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Magicka 2 Looks Like It Will Have Lower Performance On AMD Cards

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I'm really excited to try Magicka 2, as I thought the first one was quite fun. The developer has been keeping everyone up to date on progress in their Steam forum. Sadly, for AMD GPU users it looks like it won't run as well as on Nvidia hardware.

A developer wrote this on their official Steam forum:
QuoteWe've had discussions on how to support non-XInput controllers and we found that just using SDLs input subsystem would probably solve that. Since there are controller emulators already we consider it a 'would be nice' feature.

I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests. On Ubuntu I tested both the open source drivers and fglrx and both worked fine. I think the open source drivers have slightly better performance. Switching drivers around kinda broke my setup though so I installed Debian 8 and did some tests there and only had issues with decals getting a slight rectangular outline.

Overall the biggest issue in my tests with AMD cards is that the performance on Linux & MacOSX feels like it's halved compared to a corresponding Nvidia card. I've added graphics settings to control how many decals/trees/foliage the game draws that helps a bit but it would've been better if this was not necessary.


It's fantastic to see them actually implement something to help with the issue though, and I'm sure many AMD GPU users will be pretty happy about that. It's not all doom and gloom, since that developer mentioned it will even work on the open source driver for AMD users, so that's great too. They must be one of a very few developers who are testing their port so thoroughly, it's quite refreshing to see.

I just want to get my hands on it already! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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52 comments
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scaine Oct 15, 2015
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Can't wait for this one. The first game was absolutely mental in multiplayer. One of those games that you can't really "come back" to though. You learn these crazy 6-button combos for massive damage, healing, shields, or whatever, then you don't play it for a month, sit back down, and realise that you can't remember any of it!

I think this new version allows you to store macros to certain spells? That might solve that problem.
sub Oct 15, 2015
QuoteA developer: I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests.

Doesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?
Liam Dawe Oct 15, 2015
Quoting: sub
QuoteA developer: I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests.

Doesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?

No, it means he is doing thorough testing. You can only pick one card to test at a time, so they will obviously go with the more supported & used card.

Did you read what else he said? He's even been testing it on open source drivers too.
scaine Oct 15, 2015
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Quoting: sub
QuoteA developer: I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests.

Doesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?

Possibly - I'm not sure how much you "code" for a specific manufacturer though. Also, the R9 270 is about a hundred dollars more expensive that the GTX card (http://www.hwcompare.com/15671/geforce-gtx-660-vs-radeon-r9-270x/). You certainly wouldn't expect "half" the performance.

Great to see such diverse testing though.
mrdeathjr Oct 15, 2015
In good news nvidia users (most part in market) for comments have good performance only needs launched

Back to amd anyone expect some different respect actual driver situation

However maybe more interesting performance comparative between catalyst vs opensource

^_^


Last edited by mrdeathjr on 15 October 2015 at 10:09 am UTC
Imants Oct 15, 2015
Quoting: sub
QuoteA developer: I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests.

Doesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?

And what did you expect develop on AMD and the see that performance on NVidia where your most of the profit will come from is sub par. I don't think so. Of course you develop on card which will give you most profit and then test on secondary cards which would be nice to work but not mandatory.
melkemind Oct 15, 2015
Quoting: sub
QuoteA developer: I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests.

Doesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?

I'm not a game developer here, so this is more of a question than a statement. But wouldn't coding for a particular card only be the case when you're adding functionality specific to that card (proprietary things like Nvidia's PhysX)? Other than that, shouldn't common OpenGL functions work the same on both cards? These are open standards that both drivers should meet...right?
tuubi Oct 15, 2015
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Quoting: melkemindOther than that, shouldn't common OpenGL functions work the same on both cards? These are open standards that both drivers should meet...right?
My understanding is that Nvidia hacks around a lot of common mistakes and bad practices in OpenGL code. Basically it'd be better for compatibility if games were primarily (but not exclusively) tested and optimized on an AMD gpu, as this would - at least in theory - result in cleaner code that would most likely run just fine on Nvidia's drivers as well. Although coding strictly to spec without great documentation and tooling (test suites etc.) is really hard and time-consuming.
sub Oct 15, 2015
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: sub
QuoteA developer: I took the liberty of replacing the Nvidia 660GTX in my Linux machine for our Radeon 270X and ran some tests.

Doesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?

No, it means he is doing thorough testing. You can only pick one card to test at a time, so they will obviously go with the more supported & used card.

Did you read what else he said? He's even been testing it on open source drivers too.

Yes, I did. But doesn't it read like he did so *after* they ported the game?
So what's your point about my question?
kon14 Oct 15, 2015
Quoting: Imants
Quoting: subDoesn't this statement, again, shows that many developers develop on Nvidia first, then try with an AMD card and are disappointed - or even blame AMD for bad performance?

And what did you expect develop on AMD and the see that performance on NVidia where your most of the profit will come from is sub par. I don't think so. Of course you develop on card which will give you most profit and then test on secondary cards which would be nice to work but not mandatory.

This way of thinking got us this far...

Secondary cards? There's no such thing as secondary hardware, there's only miscalleneous hardware and amd is still a long way from getting kicked out of the market.

Amd support not being mandatory now? I honestly can't believe I'm reading this, almost sounds like a fanboy reply.

With such a consumer-friendly comment coming out of the keyboard of a linux (minority) user I'm starting to wonder how come devs still release linux games for us to play...

I agree with sub on this one, they indeed do seem to be developing specifically for nvidia. Then they complain about amd and after a while they decide to drop amd support in their games, that's always the plan. Let's applaud them (everyone) for it, shall we?

I'm not saying amd (fglrx/radeonsi) can currently compete with nvidia when it comes to which driver offers the most opengl performance (illegal implementation or not) and up to a great percentage that's due to amd's own support, though developing a linux game without ever testing on amd (if that was indeed the case) and expecting it to its whole, already lesser, potential is just infuriating to say the least.

They don't have to test on a single system throughout development and in any case switching between nvidia and amd once in a while is not that hard either. It's their job after all, right?


Last edited by kon14 on 15 October 2015 at 2:02 pm UTC
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