[QUOTE=Handsome Matt;49109268]basically games aren't made for Linux, shocker - title makes it sound like SteamOS is the performance issue but it's just games not being optimised for Linux, nice[/QUOTE]
Not only is the Linux library of games on Steam smaller then Windows, but the games that are there can also run worse. It's just another thing you can put on the long list of Steam Machine cons. The whole concept is simply rushed by Valve.
Doesn't help that we don't have a better alternative than xorg, AKA official drivers from the card manufacturers.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49109428]Not only is the Linux library of games on Steam smaller then Windows, but the games that are there can also run worse. It's just another thing you can put on the long list of Steam Machine cons. The whole concept is simply rushed by Valve.[/QUOTE]
I don't think they had a long list of alternatives to get away from Windows. But yeah I guess this is just adding to list of reasons as to why that is.
Maybe something's gonna change in development once Valve's sorted out some of their other projects, but as it stands there doesn't seem to be much appeal to Steam Machines. Tho not sure how their hardware/price ratio stacks up to other small gaming computers that could take over the role of a console in the living room.
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;49109513]I don't think they had a long list of alternatives to get away from Windows. But yeah I guess this is just adding to list of reasons as to why that is.
Maybe something's gonna change in development once Valve's sorted out some of their other projects, but as it stands there doesn't seem to be much appeal to Steam Machines. Tho not sure how their hardware/price ratio stacks up to other small gaming computers that could take over the role of a console in the living room.[/QUOTE]
I feel like they should've limited themselves to the controller and maybe steam link. I know literally nobody buying a steam machine
I know people that were interested but not interested enough to be up to date on the news. The other day someone asked me, "Whatever happened to the Steambox? I wanted one." This was days after it was out.
I wouldn't exactly blame it on the OS as much as blame it on the piss-poor drivers for Linux. Graphics drivers on Linux are just, complete bollocks. If you don't have an nvidia card, you can basically give up on the idea of any gaming on Linux. And even with an nvidia card, there's bugs and performance issues abound.
[QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;49111557]I wouldn't exactly blame it on the OS as much as blame it on the piss-poor drivers for Linux. Graphics drivers on Linux are just, complete bollocks. If you don't have an nvidia card, you can basically give up on the idea of any gaming on Linux. And even with an nvidia card, there's bugs and performance issues abound.[/QUOTE]
And why are there no drivers for Linux ? Because nobody uses it for gaming and it's not worth the hassle for the manufacturers. It's a cursed circle (or whatever you call it when two things depend on each other and neither can move forward...).
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49111837]And why are there no drivers for Linux ? Because nobody uses it for gaming and it's not worth the hassle for the manufacturers. It's a cursed circle (or whatever you call it when two things depend on each other and neither can move forward...).[/QUOTE]
You need to start somewhere tho.
And its not that Valve hasn't tried, they sponsored a lot of Mesa development through LunarG, and they are major contributor to Vulkan stuff.
But yeah, its going to suck for a while before it gets better, right now most game ports to linux are nothing but a charity project for most developers, they costs more then they get out of it.
[QUOTE=nickster50;49109480]Doesn't help that we don't have a better alternative than xorg, AKA official drivers from the card manufacturers.[/QUOTE]
Nvidia and AMD both provide their own graphics drivers. Nvidia's share much of their code with their Windows drivers, not sure about AMD. The issue as I understand isn't really X11, that does cause issues, but not perf related. The FOSS drivers for Nvidia are slow though, yes.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49109428]Not only is the Linux library of games on Steam smaller then Windows, but the games that are there can also run worse. It's just another thing you can put on the long list of Steam Machine cons. The whole concept is simply rushed by Valve.[/QUOTE]
Well obviously. Since half the games that do run on linux essentially run in a wineskin, drivers are worse and openGL is more often than not rotten.
[QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;49111557]I wouldn't exactly blame it on the OS as much as blame it on the piss-poor drivers for Linux. Graphics drivers on Linux are just, complete bollocks. If you don't have an nvidia card, you can basically give up on the idea of any gaming on Linux. And even with an nvidia card, there's bugs and performance issues abound.[/QUOTE]
The benchmark posted is also complete bollocks. You can easily do gaming on Linux without any issues at all, the most prominent issue is that it's not as performant on Windows (on some games you'll get as much as a 30% performance hit with the proprieetary drivers), but the pros are that you can do gaming on Linux that you cannot do on Windows.
If I were to use Windows 10, I would be completely unable to use my ATi Radeon HD 4670 GPU for gaming. It's no longer supported. On Linux, using the open source drivers, it has OpenGL 3.3 support and runs a lot of the games available on Steam, with few exceptions (games that require OpenGL 4.X), and has a great video playback support, even OpenCL support is slowly emerging, even though it isn't officially supported by the companies.
Even something like Metro: Last Light (not redux) was performing just fine on my desktop PC, although not with the highest settings.
If I were to purchase one of more recent cards, I'd have none of these issues, except the slight performance hit (which is even less of an issue with Linux 4.5 with the [b]vastly[/b] improved power control systems, even the open source nVidia drivers are seeing a great increase in performance due to optimized re-clocking support.
The real issue is lack of vendor support regarding GPU. AMD is going there now, and pushing out fantastic changes each and every day, but nVidia has yet to do shit, so you're left with the proprietary drivers that don't work with everything.
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