Doom3 Linux and Windows Battlegrounds
by Kristopher Kubicki on October 13, 2004 12:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Setting it Up
We are required to run 24-bit color for this game, so the default 16-bit desktop had to be reconfigured using SaX2 for 24-bit color. We also double-checked to make sure that we were running the NVIDIA driver, as opposed to the NV driver. We can only modify AA and AF settings using the nvidia-settings utility if we use the NVIDA driver. Below, you can see a quick screenshot of the nvidia-settings utility.
Click to enlarge.
As in our previous roundup, the 6800 and 6800 Ultra video cards are not recognized natively by the NVIDA driver. We had to select the 5950 Ultra driver manually in SaX2, run the "switch2nvidia" utility provided with our drivers, and then reboot the system. We are not entirely sure why the reboot is necessary, but Doom3 would not initialize without it.
Just like our large GPU roundup last week, we attempted to run Doom3 on ATI and NVIDIA mid-range/high end cards from the last 18 months. Unfortunately, we were greeted with an ominous warning on Doom3's Linux port webpage.
"Currently, the game will not run correctly on ATI cards using the fglrx driver. However, the ATI developers are working on new driver releases, and eventually the game will be supported. "[2]We haven't heard much from the ATI team yet, but hopefully, their upcoming Linux announcement will rectify this.
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jediknight - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
#15 - My bad to make such generalizations..but the fact that you can't even use an ATI card to play D3 doesn't bode well for Linux gaming...
jensend - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
#14- bunk. All you can take away from this review is that Windows "owns Linux for" D3 1.1 performance. You can't generalize this for game performance in general. Most games show a less than 5% difference.BTW, another article on the same topic with more detail is at http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/...
jediknight - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
I like the difference pictures.. although when you get up to 8x and 16x, they're probably unnecessary.But the thing to take away from this review is that Windows owns Linux for gaming performance.
icehot - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
Interesting article. Was it just me or are the difference maps just pure black? Also I dont think things like 16xAA are really needed, after 2x or 4x the differences between anything higher and the original image is negligable, and definately not noticeable when playing, maybe if you really take the time to admire the scenary, but who does that when fighting monsters??Lwood - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
According to an article over at LinuxHardware.org, the Linux build of Doom 3 is currently less optimized than the Windows build.Most notably SSE2 code is missing (but will be added later) and GCC does not optimize as good as VC.net.
Details here:
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/...
I guess we can expect the gap to get smaller in later Doom 3 builds, but not to disappear entirely.
ViRGE - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
Kris, odd, I swear that I was only getting 2 graphs per page when I read the article. I don't know if Firefox is bugging out on me or what.reljam - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
Kris, please put Windows and Linux numbers on the same graph, you know that people will want to see how they stack up against each other.Not clear on why you wouldn't want to do that.
jensend - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
Neither NV nor id has much of a reason to optimize heavily for linux, and it's entirely unsurprising that the windows version performs better. Nevertheless, I expect that the gap will close considerably as the Doom 3 engine matures.Myrandex - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
The AA pictures won't work for me. When I click on them, I get a new window w/ the alert 'hold your mouse over the picture' and then the page doesn't load. When I hold my mouse over the original image, nothing happens. Also, the black pictures to the right of those are way to black to tell a thing about them. Interesting article though. I wonder if 16X AA would be playable in a lower resolution.Jason
Lwood - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
That bit about the 16x AA you can enable in Linux is surely interesting. Maybe you can try this on a less performance-demanding game than Doom 3.I'd love to see UT 2004 and Enemy Territory benchmarks for this mode... :-)