Portal 2 poor performance Intel HD 4400

[phly95]

I'm on Ubuntu and running Xonotic SDL runs great (60fps) at 1080p with many settings enabled (2x that of Windows), but running portal 2 sometimes hits 20 fps, which is even lower than on Windows. I wonder if something's wrong with my setup for steam games because I heard Linux is supposed to be faster for source games.

[PLANTROON]

Linux does run games at lower FPS than Windows. Remember, everything was designed for Windows since the beginning, so were the drivers. Expect at most 70% of Widnows performance with Source engine games on Intel GPU.
20 FPS for Portal 2 seems reasonable for Intel HD 4400 at 1080p.
That Xonotic also seems impossible to me. (2 times the Win performance, there's something disabled / not working in Linux version graphics-wise)
Also, what ubuntu version are you on? The older, the worse performance. The less stable, the worse performance.

[Drako Frost]

Intel Graphics perform worse on Linux than it does on Windows, is not Linux fault, Intel drivers aren't as good on Linux. Source games do perform better on Linux, as long as you use a Nvidia graphics card.

[phly95]

I'm on Ubuntu MATE 15.04
First, I actually ran Xonotic on Windows and got 30-40 FPS and on Linux, I got 60-55 FPS which is a considerable gain, both at 1080p same settings.
Then I tried Portal 2 which firstly I noticed, the resolution was scaling before reaching the monitor, the cursor was rendering at 1080p, but the game itself is rendering at 720p. Both Windows and Linux versions were running at a set 720p resolution, but Linux was slower. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Xonotic was developed primarily on Linux? Even so, a 2x performance doesn't quite point to a driver problem on Linux, but a programming issue at Valve (or an OpenGL driver issue with Windows, since Xonotic is OpenGL on everything, and Intel has screwed up OpenGL bigtime before)

[PLANTROON]

Try disabling vsync wherever you can (game itself, desktop environment - disable compositing, xorg.conf) That could give you a FPS boost in Portal 2. Definitely disable antialiasing if you have that enabled. Also, Portal 2 has an option saying laptop power savings (I don't exactly remember) - disable that too.
I myself don't consider vsync or AA working well on Linux/Xorg atm. I'd always disable them.

[phly95]

I actually tried all those things, and am still having lower FPS compared to Windows. I don't understand why the game is being scaled without changing the output resolution. I disabled compositing and ofc AA is not an option on an iGPU. Maybe it is just because it is better optimised for windows, as other people tend to get worse FPS on linux on the comparison videos, but is not as noticable because those are super GPUs they use in the videos.

[Drako Frost]

Since Intel drivers are open source, they rely on Kernel and Mesa, so the more bleeding edge the distro is, newer the drivers are. So you might consider using the latest version of Ubuntu (you didn't mentioned what version you are using) or a more bleeding edge distro, like Fedora. The performance probably will be better, but don't expect miracles.

[UnkendTech]

there is a up date for the Intel drivers coming i think it maybe in Kernel 4.0 or 4.1

[phly95]

I just put in the absolute latest kernel, what seems to be the issue is that portal 2 is not working with unredirect fullscreen windows. Even if I use a non-compositing window manager, it is still drawing and scaling the window and then adding the UI/cursor on top at 1080p, even though I set it to 720p or 480p (tried both). On Windows, if I set fullscreen and a resolution, the game will output directly to the monitor at that resolution. If I set it in Linux, it renders the game at 720p, then scales it to 1080p, and then outputs the image as a window, even if its at fullscreen. It doesn't matter what Window Manager I use, it happens the same in all of them.

I however did find intel on some compiz blacklist for unredirect fullscreen, but clearing the blacklist doesn't seem to help at all. Novau was also on the blacklist, but I only have an intel card.

[Cybertao]

Drako Frost eredeti hozzászólása:

Intel Graphics perform worse on Linux than it does on Windows, is not Linux fault, Intel drivers aren't as good on Linux. Source games do perform better on Linux, as long as you use a Nvidia graphics card.

Assuming that's true, rather than a big bowl of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, Source games perform better on Nvidia hardware; not Linux.

[phly95]

As I said earlier, Xonotic works more smoothly on Linux than Windows, so if Intel drivers were crappy, then wouldn't both Xonotic and Portal 2 suck in performance? It's only Portal 2 (and maybe other Source games I haven't tried) that has performance issues, and it seems like an application problem, not a driver one.

[Drako Frost]

Cybertao eredeti hozzászólása:

Drako Frost eredeti hozzászólása:

Intel Graphics perform worse on Linux than it does on Windows, is not Linux fault, Intel drivers aren't as good on Linux. Source games do perform better on Linux, as long as you use a Nvidia graphics card.

Assuming that's true, rather than a big bowl of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, Source games perform better on Nvidia hardware; not Linux.

There are plenty of benchmarks on Phoronix showing that Intel Graphics perform better on Windows, even in titles that are natively available on Linux.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_iris5100_winlin&num=2
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-broadwell-winlinux&num=3

[JamieLinux]

https://01.org/linuxgraphics


if your half decent you could try intels later drivers for newer intel hd series cards lke the 4400 though the 6k Most you will have to compile yourself.

[phly95]

So maybe something's wrong with my Windows drivers causing Xonotic to be slower to begin with. That would make sense since I remember the Intel HD 4000 on a laptop I had a long time ago having better performance on some games. That would explain everything. The next step would be then finding a way to fix my Windows drivers.

[Drako Frost]

phly95 eredeti hozzászólása:

So maybe something's wrong with my Windows drivers causing Xonotic to be slower to begin with. That would make sense since I remember the Intel HD 4000 on a laptop I had a long time ago having better performance on some games. That would explain everything. The next step would be then finding a way to fix my Windows drivers.

Maybe they are outdated.

[PLANTROON]

IMO there's something not rendering on the Linux version of Xonotic, that's why it's getting more FPS.
But things like getting more FPS on Linux can actually happen. I had that with World of Warcraft in the past where I was getting very good results playing the game on Linux (that was on Radeon HD 3650 and later on nVidia GT 520)