Some good news for Linux gamers

stopper

stopper

stopper

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Not sure how important this is to most here but it is quite an interesting read never the less.
The dev of the gallium open source driver for AMD cards has found a way to allow Directx (windows) games, to interact directly with the GPU driver, eliminating the need for OpenGL conversion through Wine, which in turn will increase performance to the same level as running natively on Windows.

http://rootgamer.com/11403/news/directx-linux-gallium-driver

I personally consider this a major breakthrough as it could open up the entire back catalogue of Windows games for Linux. Pity it is still in very early stages though.
 
craptakular said:
I'm sure MS lawyers will stop this.
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They can't do a damn thing about some one writing open source software.
And he isn't even altering or copying any DX code, he is simply building his own API which alows DX to communicate with the hardware directly. Exactly the same as ATI's Mantle.
If any thing, Microsoft should be employing him.
 
Sounds interesting

I'm just looking at getting a new GPU and AMD GPU's seem so much cheaper for price/performance at the moment :D

The opensource AMD driver is quite a bit slower than the catalyst drivers at the moment tho :(
 
mortals said:
Sounds interesting

I'm just looking at getting a new GPU and AMD GPU's seem so much cheaper for price/performance at the moment :D

The opensource AMD driver is quite a bit slower than the catalyst drivers at the moment tho :(
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They're not 'that' bad, I tend to find that catalyst has so many issues with X.

Interesting news though, I'm hoping that a lot of game developers look at this with a fresh mind.
 
Number_25 said:
They're not 'that' bad, I tend to find that catalyst has so many issues with X.

Interesting news though, I'm hoping that a lot of game developers look at this with a fresh mind.
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I'm just going by this (as I'm looking at the R9 280x):
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The benchmarks are from July 2013 so not sure what changes there have been since then but seems like there is a huge difference in performance :confused:
 
mortals said:
The benchmarks are from July 2013 so not sure what changes there have been since then but seems like there is a huge difference in performance :confused:
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Dammit - I hate when I'm expecting to get 600 FPS and I only get 120 FPS, totally ruins my games :rolleyes:

The Open source drivers don't have to be as good as closed, just good enough
 
While that's a fantastic development, unless either the open source drivers catch up to the performance of the binary drivers (unlikely) or the binary drivers implement this (very unlikely) it's not much of much use in real performance terms.
 
uncle_rufus said:
Dammit - I hate when I'm expecting to get 600 FPS and I only get 120 FPS, totally ruins my games :rolleyes:

The Open source drivers don't have to be as good as closed, just good enough
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What about in newer native demanding games? (eg: Metro Last Light).

A 7950 not being able to achieve 60fps on reaction quake 3 seems stupidly slow. (with the open source drivers which is what we are on about)
which would suggest they aren't good enough, even on native games
Tom B said:
While that's a fantastic development, unless either the open source drivers catch up to the performance of the binary drivers (unlikely) or the binary drivers implement this (very unlikely) it's not much of much use in real performance terms.
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I agree with this, if the performance isn't there then there's not much point in switching.

I think if it does work, the developer might get contacted and maybe even employed by AMD :confused:
Having this functionality in the catalyst drivers could be a nice step forward

FoxEye said:
I don't expect Linux to be a viable gaming platform for another decade at least (if ever).
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This seems true if you want to play all the games that come out

If you only play specific games it can be viable tho.
I used to play quake3 on linux in 2001-2006 in competitive clans division 1.

Also seems pretty viable for some newer games like DOTA2 and hearthstone.
Hopefully CSGO soon (is already on OSX on steam)
 
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mortals said:
This seems true if you want to play all the games that come out

If you only play specific games it can be viable tho.
I used to play quake3 on linux in 2001-2006 in competitive clans division 1.

Also seems pretty viable for some newer games like DOTA2 and hearthstone.
Hopefully CSGO soon (is already on OSX on steam)
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Leaving out indy devs - who mostly do release on Linux - there are only a handful of games that support Linux. I wish there were more.

Being realistic tho, most gamers want to play a fair few of the AAA games released each year. A scenario that won't be possible on Linux for the forseable future.
 
FoxEye said:
Leaving out indy devs - who mostly do release on Linux - there are only a handful of games that support Linux. I wish there were more.

Being realistic tho, most gamers want to play a fair few of the AAA games released each year. A scenario that won't be possible on Linux for the forseable future.
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Unreal Tournament
Darksiders 2
Witcher 2
Metro redux
EA's football manager
Borderlands
Warhammer
Team17 - Worms franchise
Cryengine
Project cars
Dice are interested
Blizzard are interested
Almost all of Valves back catalogue is already on Linux.

It was Gabe and Valve that turned Windows into a major gaming platform, now he has turned all his attention to Linux and brought Nvidia with him. Linux will be a major player much quicker than Windows ever managed it, the hard work is already done.
 
mortals said:
A 7950 not being able to achieve 60fps on reaction quake 3 seems stupidly slow. (with the open source drivers which is what we are on about)
which would suggest they aren't good enough, even on native games
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I know I know, just saying bench's aren't everything... :p

stopper said:
It was Gabe and Valve that turned Windows into a major gaming platform, now he has turned all his attention to Linux and brought Nvidia with him. Linux will be a major player much quicker than Windows ever managed it, the hard work is already done.
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Hmm like the others whilst I admire your optimism (and I am also fairly optimistic about Linux for gaming in the future) I also don't think Valve did that single-handedly... Digital distribution of games on the other hand they totally drove forward
 
uncle_rufus said:
I also don't think Valve did that single-handedly
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Maybe not "single" handedly, but he worked for Microsoft for 13 years, coding and producing Windows. He literally made Windows.
1 guy left to help create Quake, 2 guys left to create Half Life (and Valve), 2 out of 3 of the biggest landmarking games that turned Windows into a gaming platform.
So yeah, I would say that he pretty much created Windows gaming.
 
What about windows 95 and direct x (which MS bought a company for)? There were a vast and diverse range of windows games before valve.
 
This would be of interest for fairly old DX9 games that have low requirements. Anything that needs a bit of power will need proprietary drivers and (effectively) nvidia hardware, which rules this out. There's far more interest in native gaming, which of course most of the newer engines have.
 
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