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jvp777
n00b
Joined: 08 Jul 2013
Posts: 11
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 Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 2:04 am Post subject: Is Gentoo better for video games ? |
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Hi, i'm asking a question, i would like to know if Gentoo is better than a binary-distro in terms of performances for video games emulation ? I mean, if i compile wine and stuff with march=native, will i get better performances ?
Thanks. |
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The Doctor
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Joined: 27 Jul 2010
Posts: 2678
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| Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 3:52 am Post subject: |
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I don't think it would be noticeably faster. What is more likely to make a difference is if you tune your entire system to remove unnecessary programs. For example, you probably don't need 20 or so daemons running in the back ground that a binary distro might start automatically.
That said, it certainty shouldn't be worse. What may be significantly better or worse is the version of wine you are running. I have experienced new releases going both ways for particular programs.
Of course the use flags you set may make a substantial difference.
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 10:24 am Post subject: Re: Is Gentoo better for video games ? |
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| jvp777 wrote: | Hi, i'm asking a question, i would like to know if Gentoo is better than a binary-distro in terms of performances for video games emulation ? I mean, if i compile wine and stuff with march=native, will i get better performances ?
Thanks. |
Nowadays, no, it doesn't make a noticeable difference.
Only in some extraordinary cases (number crunching, video encoding, and a few others) it *can* make a difference, but, video games are mostly I/O and GPU bound.
For the former, the only thing that really matters is wine and the kernel I/O scheduler (and your hardware and drivers, of course). For the later, and assuming you are using a binary blob from ATI or Nvidia, you can't recompile anyway.
The real benefit from Gentoo is, in my book, being able to control every single aspect on your OS. Having the sources directly available makes it a great development platform as well. But if you came looking for 200% speed you are probably on the wrong track. The only path to that is to buy a machine that's 200% faster.  |
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PaulBredbury
Watchman
Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 7310
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| Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 6:49 pm Post subject: Re: Is Gentoo better for video games ? |
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| jvp777 wrote: | | better than a binary-distro |
It's all Linux, so you can make the tweaks to the "binary" distros too.
| jvp777 wrote: | | video games |
Some hints I've picked up along the way:
BFS (CPU scheduler) is noticeably smoother than the default CFS.
Use a lightweight GUI (e.g. XFCE), without composite (which can only degrade OpenGL performance, e.g. with Nvidia).
Prioritize the game, using nice and ionice.
With wine, use realtime patch.
If on 32-bit, don't compile with PIC (it's slow on 32-bit).
Use TSC, as the fastest clocksource.
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shazeal
Apprentice
Joined: 03 May 2006
Posts: 206
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2013 12:20 am Post subject: Re: Is Gentoo better for video games ? |
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| PaulBredbury wrote: | | jvp777 wrote: | | better than a binary-distro |
It's all Linux, so you can make the tweaks to the "binary" distros too.
| jvp777 wrote: | | video games |
Some hints I've picked up along the way:
BFS (CPU scheduler) is noticeably smoother than the default CFS.
Use a lightweight GUI (e.g. XFCE), without composite (which can only degrade OpenGL performance, e.g. with Nvidia).
Prioritize the game, using nice and ionice.
With wine, use realtime patch.
If on 32-bit, don't compile with PIC (it's slow on 32-bit).
Use TSC, as the fastest clocksource. |
Adding to the BFS patch I would also recommend the BFQ patch set http://algo.ing.unimo.it/people/paolo/disk_sched/
It results in lower CPU overhead and less io wait. Very noticeable with a mechanical HDD, and I still "feel" the difference with SSD drives.
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