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This is sad to see. A new benchmark video for Windows and Linux using Dota 2 actually shows Windows doing quite a lot better than Linux.

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I spoke to the person who did it on twitter, he mentioned both Windows/Linux were done in borderless fullscreen mode. The Linux Nvidia driver was 367.17, while Windows used 368.25. As for AMD Windows used 16.5.3, while Ubuntu used amdgpu-pro.

I said before plenty of times that Vulkan will not be some magical bullet to bring Linux performance up on par with Windows. There can be problems elsewhere contributing to the performance drop on Linux. It could be X11, it could be a compositor issue, it could be lots of things.

I'm certainly no expert in these issues, but seeing Vulkan perform worse than OpenGL at 4K on Linux was quite disappointing to me. At least in lower resolutions Vulkan was performing better than OpenGL on Linux. The major issue is just how much faster Windows is with Vulkan than Linux.

What are your thoughts, any theories? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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devland Jun 15, 2016
QuoteWhat are your thoughts, any theories?

Vulkan is a new API. So far all performance tests yielded similar results. This was expected and is not news.

Please don't sensationalize the issue. Vulkan will get better in time as will it's implementation by game developers. :)
pete910 Jun 15, 2016
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Been quicker on windows from the start
Pecisk Jun 15, 2016
Considering how new Vulkan drivers are - is that exactly issue? Also it is quite possible that Linux Vulkan port still have strange issues left over from OpenGL. That's really say close to zero about what causes this.

Also I never considered Vulkan a silver bullet. It is flexible enough to tweak engines to get acceptable performance on Linux.
lejimster Jun 15, 2016
And did he perform the test with the Beta Steam client. This would effect the AMD results at the very least, because of the Overlay performance bug.

Otherwise, what I would say is that Vulkan isn't the finished article, but it is disappointing to see this effect right now.
rkfg Jun 15, 2016
From reddit:
QuoteMaybe the Linux driver is still not perfect for the 1080 card?
From Phoronix, discussing the latest beta driver:
The NVIDIA 367.18 Linux driver doesn't explicitly mention any Pascal support for the new GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, but I believe that's in there too. The next driver release though should officially mention this new graphics card support.
So that suggests to me that the tested driver (not sure of the Linux version he used, I assume the latest stable) is not great for the 1080.

Liam, you have Windows and you can test the renderer yourself. 980Ti should be supported very well and this concern would be struck out.
Code Artisan Jun 15, 2016
Some profiling to know where the hotspots are would have been interesting.

http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html
Liam Dawe Jun 15, 2016
Quoting: devland
QuoteWhat are your thoughts, any theories?

Vulkan is a new API. So far all performance tests yielded similar results. This was expected and is not news.

Please don't sensationalize the issue. Vulkan will get better in time as will it's implementation by game developers. :)
No one is sensationalising anything. These are the facts.

Quoting: rkfgFrom reddit:
QuoteMaybe the Linux driver is still not perfect for the 1080 card?
From Phoronix, discussing the latest beta driver:
The NVIDIA 367.18 Linux driver doesn't explicitly mention any Pascal support for the new GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, but I believe that's in there too. The next driver release though should officially mention this new graphics card support.
So that suggests to me that the tested driver (not sure of the Linux version he used, I assume the latest stable) is not great for the 1080.

Liam, you have Windows and you can test the renderer yourself. 980Ti should be supported very well and this concern would be struck out.
I don't see the point, since I have a 980ti, not the 1080 that was tested. Totally different generation.
Magbed Jun 15, 2016
Did he used performance cpu governor on Ubuntu? Its been said to make huge differences sometimes.
melkemind Jun 15, 2016
I'm actually more surprised Nvidia's Linux drivers already suppirt their 1080 card.
coruun Jun 15, 2016
I wonder, how this relates to Phoronix' results of 107FPS (compared to his 80FPS) for the 4K Vulkan test.

Is this simply the "difficult" scene or are there some other problems?!


Last edited by coruun on 15 June 2016 at 12:29 pm UTC
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