The Nvidia driver for Linux is 100% the same binary as Windows , wrapped up for Linux compatibility. That's why when a game is ported or developed from scratch with Linux in mind the performance is nigh on identical or faster.
I have never had to do this once for my 200+ Linux games on any Debian / Arch distribution. It's not really OGL that's the issue its typically the middleware which is causing the most headaches for ports, that and the quality of a lot of ports isn't as good as it could be.
i don't know what the problem you're having is, but i have spent hours trying to get things to work in Linux before. i know the popular sentiment is to screech in pain, cover one's ears, and sacrifice a small animal to the Arch gods when someone mentions Windows, but the reality comes down to you having 3 choices.
A. continue trying to beat your skull into a fine paste on the spiked barricade that is Linux driver issues. [not likely to work.]
B. wait for more stable drives. [semi likely to work, but nobody knows when/if/how that will happen, so you're still not able to play.]
(admittedly I only skimmed the above comments but......)
Have you tried another Distro altogether just to determine if this is a software or hardware issue? If not, try Korora 23 - Pharlap will detect your hardware and provide you the choice of free or nonfree drivers. This can be usefull just to see if either its a hardware issue -or - if the issue is with a specific type of driver and wether or not the free vs nonfree is the problem.
Alternatively (if you have loads of time) install any distro you have previously had working, and then one version at a time install sequentially newer kernels until it breaks.
His problem is that the driver ( AMD ) is extremely new and requires some manual patches in order to get things working good, within a few months from now or less those patches will be automatically applied. Ubuntu 16.04 ditched catalyst for the first time and that is also very new.
Linux GPU Drivers:
AMDGPU ( opensource nigh on identical to below but a different release stream ) Fast AMDGPU-PRO ( opensource official, catalyst replacement ) Fast
Nvidia Binary ( closed source, same binary as windows ) Fast Nvidia nouveau ( opensource ) Slow, like really slow.
AMD is potentially in a much better position now than Nvidia on Linux, not just because their driver can be more stable & receive daily patches being opensource, but because like everything else on Linux it will be installed out of the box for max performance, making the whole desktop easier and quicker to use than windows ( Microsoft are copying this idea now though with forced updates )
Also when the performance is close enough, the Linux user base will mostly choose AMD cards giving AMD many millions more customers, increasing development pace.
And obviously you haven't read anything I wrote. It is not about playing the games, it is about getting them to work on linux.
I ran Asus Realbench and Unigine Valley over night on Windows 10 without any problems. Memtest86 the other night. My hardware is fine. I might install debian with the old catalyst and run that over night just to verify.
That is basically the situation but I still have no way to separate if it is a driver problem or a ubuntu problem.
Sorry for my mistake, I guess I was generalizing because I have seen a lot of people complain about driver issues when it comes to gaming on linux.
I do agree with you though, that if you can set things up right everything people play on linux is likely to run better. Although you seem like much more of an expert with this than what most of us might be..
@gameg33k Thanks. Im not an expert by any means i have just been through the Linux driver wars myself and spend far too much time on the interweebles. The significance of the 480 and AMDGPU for Linux is much higher than merely just being another card release, basically on some benchmarks using the AMGPU driver the 480 is performing higher than a 980. Where previously catalyst on Linux would be 1/4 of that performance in general and crashed a lot . It's about parallel with the Nvidia driver now and much more stable.
Anecdotally, I had to change from my AMD card 5xxx series to Nvidia ever since then, so i might finally be able to move back to AMD, but im waiting for more news on the 490.
To be honest I think its about time such things became a standard anyway, most games are still developed in C, and the majority of very high end graphics / 3d software and commercial grade cinema production software is also all Linux based, its not at all a surprise that developers would not only start porting but also natively developing games for Linux, whilst Windows loses the limelight and its DX12 crown. Although I think that both platforms deserve credit they will create mutual benefits and competition between each other in the years to come, and ultimately the consumer gets to decide how progress happens for not only windows or linux games but virtually all types.
Agree. Competition is good. Microsoft have more potential to go under as a company than opensource does as an enthusiast coding userbase, or at least change the PC paradigm so much that people find themselves locked into a level of PC gaming thats more mobile/console gaming. Linux might end up being a future Saviour of the PC platform, without an alternative were all gaming on Mac's ..
Can you guys please stop making this thread into a general discussion about linux? I have a specific question here and would like to get some helping hands. Thanks.
I'm not going to read through all the comments here but it sounds like your card needs the powerstate/performance patching to high/performance setting. I believe it uses similar setup to what the standard amdgpu driver works (not quite same as radeon).
You will need to research on howto set 'high' powerstate and performance level at 'performance'. Sometimes you need to configure it to be set before the kernel loads fully. I went into some detail about this issue when my OLD 390x had the issue, but my replacement 390x doesn't have the issue (old one died).
This is one of the reasons why AMD needs the control center for Linux so people can set on boot these states and perhaps resolve allot of issues.
After a quick google search I found two different methods of dealing with power states. Namely dynpm and dpm. Can you tell me which one was causing you trouble?
you'll want to be adjusting the dpm files for your card (inside your card0 directory somewhere). Special permissions are required to be set for any changes to be accepted however.
@meggerman Had a few issues to get it running first but got steamOS working. But that beta is a mess in itself. You can basically conclude nothing from that. It starts some games but not all (Tomb Raider 2013 for example). Firewatch was running but I have to try that more. Half Life 2 Lost Coast was fine for some time and then just reset my system.
I haven't tried any other games yet and I probably won't. It is way to random in it's behavior. Ubuntu has the freezing but other than that it is fine.
Also SteamOS has AMDGPU PRO driver version 16.40 and Ubuntu is on 16.30.
OK, I just got it to the same freeze on Firewatch.
TombRaider is a Feral game no? Yeah you need to probably patch the driver 64bit and 32bit 'so' libraries to get those working. Its related to opengl profile version mismatch that allot of feral games will outright not run with.