What kind of performance differences in are seen in games when switching to Linux?
Idk about switching to Linux just yet because my favorite game doesn't support it natively and all the launchers on Wine have the garbage rating, but games that I've had performance issues with in the past like Planetside 2 have gold/silver rated launchers. Would I see much difference in performance in general, multi-core utilization and SLI GPU usage?
Have you tried linux? If you havnt you could try dual booting a distro. You would be able to test it all out for yourself. It will also help to get more familiar with linux if indeed you want to switch over completely someday.
Hope this helps.
I haven't. I should
It depends on the game or program. The hardware, and software. etc.
From what I've read, you can game on a virtual machine by letting it "borrow" one of your gpus. It only works with sli or crossfire builds, though. Since you can't make your main os use a virtual gpu
You can make it work with an apu as well like have the vm us the main video card and linux use the iGPU. but you do need the correct hardware.
linux supports multi core and sli still limited to the programs themselves just like windows. if you have a game on windows that doesn't take use of multi cores moving it to linux does not make it magically start to.
It does have good multi core uh (cant thing of term) swaping processes onto unused cores like "window manager on core one minecraft on core 2 blah blah blah"
Incorrect - it's not about SLI/Crossfire, it's about integrated/dedicated GPU's
You're right. It's integrated graphics. But what I'm trying to say is for this to work you need two gpus on different adaptors. You can't make your main os use integrated graphics when running a vm. So, hypothetically, if you wanted to make win7 use a 980 in a vm, you need for have 2 Installed. You can only let Windows use one gpu.
I'll look into this. I'm on the verge of making Linux my permanent os, but I really need to find a way to game without having to constantly restart my machine. This vm thing sounds like itl do the trick
yes you do need two gpus. but it can be the integrated gpu and a dedicated. It doesn't have to be two dedicated ones.
To dual boot I can just install a distro on my main SSD and select it in the boot menu? It works seamlessly without changing/damaging the way anything is laid out in windows?
That should work though I would stick to distros that are more streamlined like Ubuntu when your first learning about Linux the install will ask if you want to delete or duel boot in the setup
None, you will actually probably see worse performance in some games.
Yes you shouldnt have a problem. Here is a link at the bottom of someone giving a tutorial on how to dual boot with Ubuntu and Windows 8. This is just a very general information on how to dual boot. There are many different distributions of Linux and different ways you are able to dual boot. But it should give you a better understanding of how it is done and what you might see.
The performance increase (or more commonly, decrease) will vary widely based on the individual programs and how well they're optimized for Linux.