and zero maintenance required from the user. E.g. It even has a recovery partition and can restore the OS if it get corrupted. You can argue that it's a bad product and overpriced if you want. Ok but that doesn't make it a windows competitor. They are betting on their ability to create a new niche (stupid or not), it's not a windows competitor, windows is a general purpose OS, like OSX and Ubuntu. SteamOS is only marketed for gaming in the living room.

[MEC-777]

I knew AMD's Linux drivers were bad, but wow, that's horrible. lol.

 

Curious to see how the new Vulkan API pans out for performance on both brands...

[Misanthrope]

You buy Nvidia cards so that you can perform better on one outdated platform that will be gone a couple years after Vulcan arrives? Ok... Also these graphs are absolute bs, don't trust them. Even if we ignore Nvidia for a second, the 290 and 285 beat the fury in various games which make no sense. The CPU is a 5960X so no CPU bottlenecking yet the 680 and Titan X tie. Even if there was a MASSIVE amount of CPU overheard the 980 and I think 970 should still beat it by a tiny bit. Also the is one way that the 5 year old 480 beats a fury.

These results seem bad however they're not completely unexpected: it is well known that Nvidia is the only choice for Linux, AMD has nothing but promises and no decent drivers.