Not sure I understand the question, I use the following script to launch
TF2: http://sprunge.us/KCbI
The above System Information was collected by running Steam via Primus so
presumably my nvidia card is being picked up.

I do have all the necessary 32-bit multilib packages for running 32-bit
applications. Like I said, I get pretty good performance out of Portal 2
running on Wine via Primus!

On 31 January 2013 18:06, davidw-valve [email protected] wrote:

To begin with, how are you invoking Primus? The most obvious explanation
would be that you're not configured properly to use the Nvidia card and
it's falling back to the Intel GPU.

Are you aware that Steam and its games are 32 bit? Do you have Primus
configured to run 32 bit applications?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1076#issuecomment-12956179.

• Anshul

Thanks for the help -- When I had multicore rendering enabled the game
would crash to desktop, I can retry with it enabled and capture the output.
In the Advanced Video dialog I get fairly decent recommendations (High
quality for most things, Anisotropic (4xMSAA?) filtering, motion blur,
etc.) when I did try and play with these settings, however, it was fairly
choppy (although not significantly worse than with everything set to low).
The only reason I tried setting everything to low was in the hopes of
gaining a playable FPS.

I will run TF2 on the Intel GPU and nVidia CPUs using the recommended video
options and will try multicore rendering and then get back to you.

On 31 January 2013 18:34, davidw-valve [email protected] wrote:

So, if you run TF2 WITHOUT using primusrun (i.e. just using the Intel GPU)
is there any difference in performance?

Also, if you look at Options -> Video -> Advanced from within TF2, what
are the recommended options that are set? Do you have Multicore Rendering
enabled? Does adjusting any of these options seem to improve performance?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1076#issuecomment-12958087.

• Anshul

Ok, it appears I can no longer run Steam due to the following error:

/home/vixus/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 376:  2100 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) $STEAM_DEBUGGER "$STEAMROOT/$PLATFORM/$STEAMEXE" "$@"
Installing bootstrap /home/vixus/.local/share/Steam/bootstrap.tar.xz
/home/vixus/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 169:  2104 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) tar xf "$STEAMBOOTSTRAPARCHIVE"

Ok, it works using the STEAM_RUNTIME=0 fix. So I'll get testing.

Hi there, I hope you find this helpful.

Test: Offline training, dustbowl, 16 bots
Notes: max_fps=60, cl_showfps=1; -novid -dev -console

Recommended settings: High for everything. Reflect world, Motion blur, Full HDR, no vsync
Minimum settings: Low for everything, Simple reflections, No blur or HDR, no vsync
Filtering was Anisotropic 4X and multicore rendering was enabled for all tests.

Intel GPU Recommended settings: Avg FPS 20, Min ~10
nvidia GPU Recommended settings: Avg FPS 30, Min ~200

Intel GPU Minimum settings: Avg FPS 35, Min ~17
nvidia GPU Minimum settings: Avg FPS 50, Min ~22 FREQUENT CRASHES

Windows (nvidia only)

Same FPS cap of 60.. recommended and minimum settings were the same as on Linux.

Recommended: Avg FPS 40, Min 20
Minimum: Avg FPS 55, Min 40 (some spikes to 20 but I rarely saw the numbers go red)

Basically the experience is a lot smoother.

After updating today...

• I can no longer test with the Intel card as Steam fails to start.
• With the nvidia card, I am now experiencing crashes in-game due to a segfault in libnvidia-glcore.so

 [27110.978679] MatQueue0[5593]: segfault at 0 ip 00000000f689d67d sp 00000000010e0150 error 6 in libnvidia-glcore.so.313.18[f5408000+1cd2000]
[27335.940510] MatQueue0[15229]: segfault at 0 ip 00000000f687667d sp 00000000fa71a150 error 6 in libnvidia-glcore.so.313.18[f53e1000+1cd2000]

Ok, so actually removing that flag from my startup script worked and I can
run TF2 on the intel card (haven't tried a game yet). Thank you.

On 4 February 2013 18:20, davidw-valve [email protected] wrote:

@vixus0 https://github.com/vixus0: try running steam like this:

STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam

Let me know if that allows you to run again after the update.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1076#issuecomment-13090876.

• Anshul

Steam itself works fine, the tray icon appears correctly (though that may
be because I ran steam-runtime-update.sh from here.

I haven't tested TF2 yet, do you want me to do so with the nvidia and intel
GPUs?

On 4 February 2013 20:40, davidw-valve [email protected] wrote:

@vixus0 https://github.com/vixus0: good to hear that works. To test our
run time, can you try removing the following files:

~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/./usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2.4.0

~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/./usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2

~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/./usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglapi.so.0.0.0

~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/./usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libglapi.so.0

and then run

STEAM_RUNTIME=1 steam

And let me know if it works? Thanks!

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1076#issuecomment-13098104.

• Anshul

Just bumping this because the game is currently unplayable for me. I have lowered my resolution drastically to 1024x768 just to squeeze out enough FPS for smooth movement. But this is what is happening at the moment:

• On the Intel GPU, frequent freezes (no movement, sound gets stuck repeating) before hectic moments (my death for instance). The freeze stops once I'm dead or after a certain amount of time if I'm still alive.
• On the nvidia GPU, similar freezes but they result in a crash to desktop. I'll try and collect the error messages.

I have similar problems using Asus Zenbook UX32VD, with Ivy Bridge i7, 4GB DDR3 1600MHz, Nvidia GT 620M 1GB. I've also installed a 256GB SSD on my own.

It is impossible, with any settings from lowest to highest, to maintain a playable fps. With low-medium settings at 1920x1080 resolution, while staring at a wall during setup, the framerate is somewhat stable 30-40 but when players start to move and there's any kind of action onscreen, the fps drops to 10-25fps and hardly rises back up at any point.

I can also confirm that I have bumblebee + primus set up and they work.

This is weird for a game originally launched in 2007 and with the "recommended" setup being a Pentium 4 -grade CPU with 1GB of RAM and "a DX9 level graphics card".

It's not weird for a game that has been optimised to work with DirectX. I
can get reasonable performance running in Wine (with primusrun) and a
really low resolution (1024x768). Multicore rendering has to be disabled
(or no text) and all the video settings minimised but I can play.

On the linux port at the moment, you're going to get terrible performance
at 1920x1080. I'd suggest turning it down. Those are the FPS settings I get
at 1280x720 with these freezes on top. Remember, the game has a lot more clutter now than it used to -- hats,
unusual particle effects, etc. which might put additional demands on the
hardware. It may just be the * Bridge series of hardware, as I have seen
the game run somewhat smoothly on an old desktop machine with a weak
graphics card, 1GB RAM and a 1GHz processor.

"On the linux port at the moment, you're going to get terrible performance at 1920x1080. I'd suggest turning it down. Those are the FPS settings I get at 1280x720 with these freezes on top. Remember, the game has a lot more clutter now than it used to -- hats, unusual particle effects, etc. which might put additional demands on the hardware. It may just be the * Bridge series of hardware, as I have seen the game run somewhat smoothly on an old desktop machine with a weak graphics card, 1GB RAM and a 1GHz processor"

The last point is the exact one I was making - I have had better framerates with an older desktop with weaker everything as well - surely a computer with *bridge cpu, way more and way faster RAM, and a way better GPU should get at least comparable, if not even better performance; the change in resolution should be neglible with this drastic changes in HW specs. Plus, if I recall correctly, dropping the resolution to 1366x768 did not significantly improve my performance (I can re-check this some day when I have more time, and punch in some numbers).

Just as a sidenote - you might want to change the title from sandy bridge to something more generic. And be careful when replying - it appears part of your comment was interpret as a quotation from my comment, and was hence snipped to the quoteblock - someone might miss that part if not reading attentively.

To be fair, my performance in Windows 7 (dual-boot) is also disappointing for the hardware. On minimal settings I can average around 45 FPS. A maxframes config got me to 80-90 FPS but of course the game looked dire and those are specialist settings that wouldn't work in linux and shouldn't be necessary to have a playable game on Windows.

Yup. I wonder if this could be investigated both as
a) a possible bug involving the *Bridge series of HW and
b) as a possible feature request to optimize the Source engine. (e.g. I've heard of a middleware company called Umbra who specialize in optimizing otherwise ready engines)

Heck, I can get better framerates from Unigine's latest Heaven benchmark on linux than from a game from 2007, and Heaven even has tesselation. There's just something wrong here ;)

Try setting tf2 launch options as such:

vblank_mode=0 primusrun %command%

I've found this to bring the best fps out of any other configuration.
Make sure to disable multicore rendering as well, as this causes crashing until fixed.
Once multicore rendering is fixed that should boost fps by about 10 - 15+.

linux mint 14 cinnamon 64bit, i5 2430, GT540m, nvidia drivers 310.14 bumblebee 3.0.1

Issue transferred to ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games#96.

This issue is closed - continue conversation there.