graphics card

[tp40]

Hey, so I have a few machines that run Spring RTS (BA specifically) engine v103. The other day I noticed that one machine (powered by a modest nVidia GPU) was drawing shadows and the correct floating ball effect on the Core fusion plant, but anther box (powered by a modest AMD GPU of similar age) did not. This was on Windows 10 for both machines. On a Linux machine with Intel graphics, I noticed the Core fusion plant looked good, but I didn't notice any shadows at the time.

I examined the configuration exposed by the lobby client, and was not able to get the AMD-GPU box drawing shadows. Didn't test long enough for fusion plants. Perhaps the configuration was not being applied, or not being read, I don't know.

I am tempted to replace the nVidia GPU with something faster and an RX550 is about what I have in mind (the CPU is a Core2 Duo so I'm keeping it modest), but I'd hate to harm Spring.

Would someone with experience in this like to share some up to date wisdom on GPU support in the spring engine?

[Silentwings]

For Spring, you'll be better off with nVidia. (Although my desire to avoid AMD for Spring is less strong than it once was, back in ATI days they really sucked.)

[tp40]

Yeah I was suspecting nVidia was the safe choice here. Too bad though, I like what AMD has been doing in open source drivers.

Can you (or someone) comment on the situation on Linux? The integrated Intel graphics (attached to a 45W mobile Core i7) have performed very well indeed, by my standards. Perhaps in the open source world there should be feature parity as far as the Spring engine is concerned?

[Silentwings]

Integrated graphics isn't encouraged for Spring, regardless of the OS.

[tp40]

At risk of making myself annoying, isn't the stance against integrated graphics getting out of date? Well, we can agree that if nVidia is the preferred platform and there is no nVidia integrated graphics available, then integrated graphics are not a preferred platform.

The new "Raven Ridge" from AMD, i.e. Ryzen with Radeon, is almost certainly going to be faster than any low-end dedicated GPU (specifically, faster than a GeForce GT 1030 as I may come to purchase based on your comments). Enough to do very fine 1080p with the Spring engine certainly. Except for those missing shadows. :)

Thanks for your input.

Still interested if to hear about Spring and graphics drivers on Linux.

[Silentwings]

I'm afraid I can't judge the detail of whether or not, for Spring, upcoming integrated graphics are close to gaining parity with low end gfx cards - you'll need an engine dev for that. However, currently, it is common for users with integrated graphics to have problems running Spring.

[ThinkSome]

Yeah I was suspecting nVidia was the safe choice here. Too bad though, I like what AMD has been doing in open source drivers.

Can you (or someone) comment on the situation on Linux? The integrated Intel graphics (attached to a 45W mobile Core i7) have performed very well indeed, by my standards. Perhaps in the open source world there should be feature parity as far as the Spring engine is concerned?

AMD drivers are not open source. The kernel side of them is, but they just pushed the really proprietary bits down to firmware. Try wiping /lib/firmware and then running them. Meanwhile Nouveau for NVidia has the firmware reverse-engineered, though NVidia started checking signatures in Maxwell. Yes, the intel drivers work fairly well, but there are still some things that do not work properly (such as GL.POINTs or GL.LINES, I don't remember).

[dansan]

AFAIK the springrts engine does not use any vendor specific gfx extensions.
Version 104.0 will use OpenGL 3.0 features.
AFAIK the problem is not with the engine, but with the drivers.

[tp40]

Very interesting the hear that there is (probably) not any nVidia-specific code in the engine. I will be very interested to try v104 on the AMD GPU, perhaps the switch to OpenGL 3.0 will avoid whatever (apparent) non-compliant behavior in the driver is causing the missing features.

They say that the AMD OpenGL implementation isn't as good as that of nVidia, but it seems to me it should at least include all the features. Is that too much to hope?

[dansan]

I have no idea. There is a OSS OpenGL conformance test: https://piglit.freedesktop.org/ Maybe try it and compare its results... I just wanted to try it out for comparison (notebook with nvidia over integrated -> bumblebee), but my system is currently in a Debian-upgrade-limbo, so I cannot install the dev-packages required for compiling ^.^ Maybe in a few days...

[abma]

I'm using an AMD GPU on linux (currently debian 9) for years. The OS driver became very good and the performance is pretty good, too.

Currently i have a HD 5750 Card which is already ~6 years old.

In my experience is the OS driver a bit more strict: i.e. it reports much more shader errors and because of the errors some visual stuff didn't show up / has some bad side-effects.

that wouldn't be a problem if the nvidia driver wouldn't accept the shader code as valid. As most devs use nvidia... who to blame?

- nvidia for not beeing strict?
- OS drivers for beeing strict?
- devs for using nvidia?

When you use linux i can only encourage to use ATI as they support OS which nvidia doesn't.

[gajop]

who to blame?

Devs for not printing error/warning log even if shader compiles correctly.

Even Nvidia's driver properly reports all errors from my experience.
I haven't seen cases where there is no warning/error log on nvidia while not conforming to specification.

[hokomoko]

@gajop I've seen ATI/Intel printing things in DebugGL that nvidia did not.

[PicassoCT]

Integrated graphics isn't encouraged for Spring, regardless of the OS.

Ar, blatant farmers discrimination. We ve been growing potatos here, ever since the ol Fritz, and will continue to do so, sonny, no matter what you uptown folks think of us low-porns. This laptop shall be running spring, when my lap is no more.

I personally run Spring 98, which was a good year, to have a spring. Not so cold, if you know what i mean. The sprouts would still grow and the results woudl still show, if you know what i mean. We made great vodka, from what the earth gave us.

[ThinkSome]

Potato farmer checking in.