AMD and Linux: Reaching for the 64-bit Trophy
by Kristopher Kubicki on July 12, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Gaming Performance
Unfortunately in Linux, we are restricted to only a few native games. Utilities such as WineX are bringing more and more games closer to the mainstream adoption that Windows already cherishes. However, we could spend an entire review alone looking solely at Wine based gaming, so we will save that for the future. In the meantime, we can take a look at the two native Linux games with which everyone should be familiar by now.For 64-bit Fedora Core 2, we were not able to install NVIDIA's graphics driver with the default kernel. Thus, their 64-bit tests must be omitted from the benchmark.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free, stable, native game for Linux as well as a cornerstone of our Windows benchmark. Unfortunately, there is only a 32-bit version of the game, so we must settle with 32-bit performance benchmarks, even on our 64-bit platforms. Resolutions were set to 1280x1024 with default configurations. The timedemo that we are using can be downloaded here.
Frames per Second, more are better.
The significant differences in frame rates have to do more likely with optimizations of NVIDIA drivers rather than optimizations of NVIDIA hardware. Although iD and NVIDIA has put forth valiant efforts into making Linux competitive with Windows, the benchmark above hints that either (or both?) companies run extremely inefficient code for Linux.
The pride and joy of any Linux benchmark are the native 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Unreal Tournament. The timedemo (1280x1024) that we are using can be downloaded here.
Unreal Tournament 2004 32-bit
You may notice a lack of 64-bit operating system scores for UT2K4. We were particularly unnerved how difficult it was to get the 64-bit UT2K4 demo working in an out-of-the-box configuration. Both Fedora and SuSE required severe kernel hackings to get the NVIDIA 64-bit drivers working, which was, unfortunately, not the point of this analysis. Keep in mind, we have been seeing the UT2K3 demo run on 64-bit hardware on 64-bit operating systems almost as far back as the Opteron launch. We suspect that the number of users who actually play UT2K4 with 64-bit configurations are fairly selective.
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KristopherKubicki - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
tsadowski: Its actually pretty clean. I wouldnt compare it to Gentoo at all. Thats probably also why it has an RPM repository - so you CAN work with it out of the box.Kristopher
tsadowski - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
I find it interesting that you test Fedora Core 2 and expect it all to just work perfectly. Is Fedora not the bleeding edge code, hack it yourself, hobbyist version of RedHat? Not unlike Gentoo? To expect it to just work "out of the box" without some hacking is foolish at least, and at worst perhaps an intentional attempt to slander Fedora/Redhat? I have played around with Fedora Core 1 and while I wouldn't say that it is the best distro I have ever used. I wouldn't bad mouth it without acknowleging it's hackerish, homebrewish nature either!jspaleta - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
#15along with the flags, the specific versions that you compiled would be good to know. Actually since its compiled I would be interested to know if you had to install/compile any additional build requirements beyond what is available in Fedora Core as well.
I would also be interesting if you could rerun the
lame encoding benchmark against the lame build currently available in the stable x86_64 fc2 rpm.livna.org repo, as a comparison.
-jef
KristopherKubicki - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
#8, 14: lame and mplayer are compiled. I will get the exact flags and details posted soon.#8 again: SuSE gives you two options for installing the drivers - manually, as we did or via YAST. I just chmod 0 /usr/X11R6/bin/X, ctrl-alt-backspace and then run the driver. You can also hit F2 during startup and tell it to go into "failsafe" mode.
#10: Thanks Matt, id like to work closer with MS to get that. I have a feeling Intel's compiler will show up for x86_64 soon, being as nocona is available now.
Kristopher
jspaleta - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
I would like to know from where the reviewersgot fedora binaries for memcoder, mplayer and lame for fedora core. These untilies do NOT come as part of Fedora Core, are not built by the Fedora Core buildsytem, and can be obtained from a number of different repositories. I would personally like to know if different builds of mplayer/mencoder/lame from different locations experience different results.
-jef
lopri - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - link
asdfTerm - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
Out-of-the-box the video-drivers for Linux from NVidia have Fast Writes disabled, but you have enabled it right?damn good article btw
// Term
Possessed Freak - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
Errors on graphs:Why are the key color orders reversed. Shouldn't red/64bit be on top in the key?
Why does the order of the OS's change seemingly randomly in the graphs? I thought it might deal with performance, but I could not see a relation.
Regardless, good article.
LostInSpace927 - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
I am thinking someone needs to a little research before typing an article."Unfortunately, you can't even try the Personal version of SuSE 9.1 without forking the $90 because the Personal edition does not ship with a x86-64 kernel."
I downloaded SuSE 9.1 free od charge from www.linuxISO.com.
All the longer it took me to find this was a few seconds googling.
Matthew Daws - Monday, July 12, 2004 - link
To say that there is no 64-bit compiler for Win64 is slightly untrue: a CPUID.com article uses a beta VC++ 8.0 from the "Microsoft DDK for Windows Server 2003" CD. Sadly, it produces awful code from C++ and cannot optimise less common FPU functions. So, in that sense, there isn't a compiler capable of compiling a whole application: simple benchmarks are possible though (and show 5-35% speed increase, due to more registers mainly).Thanks for a good article! --Matt