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AMD + Valve Working On New Linux CPU Performance Scaling Design

Dream-Knife

Banned

AMD and Valve have been working to improve the performance/power efficiency for modern AMD platforms running on Steam Play (Proton / Wine) and have spearheaded "[The ACPI CPUFreq driver] was not very performance/power efficiency for modern AMD platforms...a new CPU performance scaling design for AMD platform which has better performance per watt scaling on such as 3D game like Horizon Zero Dawn with VKD3D-Proton on Steam."

Of course this will benefit the Deck, but if this takes off this could provide a viable alternative to gaming on Windows if Microsoft attempts to make Windows a service in the future.
 



Of course this will benefit the Deck, but if this takes off this could provide a viable alternative to gaming on Windows if Microsoft attempts to make Windows a service in the future.
I personally don't mind windows, and highly doubt I could fully move to a Linux based distro. Especially since I'm into gaming. GAMING is the biggest defacto reason why I'll stay on windows for the foreseeable future. Not that Linux gaming is bad, but most of it is unsupported or have funky issues. Of course this has been getting better and better over time, but it's still not on the level of Windows. Will that change in the future, time will tell.
 
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Dream-Knife

Banned
I personally don't mind windows, and highly doubt I could fully move to a Linux based distro. Especially since I'm into gaming. GAMING is the biggest defacto reason why I'll stay on windows for the foreseeable future. Not that Linux gaming is bad, but most of it is unsupported or have funky issues. Of course this has been getting better and better over time, but it's still not on the level of Windows. Will that change in the future, time will tell.
Yeah I prefer Windows, but if it becomes a closed subscription platform I'm gone. There subscription services are very evil, and will result in monopolies and the loss of your freedom.
Windows 365
Jesus. Didn't know it was a thing.
 

reksveks

Member
Yeah I prefer Windows, but if it becomes a closed subscription platform I'm gone. There subscription services are very evil, and will result in monopolies and the loss of your freedom.

Jesus. Didn't know it was a thing.

It's for businesses, so if you want a fleet of thin clients that remotes into more powerful virtual PC's, you can sign up for Windows 365.


As someone with a work device, I don't particularly care if my work device was a thin client* that remotes into a remote pc, it actually might benefit me if I can remote into a more powerful configuration.

* for the fact that the thin client needs to have good battery life and a good keyboard
 
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Dream-Knife

Banned
OP, can you explain to us exactly what this means, like you're doing it for a five year old?
Steam is working with AMD to provide further linux optimizations at a lower power and resource requirement. We all know AMD is great at efficiency now with Ryzen and RDNA2, and this will provide further power savings benefits, as well as increase linux optimization which works well in lower powered and lower performance devices due to less overhead.

tl;dr Linux is being optimized in a way that it has minimal overhead much like consoles, while maintaining the open platform of Linux for gamers.
 

Duchess

Member
Linux will always be behind Windows in terms of going performance, but the gap is narrower these days than its ever been.
 

sunnysideup

Banned
windows should small sleek and free. It hasnt needed any upgrade for 20 years, exept back end shit.

The best thing that could happen would be an reversed engineered open sourced version.
 

Bojanglez

The Amiga Brotherhood
Linux will always be behind Windows in terms of going performance, but the gap is narrower these days than its ever been.
Always is a bold statement. Like you say Linux performance is getting better and more stable all the time, with a concerted effort by interested parties.

In some areas running games though Proton actually gives better performance, and can also offer cool things that actually make games more accessible like being able to automatically scale to resolutions maybe not supported by a legacy game natively and even implement FSR on the fly for all games (although at the end of the rendering chain that's not ideal).

I really hope a couple of other players in the industry realise that a non Windows future is within grasp and join Valve in supporting Linux in whatever way they can. Google are already doing their bit, by getting 3rd parties to build Linux executables for Stadia, in theory it wouldn't be a massive leap for the likes of Ubisoft and EA to port their games to Linux Desktop, although I admin there is probably little commercial incentive at the moment. I'm hoping the Steam Deck might move that dial a bit.
 
I personally don't mind windows, and highly doubt I could fully move to a Linux based distro. Especially since I'm into gaming. GAMING is the biggest defacto reason why I'll stay on windows for the foreseeable future. Not that Linux gaming is bad, but most of it is unsupported or have funky issues. Of course this has been getting better and better over time, but it's still not on the level of Windows. Will that change in the future, time will tell.
Funny that. It was once stupid to even consider running graphic intensive games on Windows rather than on MS-Dos.
But then a certain nobody engineer in Microsoft decided his team was going to port Doom to run on Windows.

The team succeeded. The port became Doom95.

And that engineer sold his Microsoft stock to start a new company called Valve.

Gabe proved that games can run on Windows when common wisdom said otherwise. What Gabe created, he can UNDO.

 

BabyYoda

Banned
Steam is working with AMD to provide further linux optimizations at a lower power and resource requirement. We all know AMD is great at efficiency now with Ryzen and RDNA2, and this will provide further power savings benefits, as well as increase linux optimization which works well in lower powered and lower performance devices due to less overhead.

tl;dr Linux is being optimized in a way that it has minimal overhead much like consoles, while maintaining the open platform of Linux for gamers.
I'll ask my 5 year old nephew if he can read the above the next time I see him, he better understand it mate, or you're in trouble!
 

JCK75

Member
I'll never fully switch to Linux, I simply do too much on my workstations that can't be done on Linux well..
But for standalone devices I'm glad this is happening because it makes for an exciting future for PC gaming options.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
I'll never fully switch to Linux, I simply do too much on my workstations that can't be done on Linux well..
But for standalone devices I'm glad this is happening because it makes for an exciting future for PC gaming options.
What things? Only thing I can think of is video editing.
 

JCK75

Member
What things? Only thing I can think of is video editing.

With both video editing and music production support for everything I do is just such a PITA on Linux, too many of the plugins I need don't work..etc
my gripes with windows exist but they are so minor on the grand scheme of things and I prefer it over literally everything by a wide margin.

But I like having options.
 

martino

Member
200.gif
 
With both video editing and music production support for everything I do is just such a PITA on Linux, too many of the plugins I need don't work..etc
my gripes with windows exist but they are so minor on the grand scheme of things and I prefer it over literally everything by a wide margin.

But I like having options.
With work, you usually don't have a choice of what software to use. So it really isn't up to you.

However, the important part is to make sure MS can't start locking you into Windows, and then try to force you to pay a monthly fee afterwards. This was always Gabe's plan; to make an alternative that wouldn't be ideal but would still be an option if Microsoft went insane. Every ship need lifeboats. It doesn't matter that lifeboats are small and cramped and water gets in, it is no reason to not have them.
 

JCK75

Member
With work, you usually don't have a choice of what software to use. So it really isn't up to you.

However, the important part is to make sure MS can't start locking you into Windows, and then try to force you to pay a monthly fee afterwards. This was always Gabe's plan; to make an alternative that wouldn't be ideal but would still be an option if Microsoft went insane. Every ship need lifeboats. It doesn't matter that lifeboats are small and cramped and water gets in, it is no reason to not have them.

I mean it's my choice entirely, but I choose not to use Linux except to tinker with because I find making things work properly is such a PITA.. and I like to get a few solid machines that can do everything in one and that is just flat out windows all around.. I mean it was nice while I was in the rocksmith+ beta to just be able to fire up my studio setup and jam with my existing hardware.
 

ethomaz

Banned



Of course this will benefit the Deck, but if this takes off this could provide a viable alternative to gaming on Windows if Microsoft attempts to make Windows a service in the future.

The future is now old man. Windows 365 is already a thing.
I’m not sure about that.
Different from Office the Windows is free to use.

Unless they kill the free Windows I can’t see they doing a service with it.
 
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kingpotato

Ask me about my Stream Deck
Can you even get a version of the latest windows that doesn't ship with WSL?

Also what about CBL-Mariner?

I could see a future where even Microsoft dumps windows and the world can unify under *nix.
 

Fahdis

Member
Fuck ARM, especially is Nvidia gets their grubby mitts on it. RISC please. Open source.

Why? I can run 2K 30 FPS Tomb Raider on a M1 Mac Mini with ULTRA everything without optimization. I couldn't believe it yesterday. I was just fucking around too. Yes I understand its an old game but fuck man. All this without a $800 GPU on a 5 Watt machine.

MoltenVK would bring gaming to Apple (and I fucking hate Apple but Silicone has changed the game) just like Proton did with Linux. Valve has been looking into the future and unlike everyone else, its going to dominate the market. ARM is the future. I think Geekbench made a video on thos recently.
 

rnlval

Member
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rnlval

Member
Huh? Windows is not free.. lol
Microsoft's Windows 10 is free on devices with screens under 9 inches.

Windows 10 devices up to 9" remains free to OEMs with Anniversary Update
 
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rnlval

Member
Why? I can run 2K 30 FPS Tomb Raider on a M1 Mac Mini with ULTRA everything without optimization. I couldn't believe it yesterday. I was just fucking around too. Yes I understand its an old game but fuck man. All this without a $800 GPU on a 5 Watt machine.

MoltenVK would bring gaming to Apple (and I fucking hate Apple but Silicone has changed the game) just like Proton did with Linux. Valve has been looking into the future and unlike everyone else, its going to dominate the market. ARM is the future. I think Geekbench made a video on thos recently.
M1 Mac Mini has 39 watts of power consumption (1).

Reference:
1. https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/28/m1-mac-mini-power-consumption/
 
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IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Microsoft's Windows 10 is free on devices with screens under 9 inches.

Windows 10 devices up to 9" remains free to OEMs with Anniversary Update
Ok?

They gave Windows 10 licenses to OEMs, who make tablets and phones...

Windows is not free lol
 
Huh? Windows is not free.. lol
It effectively is. You can just download the ISO from Microsoft's website, install it on any PC, skip authentication and then use it forever. There'll be a watermark in the lower right corner and you won't be able to change your desktop background, but any games or programs you install on it will work just fine.
 

rnlval

Member
Ok?

They gave Windows 10 licenses to OEMs, who make tablets and phones...

Windows is not free lol
"I can confirm that Windows 10 on less than 9 inch” consumer tablets continues to be available at $0 (no change)."- A Microsoft spokesperson
 
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IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
It effectively is. You can just download the ISO from Microsoft's website, install it on any PC, skip authentication and then use it forever. There'll be a watermark in the lower right corner and you won't be able to change your desktop background, but any games or programs you install on it will work just fine.
Interesting.

It's still not free lol

rnlval rnlval : bro come on.. that's free to companies selling specific tablets.. not to end users..
 

Angelcurio

Member
Noob question. Why game consoles use their own OS, and have great perfomance, while linux, being open source and all, has performance issues and a big overhead compared to windows, when precisely one of the main differences between consoles and PC is how bloated Windows actually is.

It would be greatly apreciated if someone answers in simple terms.
 
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Noob question. Why game consoles use their own OS, and have great perfomance, while linux, being open source and all, has performance issues and a big overhead compared to windows, when precisely one of the main differences between consoles and PC is how bloated Windows actually is.

It would be greatly apreciated if someone answers in simple terms.
Because that doesn't typically happen for 'native' Linux titles. And for all other games, they are actually running through a translation layer - WINE, or Proton - that redirects function calls, effectively pretending to act like Windows when it's actually Linux. Since the accuracy of this "pretendulation" is not perfect, and different games react to it differently, you see a big spread of performances across the available games, from some games running worse, to perfect parity, to even some games running better - when the original version on Windows was crappily implemented, and the loss of performance from 'pretendulation' is less than the performance advantage from running a much better optimized render process.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Interesting.

It's still not free lol

rnlval rnlval : bro come on.. that's free to companies selling specific tablets.. not to end users..
It is free to use.
You don't need to pay anything to use a Windows.

There is a limitation... you can't change the wallpaper.

You can download now to install in how many devices you want from MS own site.
 
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IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
It is free to use.
You don't need to pay anything to use a Windows.

There is a limitation... you can't change the wallpaper.

You can download now from MS own site.
It's possible to use it unlicensed, and MS doesn't do much about it.

That doesn't make it free lol
 

ethomaz

Banned
It's possible to use it unlicensed, and MS doesn't do much about it.

That doesn't make it free lol
MS created that model to be free.
In the past versions (Windows XP, Windows 7, etc) it was not possible... they changed.

I will give a better ideia.
A F2P game that you needs to buy cosmetics only is a free or paid game?
Windows 10 is basically that... a F2P game that you need to buy cosmetics only.

PS. You can't get MS supports for an unactivated copy too but that is the part of the service activation they are selling.
 
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