Left 4 Dead 2 runs faster under Linux than on Windows - Valve Blog Post

[fenixkane]

blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

The title pretty much explains it. Check out the link to Valve's Linux Blog for more in depth info.

 

[ResonanceSD]

As in "the zombies run faster"? Because that would be totally imba.

In all seriousness, the Source Engine is not a particularly taxing bit of kit.


Also, with these specs on their test bench.

ntel Core i7 3930k
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
32 GB RAM

No one is going to notice a difference between operating systems. It might be there, but you'll never see it. The difference is 304FPS on Win7 becomes 315FPS on Linux. We only just got 140Hz monitors. The 3% increase in FPS shown here won't be noticeable. Ever.

 

[Andrewtheeviscerator]

That's, not that impressive really. Being able to run the game 3% faster is not really a reason for me to switch the Linux and really I couldn't care at all about it. Makes me wish that Valve would actually work on games instead of this though.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well yes, this may come as a shocker but Windows is not the best optimized system.
Heck that little bit of difference tels me they haven't really ported the engine over all that well.

But the really good news in this is that Linux gets more games that run just as well.

 

[Zagzag]

Let's hope they can get more games to work on it at all. At the moment 3% faster zombies doesn't really make up for not having any other steam games work natively.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

That's, not that impressive really. Being able to run the game 3% faster is not really a reason for me to switch the Linux and really I couldn't care at all about it. Makes me wish that Valve would actually work on games instead of this though.

I think the more important bit of this news is that it's already running nicely on Linux, and it is an instant net performance gain compared to, say, Wine or any other roundabout way of playing games on Linux or dual-booting just because of them darn games.

I'm a Windows person because that's the hand fate has dealt me, but I like the idea of having a Linux rig specifically for games... you know, being more or less impervious to malware and not easily tempted by other invasive stuff?

 

[loc978]

I love how diplomatic they are in saying D3D runs like cold molasses compared to OpenGL...
Can't wait for native Steam. Been wanting to run all of my drives formatted in ext4, not just the storage ones.