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Tomb Raider benchmark video comparison, Linux vs Windows 10

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I decided to do a bit of a learning exercise today and do my first ever video comparison between two platforms. I picked Tomb Raider since that's what's hot right now. The performance difference between Windows 10 and Linux is quite large in Tomb Raider.

This is my first ever attempt, but I think it turned out reasonably well. The problem I've found is getting a smooth video of the benchmark on Linux, as all recording software made it slightly stutter (with no effect on actual FPS, tested against my previous results). This happens in some games, others are fine.

The second issue is the Tomb Raider benchmark is actually a little different each time with the animations that happen and their timings. Even in this video the timing of the animations at one point is different, but the rest is fine.

To note: This was on the exact same settings, double checked. High preset, motion blur off.

Tested on
Linux Mint 17.3
Intel i7-5960X
Nvidia 980ti
16GB RAM

Also, the game is actually heavier than the benchmark as I noted in my port report.

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The performance difference is quite striking, and quite sad to see such a major difference in performance when testing it myself. Considering the power of my test rig, I do expect better.

I have no doubt Feral Interactive will push out future patches to improve things. They do support their titles very well, but it's still sad to see such a massive difference. I didn't even realize the difference was so large until I performed these tests. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Benchmark, Video
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About the author -
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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.
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omer666 May 2, 2016
Quoting: wojtek88I feel like I need to clarify one thing regarding my opinion - I know that Feral may not be the one to blame for performance. But Feral is the one who announces release, and Feral is the one who makes game available for us. And there was no information about known performance issues or they did not say that the game is released, but there is performance update that we should expect. Instead, we have a product, that seems to be final according to all the advertisements, but is not according to performance.
And I just expect those issues to be solved, and Feral needs to take part in fixing process. Even if nVidia is the one to blame.
If this is fixed and performance is comparable to Windows, then I will be happy to give them my money for the full price.

But sadly, currently I have an impression that we have a half product.

No worries, I was not pointing at you by any mean, I just wanted to clarify who's doing what as far as pure performance is concerned, and nVidia is a factor we should not overlook. Their monopoly doesn't encourage them to push things forward and it's a real shame at the time. As their hardware is included in every Steam hardware produced as of now, their Linux drivers should be top priority... But obviously, they're not.


Last edited by omer666 on 2 May 2016 at 7:35 pm UTC
rkfg May 2, 2016
Quoting: Mountain ManActually, the Linux version of XCOM 2 ran comparable to and even slightly better than the Windows version. It was Firaxis who "downgraded" some of the visuals in the performance patch. Feral just ported those changes into the Linux version.

View video on youtube.com
Wow, that's quite surprising! Then I guess some hope's restored, though XCOM 2 was released recently and costs much more than Tomb Raider after three years. So it's much more likely to be optimized. The driver issue still stands as I see and unfortunately 35x.xx branch just isn't for me, NS2 crashes with it frequently and Steam crashes as well when changing game category.
rkfg May 3, 2016
Quoting: Guest355.11 has worked very well for me (GTX 660). It’s the 358 series that made Steam crash. But I don’t know about "NS2".
Natural Selection 2. I tried 352.79 today, Steam indeed doesn't crash but NS2 does. I suspect that the crash was fixed in 36x.xx on the driver's side as it was present for pretty long time, random crash just during the game. NVIDIA even investigated it and pointed to the game binary but I suspect they made a game-specific fix in the driver eventually like they do for lots of Windows games. And I'm grateful for that.

The performance isn't very different in Tomb Raider between 352.79 and 361.19 actually. Maybe 1-2 FPS at most while in the heavy zone of the map. I had about 15-18 FPS there, the very beginning of the Roth arc. BTW, setting __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 helps to get another 3 FPS while loading the CPU for 50% more. Normally I have 200% (it's actually using threading, yay!) and after enabling the optimization I've got 250-280%. To easily switch it on I've created a script like this:
#!/bin/sh
env __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 "$@"

and saved it under the name /usr/local/bin/glto, then I put "glto %command%" to the launch parameters of the game and voila.

Too bad Feral still hasn't sorted out the issue with XCOM 2 as it has such a massive performance hit on 361.xx branch. It doesn't really look like a driver-only issue (the new GLVND architecture and such) since other games aren't affected.
dubigrasu May 9, 2016
Quoting: rkfgI've created a script like this:
#!/bin/sh
env __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 "$@"

and saved it under the name /usr/local/bin/glto, then I put "glto %command%" to the launch parameters of the game and voila.
Nice idea, thanks.
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