# [NEWS] FreeBSD: A Faster Platform For Linux Gaming Than Linux?



## vermaden (Sep 7, 2011)

> FreeBSD provides a Linux binary compatibility layer that allows 32-bit Linux binaries to be natively executed on this BSD operating system. Linux binary compatibility on FreeBSD allows Linux-only applications to be executed in a near seamless manner on this alternative platform, even for games. New tests have revealed that the modern FreeBSD operating system (via PC-BSD 8.2) can actually outperform Linux when it comes to running OpenGL Linux game binaries.



SOURCE: http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_games_bsd

... and thats using older and slower FreeBSD 8.x line


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## nakal (Sep 7, 2011)

It's nice to have numbers, because no one really took it seriously (already years ago), when I said that Unreal Tournament runs remarkably smoother on the FreeBSD Linux ABI.


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## xibo (Sep 8, 2011)

This is interesting. I take it FreeBSD can do kill/select/page_fault/softclock/... more efficient then linux/gnu. But then, why would this efficiency difference increase when spending more time waiting for video interrupts or executing nvidia driver elements (by increasing the video output resolution) ?

Or is it that we have a better driver blob then them?


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## ramonovski (Sep 9, 2011)

In my case, Urban Terror in GNU/Linux feels a little less "laggy" in general and the low FPS I got in particular situations doesn't make a bad experience at all, contrary to FreeBSD; it becomes a little frustrating when I have low FPS. _<noob> My FreeBSD box (kernel include) needs more customization thought. </noob>_

But with bigger resolutions FreeBSD feels more "flexible" and the *moused* (killer) feature in FreeBSD improves a lot the experience with my USB shittie mice (thanks aragon).


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## eadler@ (Sep 11, 2011)

nakal said:
			
		

> It's nice to have numbers, because no one really took it seriously (already years ago), when I said that Unreal Tournament runs remarkably smoother on the FreeBSD Linux ABI.



It would be nice to have numbers, but these are a load of bunk. Not only do they not understand statistics but they ran the OSes on different hardware! (source: http://openbenchmarking.org/embed.php?i=1109019-MICH-FREEBSD02&sha=14227d4&p=2)


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## vermaden (Sep 11, 2011)

@eadler



> Not only do they not understand statistics but they ran the OSes on different hardware!



They are not mate, it may seem to look like that, but its the same motherboard, same graphics card, same audio card and same CPU and disk, its just differences in OSes how they report hardware to the PHORONIX test suite, the same motherboard or audio card has different name under FreeBSD and different one under Linux, same for hard disk size displaying, Linux displays 'marketing' 250GB while FreeBSD displays real 236GB for that disk, also author of the tests confirmed its the same hardware for both:

*Michael *confirmation about the same hardware:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthre...r-Linux-Gaming-Than-Linux&p=226541#post226541


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## expl (Sep 11, 2011)

xibo said:
			
		

> Or is it that we have a better driver blob then them?



FreeBSDÂ´s NVidia drivers are direct port of Linux drivers and it usually lags behind one or two releases.


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## vermaden (Sep 12, 2011)

Someone wrote there quite good comment that I would like to cite here:



> _"What's funny is that people are finding any reason they can to dismiss the benchmarks (my favorite is claiming the hardware is different, when it's not).
> 
> Meanwhile, nobody seemed to have a problem with Phoronix's previous benchmark showing Wine/Cedega games running faster on Linux than on Windows:
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=681&num=2
> ...


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## fonz (Sep 12, 2011)

vermaden said:
			
		

> > When Linux wins, everything is correct and good and fair. When Linux looses, something is wrong and the benchmark is bad and unfair. What is this behavior called?


Selective Calimero-ism?

Fonz


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## nakal (Sep 12, 2011)

On one side there have been many wrong arguments against the benchmark, but I would like to see some more details on this. The article did not say why the benchmarks are better on FreeBSD and this is bad.

There have been a few speculations:

Unity is slow.
Ubuntu uses Compositing.
Ubuntu has too much crap running in background.
FreeBSD graphic quality is reduced because of incomplete 3D-support.

All these are valid arguments, although I don't know which are true.


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## aragon (Sep 12, 2011)

These things will always be controversial I guess, but it's nice to be on the gloating side for a change.


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## break19 (Sep 17, 2011)

Even more interesting is the fact that, at least for me, Wow seems to run smoother in wine on FreeBSD 8.2 amd64, than it did in archlinux, on the exact same hardware.. 

AMD Phenom2 3.1ghz callisto dual core (stock speeds. using powerd on FreeBSD, and ondemand cpufreq governor on archlinux)
4G RAM
GeForce 9600 GT 1G, with latest NVIDIA blob drivers on both OSs.


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## cabriofahrer (Mar 20, 2012)

FreeBSD completely outperforms Linux and Windows, I made that experience a long time ago. See my post in PC-BSD forums for a detailed description of my experience:

http://forums.pcbsd.org/showthread.php?t=13912


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## bsduser35325 (Mar 20, 2012)

While both FreeBSD and Linux might perform better than windows for games, I don't really understand what is the point if you cannot play the latest games. Sure you can emulate those old games with wine, but you will alawys be late on every game and they might not even work.

My question is.. what about gaming by running windows as a virtual OS? would the performance be as good as a native install? You wouldn't need wine anymore I hate it anyway..


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## UNIXgod (Mar 20, 2012)

bsduser35325 said:
			
		

> While both FreeBSD and Linux might perform better than windows for games, I don't really understand what is the point if you cannot play the latest games. Sure you can emulate those old games with wine, but you will alawys be late on every game and they might not even work.
> 
> My question is.. what about gaming by running windows as a virtual OS? would the performance be as good as a native install? You wouldn't need wine anymore I hate it anyway..



Your point is valid. No serious gamers use FreeBSD or GNU/Linux. The benchmarks (which also have been proven last decade) tend to knock linux in the sense that FreeBSD's emulation layer actually performs better than the real thing.


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## adamk (Mar 21, 2012)

bsduser35325 said:
			
		

> My question is.. what about gaming by running windows as a virtual OS? would the performance be as good as a native install?



Not even close.


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## xibo (Mar 21, 2012)

With full hardware virtuallisation I don't think it would be a lot slower


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## kpa (Mar 21, 2012)

Is there such thing available now? GPU virtualization in the same sense as CPU virtualization is done?


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## adamk (Mar 21, 2012)

Not really.  Both virtualbox and vmware virtualize their own GPUs to the guest operating system.  In my experience the vmware 3D support inside Windows guests is better, but that doesn't do much good to someone running windows.  The virtualbox 3D support for Windows guests isn't bad, but it's far from native speeds and is certainly not capable of playing any reasonably modern 3D games with acceptable (IMO) performance.

Adam


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## ahavatar (Mar 22, 2012)

kpa said:
			
		

> Is there such thing available now? GPU virtualization in the same sense as CPU virtualization is done?



Yes, it exists. It's called IOMMU, VT-d (Intel), or AMD-vi (AMD). Not all motherboards and CPUs support this, thus you have to double check before you purchase PC hardware parts.

http://youtu.be/L_g7ZBMWoLk


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## bsduser35325 (Mar 22, 2012)

Wow, so with that hardware you can actually play all the latest games? *B*ut it still wouldn't make sense to do so


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## phoenix (Mar 22, 2012)

Using PCI-Passthrough, you can dedicate a PCI-based videocard to a VM.  Not sure if you can do that with the PCIe videocard used by the host system, though.

So, yes, you can get 3D accelerated graphics in a VM.  But, no, you won't be able to play the latest versions/games (as in, released in the past 12-18 months).

If you want to play the latest games, then use a dedicated Windows box, or a game console.  Don't try to use a VM.


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## athos (Mar 23, 2012)

...Or you could use wine

I've been playing Mass Effect 3 and TESV:Skyrim with pretty decent graphics at PC-BSD. 
(With a performance almost, if not as good as with windows 7 installed!)

The problem with wine is that not everything is fully supported...


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## Zare (Mar 24, 2012)

@phoenix, VirtualBox needs IOMMU, and it's in beta stage. Xen can remap DMA to VM's fixed memory without IOMMU, but both need Linux hosts.

So no, we cannot utilize this function on FreeBSD...yet.

ESX has really good direct hardware access (VMDirectPath), but it's in another category (bare-metal hypervisor). There are success stories about passing USB root device and PCI-x graphics, hooking K/V/M, and playing latest 3D games.

Whole story would be a lot more simple if graphics processing and graphics output were separated. External GPU units would hook themselves to mainboard's framebuffer, RAMDAC/TMDS, and feed their renderings. Since PCI passthrough enables hypervisor to take control of device's DMA and IRQ calls, it integrates the device onto it's emulated bus. And then the PCIx GPU can hook VM's framebuffer. And then you would be able to seamlessly play 3D games inside VirtualBox window on FreeBSD.


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## sossego (Mar 24, 2012)

What's missing is knowing how to implement FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc together to improve performance.

My two fiat cents.


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