Testing NVIDIA's Linux Threaded OpenGL Optimizations

[GT220]

Speak for yourself. The nouveau garbage is bad for everything else, not just games.

http://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer...00gt_fail1_lrg

"This eight-year-old graphics card is still failing badly with Nouveau."

Like I said, you open source driver retards want horrible, subpar experience, thats your choice. Don't try and troll in the Nvidia drivers threads.

[bug77]

Speak for yourself. The nouveau garbage is bad for everything else, not just games.

http://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer...00gt_fail1_lrg

"This eight-year-old graphics card is still failing badly with Nouveau."

Like I said, you open source driver retards want horrible, subpar experience, thats your choice. Don't try and troll in the Nvidia drivers threads.

Are genuinely trying to see if you can get banned in 20 posts or less?
I have no use for nouveau either. It's why I buy nvidia, to have a driver that works. But you don't see me thrash talking nouveau because of that. Nor do I look funny at people who actually use it.

[Shahrizai]

I don't like the new shampoo that just came in store... so I dont use it. Does that mean it was a waste of time making it? No, probably somebody out there liked it.
If you dont like something, dont use it. Case closed.

Now, PLEASE, back on topic:

but with nvidias threading provides vastly better performance than without threading optimization. The effect is supposedly twice what you get for ae's patch, but the big bone is that it actually works for everybody and it is stable. You definitely do not want to use ae's patch together with nivida's optimization, they both try to achieve the same.

So, let me get this straight: You -activated- the threading optimization that cut performance in half on the majority of the tests here on Phoronix, but YOU actually got an increase in fps through Wine in WoW?

... I must say.. THAT is interesting. Maybe it will work for GW2 too then. I mean, not the patch, but the new Nvidia drivers (after turning on the threading optimization)

Although, I didn't quite understand how to actually turn it on. It said:

Setting the __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS environment variable to "1" before loading the NVIDIA OpenGL driver library will enable these optimizations for the lifetime of the application.

Where and how did you do that?

Please note that these optimizations can currently only be enabled if the target application dynamically links against pthreads. If this isn't the case, the dynamic loader can be instructed to do so at runtime by setting the LD_PRELOAD environment variable to include the pthreads library.

Where and how do you do that?

[Vadi]

Taking advantage of this experimental OpenGL support can be easily exposed in this case by setting LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ded_opts&num=1

[Del_]

So, let me get this straight: You -activated- the threading optimization that cut performance in half on the majority of the tests here on Phoronix, but YOU actually got an increase in fps through Wine in WoW?

Yes, a substantial increase, think like 50% increase in fps during raids.

... I must say.. THAT is interesting. Maybe it will work for GW2 too then. I mean, not the patch, but the new Nvidia drivers (after turning on the threading optimization)

yes, but it seems less clear cut there. Look at the wine bug report I linked to and you will find reports for gw2.

Although, I didn't quite understand how to actually turn it on.

1. Go to nvidia's download page here: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
you will find reference to beta and old drivers down to the left of the page, choose that and download your driver.
2. Make sure you have kernel headers for your kernel installed, stop the xserver (otherwise nvidia refuses to install, a nice user-unfriendly feature). On Ubntu variants this is now done with the service command, while previously it was the /etc/init.d/ used. For me using kubuntu with the kdm log-in mamanger, it goes like this: Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get a terminal, run sudo service kdm stop, to stop the xserver, and then install the driver with sudo sh NVIDIA-blob-name.
3. Reboot, and start your application with the said environment variable like this:
LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 wine /path/to/wow.exe
ref. the README (towards the bottom of the page) http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...variables.html

What version of the game are you running? Are you running current or 2.4.3/3.3.5a/4.0.6a

Latest Mists of Pandaria (actually it is not me but my son doing all the gaming), but the performance increase should be similar across the latest versions of wow.

Speak for yourself. The nouveau garbage is bad for everything else, not just games.

http://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer...00gt_fail1_lrg

"This eight-year-old graphics card is still failing badly with Nouveau."

Like I said, you open source driver retards want horrible, subpar experience, thats your choice. Don't try and troll in the Nvidia drivers threads.

I can easily fill a thread with my bad experiences using the nvidia blob. Just a few highlights:
-said gaming rig used by my son refuses to boot normally with nvidia card (had to resort to text based install, and use failsafe to get it to boot), only and issue with nvidia, ait card no problem. Not to mention twinview being fucked up so bad that it takes us a whole evening of tinkering to get his television screen operational together with his monitor.
-I have a top of the line Red Hat workstation beside me, specially ordered to run a visualization server. The server needs newer opengl drivers, so I got a top-of-the-line nvidia quadro card on it. Guess what, I have spent months testing through all the latest nvidia drivers, none being close to stable on this thing. Actually, it is *always* the nvidia blob whenever I experience non-hardware related instablitites on the Red Hat workstations. The only piece of closed software on the machines are always the sinner.

So I happen to agree with Linus.

[Shahrizai]

Oooh, quick reply, thank you

I will upgrade my Desktop to 12.10 and come back and try your guide

Thanks! (in advance)

[Shahrizai]

Ok, I've been googling all day trying to get things installed. I finally have things up and running with 310.14.
Creating a launcher for the game was not an easy task either.

So, I have this command now:

LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 wine /home/shahrizai/GuildWars2/gw2.exe

And it gives me this in return:

There was an error launching the application.
Details: Failed to execute child process "LD_PRELOAD=libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" (No such file or directory)

Any idea what I haven't done?

[johnc]

Try:

/bin/sh 'LD_PRELOAD=...'

Those launchers can be tricky.

[Shahrizai]

Hmm, interesting, now nothing happens. No error message, but the program doesnt start either.
Thank you for your answer btw

Edit: Oh btw, I tried to add "etracer" to the string (it was added in the readme), but that didnt make any difference.

[asdx]

Speak for yourself. The nouveau garbage is bad for everything else, not just games.

http://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer...00gt_fail1_lrg

"This eight-year-old graphics card is still failing badly with Nouveau."

Like I said, you open source driver retards want horrible, subpar experience, thats your choice. Don't try and troll in the Nvidia drivers threads.

At least we can fix those issues in the open source driver, try fixing a problem with your blob, wait, you can't.

Right, you need to go and beg nvidia to do it for you.

Asshole, garbage is your blob and yourself.