The game runs on my 2.5 GHz Ivy Bridge i5 notebook using the integrated graphics system (HD 3000?) but even with all the graphics settings on low it is not really playable. I now consider upgrading my desktop box (2.6 Ghz Sandy Bridge quad code, currently using integrated graphics as well) with some graphics card. I would like to avoid running a proprietary driver... can anyone recommend a card that runs the game well using the open source radeon or nouveau drivers?
What Mesa you used? When I test it myself on my notebook I get something like 50-70% of Windows performance on latest Mesa. Actually it's playable depends on map and units count. For open source drivers you need to go with any AMD cards which use R600g driver, it's give best performance compared to proprietary driver. You can check it's here: http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/ Nouveau doesn't have reclocking on most of newer cards (especially Fermi and Kelper), it's mean that GPU always working in lower power profile, sp it's not suitable for games. PS: For proprietary drivers you obviously need to go with Nvidia because Catalyst is crap.
Also I think there is some chance that radeonsi (Southern Islands) will catch up Catalyst later, but R600g GPUs it's safer bet because they already have something like 70%+ of Catalyst performance, most features on. R600g also much more stable than Catalyst and it's 2D performance is just beautiful.
Using Mesa 9.2. The game seems to be stable and no serious graphics corruption. I am able to start building a base but as soon as multiple units move around the screen (not even a lot) everything gets really slow (2-3 fps). Is there any specific card you can recommend using that r600g driver? If so, how much FPS in PA?
I'm not tested lot of different GPUs on open source drivers, so I can only talk about my card. I don't really want to give you some random numbers, because I didn't make any proper testing in latest builds. I also still using 3.8 kernel which doesn't have DPM, so my config doesn't really represent what performance you will get. If you don't need this information immediately I'll make some real testing in few weeks.
Hope this helps: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18858 http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18688 http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18520 http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=18203 http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17299 For best results nvidia proprietary driver is the way to go.
First of all, if you want a comfortable linux gaming right now, then it's nvidia with proprietary driver for you. Sorry, but open-source driver (even r600) just doesn't cut it. Yet. But seeing the tendency, I'd say it'll be like this for a year at least. Second of all, do you want to be able to run PA alpha right now, or do you want the release version? Because, like uber have said previously, they didn't even start optimizations and LODs and stuff like that. If the game is lagging for you now, it doesn't mean it'll be like this after polishing.
If your looking for a video card, video ram most important for this game more than anything think else unlike other games. I recommend at least 2GB of GDDR5 ram if buying new card. It's not important to get a card with latest OpenGL support such as 4.3, 4.4 older cards work better on newer drivers as stated above. Nvidia drivers best but if radeon, my laptop with older radeons 6670 and 6620 work better with newer catalyst drivers, desktop has 7660 but is actually 6660 level chipset. I'll wait to get a card at end of year because newer Radeons will be more power efficient but as far as new features not an advantage running with catalyst under linux. I'm sure virtual textures won't thrash the v-ram as much when optimized but if your going for higher texturing v-ram most important.
I just bought the game today and I have a haswell desktop and it runs perfectly smoothly on medium settings I haven't tried out higher than that but id guess that it works fine given that I did stress out my computer on like my second game with a massive amount of units. So yeah it works if you just want to upgrade your processor and not getting a dedicated GPU.
What distro you using? Are you using latest Mesa? I'm just curious what exactly Intel HD model you have and what your FPS is.
Im on Ubuntu 13.04 with the xorg edgers PPA. I don't know how you dump the FPS but it seems stable enough.
