Game performance

cancech · Apprentice Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 171

I've been a happy gentoo user for the past few months and I spent a chunk of this time playing games and any performance loss I attributed to the game and/or programs running in the backgournd. BUT a few days ago a friend of mine got a new computer (more or less the same as mine), but he runs windows instead. Yesterday I was helping him scale a few problems he had and I also helped him install some games onto the computer. Here is where my question start

1) Is there any difference performance wise between running a game in Windows as compared to Linux. I mean with native games. I played Doom 3 on his computer for a bit and it ran smoothly @ 1280x1024, where as if I play @ 800x600 it gets quite chopy. Also Neverwinter nights runs smoothly for him at 1280x1024 while I get a little lag playing at 1024x768. Would this difference be as a result of playing on Windoze as compared to linux, or does it have to do with the way that I've got gentoo setup. So far I haven't noticed any lack of performance when playing UT2004 or Americas Army.

2) On a somewhat related note: how do I get linux to support resolutions above 1024x768? I know that both my video card and monitor support higher resolutions, but 1024x768 is the highest that KDE will go for me and when I set the resolution above 1024x768 in a game, then it "spills" beyond the boundries of the monitor.

Thanks!!!

BlackEdder · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 4:34 pm Post subject:

1) What card do you have? If it's an ati card then the ati drivers are to blame. They are a lot worse performance wise than the windows drivers.

2) You will have to make sure your xorg.conf is setup correctly:

cancech · Apprentice Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 171

desktopfan · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 6:21 pm Post subject:

cancech · Apprentice Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 171

He's got a Geforce4 Ti 4200...the specs for the 2 cards seem to be about the same.

Geforce4 Ti 4200
Vertices per Second: 113 Million
Fill Rate: 4 Billion AA Samples/Sec.
Operations per Second: 1.03 Trillion
Memory Bandwidth: up to 8GB/Sec.
Maximum Memory: 128MB

Geforce MX 4000
# Features: GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce MX 4000
# Bus Type: AGP
# Memory: 128MB DDR
# Core Clock: 275MHz
# RAMDAC: Dual 350MHz
# API Support: Microsoft® DirectX® 8.1 and lower, Open GL 1.4 and lower for Microsoft® Windows®
# Connectors: VGA, S-Video-Out
# 31 million triangles/second
# AGP 8x/4x/2x compatible
# Up to 4 pixels per clock rendering engine
# 2 dual-rendering pipelines
# NVIDIA® Lightspeed Memory Architecture II
# NVIDIA® Accuview Antialiasing

Rcomian · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 10:56 pm Post subject:

I'm a bit out of the 3d tweaking scene (by a few years now), but the MX series of cards are the budget nvidia cards, whereas the Ti are the "titanium", top of the range. I've been trying to find some 3dmark comparisons for the cards, but my old bookmarks are out of date and the 3dmark site's been reworked since I last played with it.
The last I heard, nvidia's linux driver's weren't quite up to the windows performance for a number of technical reasons, I've no idea how well they've been addressed recently.
To be honest, the cards being Ti and MX versions are enough to emplain the difference to me. I do remember some people complaining that the MX version of the geforce4 performed worse than a standard geforce3, closer to the old geforce2, whereas the Ti version was a genuine and definite upgrade.
If you want to know for sure, maybe you can swap cards for a bit - nvidia use a "one for all" driver approach in both windows and linux, so you shouldn't have to do more than just physically swap the things.

cancech · Apprentice Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 171

Ok thanks

that answers a lot. The main thing was that I played some games on his computer and they looked and ran so much better that I was worried if I had my system set up properly. From the various posts I read it seems that native games run as well if not better then in doze and here I was getting such drastic performance differences. If my video card is that much worse then it'll explain a thing or two (or three).

Rcomian · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 8:51 pm Post subject:

Here, found a graph which shows roughly what I was on about, it's not the same cards, but the same classes. You need to scroll down a bit for the good pretty picture:
http://www.gamingillustrated.com/xfx4400.php

And of course, toms hardware comes through yet again:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20020206/geforce4-09.html

cancech · Apprentice Joined: 22 Dec 2004 Posts: 171

wow.......I really should reaserch hardware that I buy a bit more next time.......

But then again I just wanted something cheap that was better then integrated video, so at least it does the job

Thanks for all the info.......you saved me from a possible double boot