Don't want to see articles from a certain category? When logged in, go to your User Settings and adjust your feed in the Content Preferences section where you can block tags!
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.
It seems the OpenGL threaded dispatch code to speed up some games in Mesa now uses a whitelist, with a few games now able to make use of it. As a quick reminder, the OpenGL threaded dispatch code aims to reduce the CPU overhead of Mesa, resulting in better performance for some games.

They seem to have gone for a whitelist, since not all games work with it. In fact, some games regress with it, so it's a safer approach to allow it for games that are known to work better with it.

A set of 10 patches from Mesa developer Marek made it into the Mesa-dev mailing list on Thursday. It looks like all patches as of early this morning are now in Mesa-git too, so this should be in Mesa 17.2 which is due for release in August.

Here you can see the games currently whitelisted and their changes:
QuotePerformance deltas:
Alien Isolation: +17% (it varies depending on the location)
Borderlands 2: +50% (it varies depending on the location)
BioShock Infinite: +76% (benchmark)
Civilization 6: +20% (benchmark)


Marek was pretty clear that he doesn't plan to spend any more time on glthread in the near future. Hopefully someone else can keep it going, if more work is needed that is.

Don't remember what Mesa is? I wrote a little article to help explain it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Drivers, Mesa, OpenGL
8 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
6 comments

Pecisk Jun 26, 2017
I know OGL guys are very wary about using whitelists, but I think in these kind of performance tweaks it is ok to go for that - as long it doesn't turn messy and is well documented.
Shmerl Jun 26, 2017
It seems to help The Witcher 3 in Wine, even with CSMT. I got 60 fps with threaded dispatch enabled (RX 480), while without it it only produces 40 fps (max settings, hairworks off).

lejimster Jun 26, 2017
Quoting: PeciskI know OGL guys are very wary about using whitelists, but I think in these kind of performance tweaks it is ok to go for that - as long it doesn't turn messy and is well documented.

Seems to me, a lot of open source guys are purists and don't want any hacks, workarounds, whitelists for specific games as they see it as setting a bad precedent and think the game developers should fix these problems on their side.

While I tend to agree with them in one sense, it is the responsibility of the developers/porters to do it properly. In reality most of them will never do this and so if we let the purists have their own way, gaming on AMD hardware would be stuck back in the stone age.

Personally I'm happy to see all this work being done, it means finally I can play these games Windows and nvidia users have had no trouble with for years.


Last edited by lejimster on 26 June 2017 at 4:14 pm UTC
timothyja Jun 26, 2017
Quoting: lejimster
Quoting: PeciskI know OGL guys are very wary about using whitelists, but I think in these kind of performance tweaks it is ok to go for that - as long it doesn't turn messy and is well documented.

Seems to me, a lot of open source guys are purists and don't want any hacks, workarounds, whitelists for specific games as they see it as setting a bad precedent and think the game developers should fix these problems on their side.

While I tend to agree with them in one sense, it is the responsibility of the developers/porters to do it properly. In reality most of them will never do this and so if we let the purists have their own way, gaming on AMD hardware would be stuck back in the stone age.

Personally I'm happy to see all this work being done, it means finally I can play these games Windows and nvidia users have had no trouble with for years.

Eventually it should be possible to enable/disable this feature automatically based on whether it is improving things or not. Nvidia originally had a whitelist for their version of it by it's now enabled on the fly.

Nobody is working on this yet for Mesa.
Shmerl Jun 27, 2017
Actually, correction. I had framerate cap switched on in TW3. Without it, it reaches 70-75 fps with threaded dispatch.

But when it's on, it seems to have a bad side effect. There are occasional dips in framerate, where things stutter for a fraction of a second. This doesn't happen when threaded dispatch is off.


Last edited by Shmerl on 27 June 2017 at 3:22 am UTC
DasCapschen Jun 27, 2017
Seeing as GL Threaded Dispatch improves performance in The Witcher 3 substantially, how can I enable it? ^-^'

(need ability to remove my own posts ; wanted to post this in forums, messed up my tabs ._.)


Last edited by DasCapschen on 27 June 2017 at 8:12 am UTC
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.