Gentoo & games performance

[Xywa]

Hi,

What is important for games performance on Gentoo?

I know eg. right nvidia driver could improve things. What else? Eg. War Thunder use OpneGL 3.1 engine, I use stable Gentoo amd64, maybe some newer package could bring me a boost? Eg. mesa, kernel?

[Roman_Gruber]

The following section is my personal opinion.

I assume intel cpu + nvida graphics card. These are the most common hardware in use these days

1)
nvidia-settings => gpu0 tab. The important section is the used dedicated memory.

I suggest to use e.g. a minimalistic desctop environment or a plain x-server.
i3wm uses ~54mb of my 2GB VRAM of my 660m GTX

2) overclock in bios when available / overclock via config file via nvidia-drivers
2a) ensure a proper cooling of your hardware. Changing thermal paste of cpu / gpu works wonders. e.g. Noctua NT-H1
2b) I assume the hardware is maintained once a year. Changing thermal paste every 6 months ~ 12 months. Removing dust / lint of the cooling system. Improving the airflow should be achieved or aimed for.

3) cpupower frequency-set -g performance

4) Kick those unneeded servies => rc-update show

5) I think eudev with openrc is a good base. No idea on the cpu and memory usage of systemd.

6) gentoo sources => experimental useflag enabled => e.g ivybridge cpu installed => set ivybridge cpu
~ a few minutes gain when compiling libreoffice. Repeatable gain vs not tempered kernel with same config, except ivybridge.

any other kernel stuff may be ricer

7) Always use latest intel microcode + gentoo-sources + mesa + nvidia-drivers.

My personal opinion. A recommendation.

SSD + RAM with lower timings. LOW CAS / High Frequency

AMD APUs highly benefit from overclocker rams and higher ram frequency.

[Myu]

If you're using compositing ( i.e shiny effects like shadows, transparency, wobbly windows, ...), disable it when running fullscreen windows (i.e Games)

It seems to matter quite a bit : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Kubuntu-15.10-Fullscreen-Test

KDE, Cinnamon, Compiz (maybe only 0.8.12+) have switches for that.
_________________
Gentoo stable with bits of ~amd64 // Xfce 4.13 + Compiz Reloaded.

[Roman_Gruber]

the reason why i ahve written => memory foot print of the window manager in use (queck nivdia-settings .. as written above). and to use something small like a plain xorg-server session or i3wm. Maybe there is something even smaller as i3wm regarding htis.

personally i doubt that mesa has any impact when you come like myself from a binary point of view.
the binary nvidia-driver usually handles all the stuff.

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well when you game you should use wired connection and not wifi. I changed to wifi here and there is a slight impact. e.g. urbanterror.

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use a native client if possible instead of wine + windows binary if possible.

e.g. d2-rebirth instead of dosbox / wine and the windows / msdos installer.