Linux Gaming For Older/Lower-End Graphics Cards In 2018

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Gaming For Older/Lower-End Graphics Cards In 2018

A request came in this week to look at how low-end and older graphics cards are performing with current generation Linux games on OpenGL and Vulkan. With ten older/lower-end NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards, here is a look at their performance with a variety of native Linux games atop Ubuntu using the latest Radeon and NVIDIA drivers.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25890

[mphuZ]

Hmm.. Serious Sam 3: BFE, FullHD, Low, Vulkan - 34 fps maximum from the entire set? Are you serious?

Are you sure that your tests right? Or on Linux really all that bad? Example: SS3, FullHD, Low, Vulkan, Windows 10 & HD7850 - 160-220 fps (random benchmark)

[Jahimself]

Very interesting benchmarks.

It shows that you can make affordable multimedia/gaming linux rig when budget is tight.

There is now about 4000 games for linux on steam and I feel there is nice card to play for the less fortunate who want to provide fun for them and their family. Outside of that on gog and itch.io there is a growing number of independent games that are really worthy.

It is a good spot as on top of that as your privacy to be respected and your setups don't get broken on every update like windows 10 does. It also save you the cost of the license which is quite expensive.

AMD results were surprisingly good for that purpose as vulkan seems to really benefits old/low-end rigs.

Thanks Michael once again. Very good job and good selection of hardware.

[dungeon]

For making the tests realistic for an older/lower-end system, I used an A6-7400K Kaveri system for testing. The aging A6-7400K is a dual-core 3.5GHz part and for making sure it's less of a CPU bottleneck I overclocked it to 3.9GHz.

Great choice to use it as just CPU, as that APU works the best without iGPU

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99353

Phoronix claims this APU worked in 2014[1]. It never worked for me with the open source driver (previously not even KMS worked), however it worked perfectly with fglrx last time I tried it.

Looks like model is broken since forever with opensource drivers To not mention that since AMDGPU-PRO does not support APUs, the first and last working driver is 2+ years old FGLRX

[Guest]

Seems like the most tests ("real" games, CSGO, Dota, ...) are CPU bottlenecked, variance within same driver/vendor is suspiciously low.
edit: assumption doesn't go too well with CPU usage grap, wonder what that graph signifies (min(1.0, load/num_cores)?).

[Michael_S]

Hmm.. Serious Sam 3: BFE, FullHD, Low, Vulkan - 34 fps maximum from the entire set? Are you serious?

Are you sure that your tests right? Or on Linux really all that bad? Example: SS3, FullHD, Low, Vulkan, Windows 10 & HD7850 - 160-220 fps (random benchmark)

I wonder how much of that is a driver problem and how much is a Linux port problem (edit and how much is a CPU problem).

Let me check, Radeon HD 7850: shaders/texture mapping units/render output units 1024/64/32, 860 MHz, 1760 single precision GFLOPS, 110 double precision GFLOPs. Compare that to the best AMD card on that list, RX 550, right?

RX550 512/32/16, 1100 MHz, 1126 single precision GFLOPS... so one would reasonably expect 50-60% of your 7850HD performance, not less than 20%. That is disappointing.

Is it possible Serious Sam 3: BFE is CPU bound, and the antique dual core he used is the bottleneck?

[Guest]

7850 actually has Vulkan support on windows? I thought they skipped southern islands on windows (or perhaps it was added late, don't really follow windows driver updates).

[pinguinpc]

Michael

Very good tests and all in 1080p

However could add some titles case shadow of mordor, grid autosports and others

And in future test maybe can try with i7 8700K or 8600K (oc to 5.0ghz if is possible) for see how run games in higher frecuencies because 1080p* is most common resolution used according steam

*Without forget 1080p needs more cpu

Almost forget could be add ryzen stock and overclocked too

If is possible try add test with 1-2-3 and 4 cores for see how games using cpu cores

[Michael]

Michael

Very good tests and all in 1080p

However could add some titles case shadow of mordor, grid autosports and others

They aren't properly automated tests.

[pinguinpc]

They aren't properly automated tests.

Some manual tests will be good