Hi all! (Steam & L4D2)

General Discussion
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Hi all, just wanted to make a first post here, but wanted to make it about something rather than just spamming the board up!

I’m posting about Left 4 Dead 2, and the disappointing performance vs. Windows on my ATI HD4850. I know it’s an old card, and isn’t supported by AMD anymore, but even through a bodge of the X server allowing the use of the latest legacy driver (via a PPA), the performance is dismal (and was glitchy as hell) - barely better than the open-source radeon driver that comes with X. I can play it on maxed settings on Windows, so it’s a shame that I can’t in Linux. I’m pretty sure it’s down to the crappy drivers rather than Valve, as performance is better on my laptop (Nvidia GT630m). It’s a shame that I cannot afford to jump to Nvidia, and it’s more of a shame that AMD have dropped support for the card (as in, you can’t even use the drivers as the required kernel & X server versions aren’t compatible). It’s my old rig anyway, something for the missus to game on while I use my laptop :slight_smile:

This post isn’t meant to be negative (oops), as I’ve been wishing for gaming to come to Linux ever since I started using it (Ubuntu 8.04). Steam coming native to Linux has changed everything, I find that I very rarely boot into Windows now, and actively look for games that are native to Linux in the store (and think twice about buying a game that isn’t Linux compatible). The future is very bright now :smiley:

Anyway, sorry if this is a bit random, hoping this is the kind of forum that tolerates this kind of crap ;D
I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on Linux, but I’ve got a fair amount of experience (use to run Arch), so will try to help where I can :slight_smile:

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Welcome to the forum chemicalfan :slight_smile:

Yeah we’re pretty tolerant here, and generally a friendly bunch that have a bit ofo a laugh and take the p*ss out of each other a bit :wink:

Is it just L4D or is it gaming steam gaming as a whole ?

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To be honest, I’ve set up Linux on that box as a dual boot to Windows, solely so my GF can play L4D2 while I use my laptop (my main machine nowadays). It’s only got that and Dota 2 on it (never played that - seems really buggy on the menu screen though) - I haven’t tried any other games. I guess if there’s space, I could put World of Goo on it, but she doesn’t have any other Steam games, and I’m not sure I’d even notice poor performance, as she can play that on her Atom netbook fine (which has next to no graphical performance worth speaking about!)

I know there’s no solution, it was a bit of a rant I guess. It’s frustrating to know the potential of the GPU (as evidenced by Windows), yet on the same game on the same rig under Linux, graphics performance is shocking. Probably less than a quarter (it’s playable at native res with everything on low, no AA, with AFx4)