

Faster Zombies - phenylene
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

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arange
this is exactly why big companies need to invest way more time in risky, it-
would-be-cool-if, projects

most studios would have avoided even trying to work on a linux port to their
games often citing that there arent enough users to justify the engineering
time. yet the unintended consequence of this [allegedly bad business decision]
was that they found sizable optimizations to even their flagship Windows
version as a by-product of linux optimizations. this in turn brings the system
requirements down for the game on Windows, more people can play it, and more
profits. all because of the effort used to port to Linux.

cool stuff valve.

~~~
dtf
Valve are quite concerned about Microsoft's moves with the Windows 8 Store.
Linux is a less risky bet than you might think.

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/steams-newell-
windows-...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/steams-newell-
windows-8-catastrophe-driving-valve-to-embrace-linux/)

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tsahyt
I had a feeling that the Linux version would actually run faster. I can't put
my finger on why that is though. Valve says it's because of the underlying
effeciency of the kernel.

However, I'm still very much concerned about the things that come with
proprietary games on the Linux platform. On the one hand it will open up Linux
for a lot of users but then again I want a fully free platform without any DRM
drenched material or proprietary code. This is what made Linux so powerful in
the first place.

~~~
freehunter
Linux hasn't been free from DRM or blobs for quite a while. Official drivers
are often closed source, things running in Wine are often closed source,
codecs are sometimes non-free, etc. You can get by without installing
proprietary code right now, but you can do the same when Steam and various
games are on the platform. It's not like the presence of Steam automatically
locks the source on the existing applications.

~~~
obtu
You give examples of blobs, not DRM. Unless you are referring to the direct
rendering manager, I have not encountered any DRM in years of using Linux on
the desktop.

~~~
freehunter
You're right, I was thinking of Mono/Moonlight but had forgotten that this was
a DRM-free implementation.

Although Linus doesn't feel too negatively against DRM on Linux.

<http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2003042401126OSKNLL>

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maytc
"After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux
version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6)"

I can see hope for linux in the gaming industry!!

~~~
addandsubtract
To be fair...

"Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped
up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4
FPS with that configuration."

~~~
obtu
It still implies the Direct3D implementation stayed at 270fps. I wonder how
Windows+OpenGL fared before the optimisations; presumably it was lower than
270 or OpenGL would have been the baseline.

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subsystem
Well, that was quite useless and I'm surprised no one has mentioned it.

1\. What you really care about is consistently having a framerate of more than
60 fps. A higher fps count can actually be worse.

2\. Relatively few linux users have a gtx 680. It's a 500$ graphics card and
there just aren't that many linux applications who needs it.

3\. If this down-scales linearly, which it might not, we are looking at around
3 fps difference at 60 fps.

~~~
bryanlarsen
270.6 to 315 fps is a 14 per cent speedup, or 8.5 fps at 60 fps. That's pretty
big.

But that's only if it scales linearly. I suspect most of the speed-ups are
per-frame, in which case we have a 500 microsecond speed-up, which is just
over 2 fps at 60fps.

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gingerjoos
Link to the same article which appeared on the front page :
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4327908>

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Symmetry
What I'd really be interested in is a comparison of how the newest generation
of Intel graphics compares between the two.

