Quoting: linuxgamerFor me Talos and Serious Sam 3: BFE had a quite low performance. Talos went well as there is very few time depending action, but it was not possible to play a FPS like SS3, so I preferred to get a refund

Exactly - minus the refund.

It will be very interesting to see if Vulkan can make these games, in particular SS3, run on a 7950 from zero to hero.
However, it's not clear 7950 will get Vulkan on Linux at all, AFAIK. :/

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: sub

Quoting: GuestBest we can hope for is that Valve release the intel drivers they modified for testing Vulkan.

That's what Valve promised.

Page 18:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Pierre-Loup_Griffais_and_John_McDonald_Vulkan.pdf [External Link]

A "promise" back then means nothing until it's actually released.

Right, in that regard you cannot trust anyone promising anything. :D

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Quoting: GuestBest we can hope for is that Valve release the intel drivers they modified for testing Vulkan.

That's what Valve promised.

Page 18:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/2015/Pierre-Loup_Griffais_and_John_McDonald_Vulkan.pdf [External Link]

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Is it just me or is eON/VP-ported stuff looking differently than the windows games?

Despite the lower graphical settings required (because the ports are usually not performing well on my AMD setup), the output looks like it is actually rendered at a lower resolution and then upscaled afterwards.
Hard to explain but the output is blocky beyond what to expect from the resolution and this seems to be consistently the case for all eON games I have - Witcher 2, Dirt Showdown and Saints Row IV.

Can anybody confirm this or is it just my imagination?

Edit: Or maybe this could be a Volkswagen-like AMD-specific code path to make it playable on those GPUs at all? #conspiracy

Edit2: Too much paranoia. Game looks perfectly the same on windows. But there it runs perfectly smooth at least.

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Runs slow with a Radeon 7950, Catalyst 15.11, at the rather low standard settings 1280x960.
Graphical corruptions on character polygon edges are present.
Even the scroll text in the menu stutters.

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So that's basically "Mario's Picross"?

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I remember the 90s when a Neo Geo was extremely expensive,
especially the cartridges which featured extremely big memory for that time.

Far out of reach - for me. :)

That's a very nice bundle!

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Imho no need for a "Worst game category".

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Quoting: PeciskI personally don't think Vulkan is any kind of salvation here.

It's not a guaranteed salvation but there's a good chance it will help to get some more AAA games to SteamOS.

Quoting: PeciskBinary drivers just has to get better.

Yeah, but here lies exactly the big opportunity.
Vulkan drivers are significantly lower level and slimmer than OpenGL drivers.
Hence, easier to write and test.

However, much responsibility and control is transferred to the application developers.

But that is exactly what the AAA-Million-Dollar-Blockbuster-Developers were asking for.
Maybe not so much your creative indie buddy - but they can still use OpenGL.

TL;DR

Vulkan has the potential to make a difference.

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IMHO the impact of those articles, albeit partly or fully true, is huge!

We all know: "There is no second chance to make a first impression".
And this is exactly what I'm afraid of when it comes to the Steam Machines.

While *we* know that there is a good chance Vulkan and other improvements
of the environment might eventually lead to a very good and competitive platform,
most of those articles (maybe intentionally) don't make that clear.

Even worse, it feels like they want to prove that Steam Machines with SteamOS are crap.
And they're doing a damn fine job at this.

I'm really puzzled about Valve's PR department when it comes to the SteamOS.
I'd say they're doing a terrible job. Am I missing anything?

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