The best graphics card for free drivers in playing planeshift and other 3d games

[_user]

Hello, i have similar topic in down, but this touch another thing.

I wanna ask open drivers users for what are the best(in they opinion)graphics cards(model,vendor,mark etc) for using with free soft driver in planeshift and maybe in another games, i will be glad if somebody who using free drivers for playing 3d games wanna share his experience here

Greetings !

[Celroc Amaul]

Hello! 

  I use the closed-source Nvidia drivers mainly for gaming, and they generally have worked well for me.  Nvidia officially supports Linux and releases native drivers for it, while IIRC, Radeon drivers are community-based.  I don't know much about Intel based cards, but I have heard people mention some issues playing PS with them.  I have a Intel card in my Mac and it seems to play without major issues, so your mileage may vary  .

Now, as a warning, my view is a little closed-minded:  I have owned mostly Nvidia cards and have had very few Radeon ones.  So there may be advantages that I am overlooking in those cards.  But overall, I've been happy with my Nvidia cards + closed-source driver.

Celroc A

[_user]

Im happy from your happiness but this is topic for open-driver-gamers, in case and i wanna see their suggestions only, cheers

[Damola]

Intel driver works quite well. It is a bit slow for playing PlaneShift in Full HD, but it works. Can not give reliable FPS number due to ThinkPad T520 laptop overheating issues that I have not repaired yet.

With newer Intel graphics I bet it would be quite fine. Especially then newer means Haswell or Broadwell. I am not sure about driver maturity for Broadwell tough.

[Damola]

Overheating meanwhile repaired with a can of pressured air. Sandybridge fps numbers vary from capped 60 fps for easy scenes, set as limit in game, to as slow as 12-15fps for complex scenes (snow, more complex lighting effects). That is with: Full HD, texture quality highest, shaders high, but particles medium. Last time I tried particles high looked wonderful,  but was very slow, but back then I had also overheating issues, may try it again.

This is on ThinkPad T520 with Intel i5 Sandybridge dual core with hyperthreading:

$ phoronix-test-suite system-info

Phoronix Test Suite v5.2.1
System Information

Hardware:
Processor: Intel Core i5-2520M @ 3.20GHz (4 Cores), Motherboard: LENOVO 42433WG, Chipset: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family DRAM, Memory: 16384MB, Disk: 300GB INTEL SSDSA2CW30 + 480GB Crucial_CT480M50, Graphics: Intel HD 3000 (1300MHz), Audio: Conexant CX20590, Network: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Connection + Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205

Software:
OS: Debian unstable, Kernel: 4.3.0-rc4-tp520-btrfstrim+ (x86_64), Desktop: KDE Frameworks 5, Display Server: X Server 1.17.2, Display Driver: intel 2.99.917, OpenGL: 3.3 Mesa 11.0.2, Compiler: GCC 5.2.1 20151010, File-System: btrfs, Screen Resolution: 3840x1080

(I use only the bigger external screen for PlaneShift while PTS shows the combined resolution of laptop display + external screen.)

I expect PlaneShift to play completely smooth with Intel chipsets beginning from Haswell onwards, maybe even Ivybridge. I expect it to fly with Broadwell or even Skylake. At least in Full HD. Since Hi-DPI display have up to four time the resolution, I am not sure about these, but Full HD I expect to be definately playable. Well except for low fps spikes with Sandybridge its even playable there, maybe not best for PvP, but as I do not engage in PvP it is no issue for me.

Also CPU usage of PlaneShift client dropped considerably. Often only about 20-40% of one core occupied. Dunno whether thats due to improvements in the Intel driver stack or in the client. It used to fully occupy one core with the PlaneShift client process.

I welcome any figures for Ivybridge and later chipsets. I expect it to be quite playable with Intel drivers there. I´d also expect free software radeon drivers for mid range APUs and gfx cards from AMD to work well enough, but as I do not have any experiences, I do not know for sure.

As soon as I have some Skylake laptop I report back. I expect it to fly there.

[Damola]

Two additional notes:

• Supertuxkart 0.9 is barely playable at Full HD with medium gfx settings. It looks stunningly beautiful, but with just about 10-15 fps it is to slow for a car racing game. They revamped their engine, so I expect 0.8 to be faster
• Trine 2 Complete Edition (a non free software game) is on the edge of being unplayable with Full HD, but not much better with a lower resolution either

So I definately recommend someting later than Sandybridge for gaming.

As for PlaneShift with Unreal engine? No idea.

[CheatCat]

As for PlaneShift with Unreal engine? No idea.

That would probably be really slow.

As for OT: Neither AMD nor Nvidia is good when it comes to open drivers. As for now, Intel is the only hope.

[Echoes91]

Actually I'm playing now on a Radeon Mobility HD4850 with mesa drivers, full HD and maximum settings. And it's mostly smooth with good fps.
FOSS drivers, especially for AMD, have improved so much during last months, and let me enjoy a card that's not supported anymore by proprietary blobs.

[Eurac]

Never had a problem with Nvidia Propitiatory Drivers with PS in 10 years on a GTS 450.

[Ecthion]

Thought I'd toss this out here since older Intel integrated chips are notorious for not playing nicely with CS... I'm running an i7 system with integrated Intel HD 4600 graphics. I run it with textures, shaders, and particles on high, 4xQ antialiasing, and 4x anisotropic filtering with good framerate and perfect stability.

[Rigwyn]

I used the built in HD2500 chip that comes with the core i5 and it worked fine after some fixes were made to Mesa. ( don't remember which version of Mesa had problems ) 

After that, I got my hands an Nvidia GTX 970 and tried the native nouveau driver and the proprietary driver. I favor the latter, mainly because the nouveau driver never seemed to be quite as good for 3d acceleration. With this card, the performance on PS is greatly improved.

[Gilrond]

RX 480 is a pretty good card with Mesa. But upcoming Vega GPUs should be even better.

[lehjr]

RX 480 is a pretty good card with Mesa. But upcoming Vega GPUs should be even better.

The amdgpu and radeon drivers seem to be about the same, but the amdgpu-pro drivers are terrible (random crashes), not to mention no 4.10 kernel support. Amd cards are better if you want to use opensource drivers, but performance wise, nVidia still has a huge lead with closed source drivers. For instance, with something like Minecraft, I'm lucky to stay over 50 fps for more than a few seconds regardless of driver, even with the player facing a wall. In Windows 10, despite opengl being second class citizen and Minecraft still building on a clunky 10 year old version of lwjgl, I can hit over 100fps. According to AMD employees, their Linux team is primarily focused on enterprise and server areas, you know because you need top performing drivers to render a terminal emulator.

[Gilrond]

The amdgpu and radeon drivers seem to be about the same, but the amdgpu-pro drivers are terrible (random crashes), not to mention no 4.10 kernel support. Amd cards are better if you want to use opensource drivers, but performance wise, nVidia still has a huge lead with closed source drivers. For instance, with something like Minecraft, I'm lucky to stay over 50 fps for more than a few seconds regardless of driver, even with the player facing a wall. In Windows 10, despite opengl being second class citizen and Minecraft still building on a clunky 10 year old version of lwjgl, I can hit over 100fps. According to AMD employees, their Linux team is primarily focused on enterprise and server areas, you know because you need top performing drivers to render a terminal emulator.

Don't use closed AMD drivers - there is no point. Radeonsi (Mesa) performs very well today. Only radv (Mesa Vulkan for AMD) is still behind, and AMD didn't open up their own Vulkan implementation yet.