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Mesa 18.1 is out with the shader cache on for Intel

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Open source drivers on Linux have advanced rather quickly and now we have another fresh release out with Mesa 18.1 which was released yesterday.

One of the major new features, is that the shader cache for Intel is now turned on by default, which should hopefully result in smoother performance for those of you gaming with an Intel GPU. Vulkan 1.1 support for the AMD RADV and Intel ANV drivers, plus various performance improvements and bug fixes.

Here's their other feature highlights:

  • OpenGL 3.1 with ARB_compatibility on nv50, nvc0, r600, radeonsi, softpipe, llvmpipe, svga
  • GL_ARB_bindless_texture on nvc0/maxwell+
  • GL_ARB_transform_feedback_overflow_query on nvc0
  • GL_EXT_semaphore on radeonsi
  • GL_EXT_semaphore_fd on radeonsi
  • GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch on i965 on desktop GL (GLES was already supported)
  • GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch_non_coherent on i965
  • GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced on radeonsi

Usual notice: Since I have an NVIDIA GPU I don't follow Mesa too closely.

Find the full release notes here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Drivers, Mesa
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nox May 20, 2018
Quoting: Guestit's getting better but theirs always going to be that one game that is just not working or devs can't get working due to a limitation of the driver

Thank you for the list :)

Now, which "limitations of the driver" are you referring to?

I'm sorry, but if you had stopped your sentence at "mesa is still not perfect" I would have let it be, but you clearly know of limitations that makes it hard to support mesa. As I lack technical knowledge about the inner workings of any driver I'm very interested in knowing exactly what limitation you are talking about :)

Just a little information though about mesa and compatibility: The bug reports I've followed in the past half a year has mostly been about game bugs, not driver bugs. In certain cases mesa could add workarounds.


EDIT:
Aragami works fine on Manjaro with mesa 18.0.4


Last edited by nox on 20 May 2018 at 12:48 pm UTC
x_wing May 21, 2018
Quoting: pete910All those work fine with mesa with AMD, Expecting intel's IGP to run them well is a little unfair. Lets be honest, Intel make good CPU's but plain suck at the graphics side of things.

There is currently one game that has issue for me with mesa (I have a fairly good library too) and that is Dying light !

It refuses to work with mesa on anything other than Ubuntu for some weird reason

It has been working for me since Mesa 17.3 (I ended the game months ago).

On my launch options I have this: MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=450 %command%

Check if that helps you!
x_wing May 21, 2018
Quoting: Guestpersonally for me i have experienced issues with three games under mesa

aragami (probably a unity problem but crashes every distro i have tried)

the last tinker city of colors (devs said it might be a unity texture issue)

mark of the ninja (broken off center display)


keep in mind that i don't buy a crap ton of games so i can't speak for all games

mesa is still not perfect for gaming on linux

it's getting better but theirs always going to be that one game that is just not working or devs can't get working due to a limitation of the driver

I think that the release of Rise of the TR proves you're wrong. With this game I saw more issues with nvidia driver than with Mesa. In fact, one of the most incredible things of the open source driver was that Feral committed a bug fix on the driver. This means that publishers don't have to wait for AMD or Nvidia to fix their drivers.
pete910 May 21, 2018
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Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: pete910All those work fine with mesa with AMD, Expecting intel's IGP to run them well is a little unfair. Lets be honest, Intel make good CPU's but plain suck at the graphics side of things.

There is currently one game that has issue for me with mesa (I have a fairly good library too) and that is Dying light !

It refuses to work with mesa on anything other than Ubuntu for some weird reason

It has been working for me since Mesa 17.3 (I ended the game months ago).

On my launch options I have this: MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=450 %command%

Check if that helps you!

Don't work for those not on *buntu distros. But thanks for the suggestion
Shmerl May 22, 2018
Quoting: GustyGhost
Quoting: Guestmesa is a life saver for intel and amd users however i still stand by what i always said older games are still going to run bad in mesa due to being mostly optimized for nvidia gpus

I have not experienced any performance issues with older games whatsoever.

Same here. Old games work fine with Vega 56.
x_wing May 23, 2018
Quoting: Guestyes a recent game at a time when mesa is actually good vs games that were made when mesa was not so good totally proved wrong ;)

Well I think it does, as I was answering to his last statement: "it's getting better but theirs always going to be that one game that is just not working or devs can't get working due to a limitation of the driver"

Also, the count of "old" games that are unplayable with Mesa is near zero...


Last edited by x_wing on 23 May 2018 at 11:01 am UTC
x_wing May 23, 2018
Quoting: pete910
Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: pete910All those work fine with mesa with AMD, Expecting intel's IGP to run them well is a little unfair. Lets be honest, Intel make good CPU's but plain suck at the graphics side of things.

There is currently one game that has issue for me with mesa (I have a fairly good library too) and that is Dying light !

It refuses to work with mesa on anything other than Ubuntu for some weird reason

It has been working for me since Mesa 17.3 (I ended the game months ago).

On my launch options I have this: MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=450 %command%

Check if that helps you!

Don't work for those not on *buntu distros. But thanks for the suggestion

Well, I currently have Kubuntu 16.04 (with padoka ppa) and is working for me :P (I've updated my kernel up to 4.13 when I played it, but the problem was at Mesa level due to a non standard usage of the API -AFAIK-)
nox May 23, 2018
Quoting: Guestplayable and playable without texture corruptions and other issues caused by running a game in a mesa environment are two very different things


Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: Guestyes a recent game at a time when mesa is actually good vs games that were made when mesa was not so good totally proved wrong ;)

Well I think it does, as I was answering to his last statement: "it's getting better but theirs always going to be that one game that is just not working or devs can't get working due to a limitation of the driver"

Also, the count of "old" games that are unplayable with Mesa is near zero...
So, what games are you experiencing texture corruptions in?

I don't understand what your goal is, to be honest. Yes, mesa used to be much worse than Nvidia, but at this point they are mostly caught up. The main field they've been slightly slower at has been vulkan, but that is quickly being fixed as well.

Maybe it's time for you to check out how mesa is today, and not how it was 2+ years ago?
x_wing May 23, 2018
Quoting: Guestplayable and playable without texture corruptions and other issues caused by running a game in a mesa environment are two very different things

What nox said, give us some examples. The games I usually play on my system doesn't have texture corruption, so it's difficult for me to answer something that I don't experiment.

I have been using Mesa with AMDGPU drivers for more than two years by now (R9 380 and R9 580), I experienced game crash or hangs (and most of the times was a game fault) but I don't recall having texture corruption.
pete910 May 23, 2018
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Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: Guestplayable and playable without texture corruptions and other issues caused by running a game in a mesa environment are two very different things

What nox said, give us some examples. The games I usually play on my system doesn't have texture corruption, so it's difficult for me to answer something that I don't experiment.

I have been using Mesa with AMDGPU drivers for more than two years by now (R9 380 and R9 580), I experienced game crash or hangs (and most of the times was a game fault) but I don't recall having texture corruption.

Last game I was having that was Insugency/dying light and Day of infamy but ironically on the gtx1080. Was one of the reasons that finally made me jump back to AMD/Mesa
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