Valve ports Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux and finds that it performs better than the Windows version.
Valve ports Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux and finds that it performs better than the Windows version.
Linux is a great system for everything, except games. Sure you can get them but none of the big titles that most people want to play are available on it. With Valve bringing Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux and with the news that this game actually performs better on Linux than Windows could the kick other game makers to start considering Linux as a viable platform.
According to internal testing done by Valve, they found the Windows version performed around 14% slower, once the Left 4 Dead 2 Linux version was optimized. When the Linux version was originally ported to the high-end hardware, Valve only received 6 FPS. They say this is typical at the beginning of a successful port.
The setup used to test this is as follows:
Hardware
Intel Core i7 3930k
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
32 GB RAM
Software
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64-bit
Left 4 Dead 2
Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit
You might have noticed that the testing was done on 64-bit Windows and 32-bit Ubuntu but Valve plan to test on 64-bit Ubuntu. The Valve blog on this is a fascinating read and goes into a lot of detail about the tests and what Valve found while doing them. I highly recommend reading it for more information.
I personally can’t wait for more mainstream games to become available on Linux! Tells us what you think of all this in our forums.
Source: www.tweaktown.com, blogs.valvesoftware.com
