AMD FGLRX + Steam for Linux

During these past 2 years of testing Steam-for-Linux betas and various Linux-based/-ported games I have been using a mid-range nvidia graphics-accelerator. Which has been fine. But I wanted a little more kick from the GPU.

DOOM 3: BFG Edition (non-steam version) - running natively on Linux.

After visiting a gamer-friend with years of bleeding-edge hardware experience, especially related to full HD 3D-rendering, I decided to go over to AMD-based stream-processor gfx-cards. My friend really recommended AMD due to their aqcuirement of the graphics-company ATi in 2006. Having both CPU-production and GPU-production under the same company really put them ahead of other CPU-vendors in terms of graphics-performance, both in integrated and discrete graphics-solutions.

I have to note that laptops sporting AMD GPU's (integrated graphics-cards) don't work so well with the proprietary Catalyst-driver, I have tried to make it work on several occasions, but the driver (Catalyst) always seems to crap out. Unless you REALLY know what you are doing (manually tuning the Catalyst-driver), I would not recommend using Catalyst on laptops or notebooks.

ONLY use the Catalyst-driver if you are using a gaming-rig (desktop PC) with a discrete (separate component) graphics-card installed.

Space Hulk - running natively on Linux.

AMDs Catalyst graphics-driver had quite a few improvements the last few years as well, so I was eager to test it out on Linux and see for myself.

Left 4 Dead 2 - running natively on Linux.

The proprietary driver worked rather well (for the most part), but it still suffers from a set of annoying bugs (window-manager artifacts, exiting fullscreen HD video won't reset to default resolution, etc.), but not as annoying as they used to be in the start... believe me (video-tearing, 3D-tearing, kernel panics, etc.).

Trine 2 - running natively on Linux.

For 3D-accelerated games, it works really good. Impressively good. The lower high-end card I decided to opt for raised my rigs eyecandy-potential at least tenfold(!). After realizing this, I would really recommend AMD's graphics to any serious gaming-enthusiast looking for OP graphics that does not compromise the gaming-experience.

Darwinia - running natively on Linux.

To put it rather simply: it just works, better than I expected, but not without the odd bug or two...

DOTA 2 - running natively on Linux.

My final verdict: I would recommend AMD graphics-cards to hardcore gaming-enthusiasts who doesn't get shocked by an odd bug or two (at least, not serious bugs anyway), however, I would NOT recommend it to average-joe.

FEZ - running natively on Linux.

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ACCELERATOR-TIP:
To enable video-accelerator (VA-)chips on discrete AMD-based (Radeon/HD) graphics-cards (on Linux), run the following command in a terminal on Ubuntu Desktop or Linux Mint:

sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver libva-glx1 libva-egl1 vainfo

These libraries and drivers prevents video-artifacts/-tearing, stabilizes video-movement, de-processes video-interlacing and similar video-issues.

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I will be testing and experimenting with the open-source 3D/video driver for AMD-based cards at a later date, namely the Gallium3D-driver. And I'll be posting about it too, so stay tuned...

NVIDIA stable/current

Woke up this morning, logged onto my workstation, realized nothing was behaving like it should.

Windows were tearing, whole screens were acting weird and I could not for the life of me surf the web with ANY browser I had installed. Which wouldn't be as irritating right then and there, if it wasn't for the fact that I needed to log into my online bank-account!

After an hour of aggravation, and another hour of testing with different graphics-drivers (NVIDIA stable/current), I found out my GPU (GeForce GT520) did not play well with the new experimental driver from NVIDIA.

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current && \
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

The above command resolved my issue by removing the bleeding-edge nvidia-driver and replacing it with a version-rollback (v319 instead of v331).

After a warm reboot everything worked perfectly! Spotify, Steam, Chromium and Thunderbird all started, worked and rendered like they should.

Dunno if I'll be re-installing the experimental driver any time soon. Time will show.

For now, the stable current-version does it's job.

Who knows, maybe the time is right to replace my NVIDIA GeForce card with a more recent AMD Radeon HD card? I'm quite sure I read somewhere that the Catalyst Linux driver had ironed out most of the major bugs (fullscreen HD crashes / screen tearing / etc.).

VMware ESXi 5.0 upd1

I haven't been that consistent about posting on this blog lately. But here's a little re-cap of my computing escapades for the last months:

I've updated my WD 4GB USB dongle with VMware ESXi 5.0 update1 hypervisor. Yes, I've set out into the virtualization cloud ;) running through 1.8TB X-RAID array via iSCSI.

I have also upgraded the graphics-setup in "h3x", it now sports a brand-spanking-new Nvidia GeForce GT520 Silent. Testing out this card blew me away :D then again, last time I invested money in a decent gfx-setup was back in the AGP-days :p PCIe 2.0 x16 definitely kicks ass!

I had to add certain PPA-repositories (apt-get repos) to get a driver that would work in Linux Mint 13, but it was no hastle, and it worked like a charm :)

NVIDIA & Linux

Phoronix.com recently interviewed one of NVIDIA's core linux driver engineers --Alan Ritger-- along with their technical marketing manager --Sean Kilbride-- about their development processes, IDE's, test-tools, etc. It proved to be quite an interesting read.

According to Ritger, NVIDIA engineers uses 'Perforce' for code management on big projects and/or big modifications, but are also able to maintain their own source tree with either git or quilt before submitting their changes to Perforce for quality assurance and to be included in the mainline code tree @ NVIDIA.

Phoronix also asked which IDE's and/or text editors they use, and Ritger said most engineers @ NVIDIA use either emacs or vim for their day-to-day development work. We're talking hardcore oldschool command-line development tools here.

Ritger also said most engineers use x86 as their base platform for driver development, but also focus alot on x86_64 for testing because most OEMs utilize 64bit nowadays.

Testing (which won't come as a shock to most linux-enthusiasts) is mostly done with in-house OpenGL test-tools, modified by engineers to reflect additional OpenGL extensions that are added and to accomodate for new GPU cores to be thoroughly tested. Games used in testing range from Quake 3, Doom 3 all the way up to ETQW. Testing frameworks include Viewperf, Unigine Tropics, Maya and yes, they even tend to use glxgears as a simple sanity test from time to time ;)

What DID shock me in the intervew however, was the question of how much codebase is shared between Linux and Windows, and the answer is, the OpenGL codebase shares A WHOPPING 90%! Yes, both Linux and Windows share a massive 90% of the NVIDIA OpenGL codebase. The X Windows driver is more UNIX-focused, but shares some code from the NVIDIA display drivers from other platforms and systems.

The main focus of the Linux NVIDIA driver development groups are for the Linux workstations used in the TV/movie-industry for advanced 3D work. But since their test-tools include a few popular computer games, the gaming aspect of it all is not completely forgotten :)

Even Ritger himself does a round of xpilot from time to time ;D

Link:
http://www.phoronix.com/ - 8-page interview