Left 4 Dead 2 runs faster on Linux than Windows

Valve’s discontent with Microsoft has always been present, but it has only culminated in the odd comment here and there – until recently. After Gabe Newell’s criticism of Windows 8, where he dubbed it a catastrophe for PC gaming and the PC platform, Valve has been pushing ahead with plans to bring PC gaming to Linux.

The pin head of this new movement has been to port its own source engine based games to a Linux-playable format. Valve’s latest efforts are seeing very encouraging results. In fact by running Left 4 Dead 2 with an OpenGL rendering platform on the Linux kernel  performance was much better than Windows 7. And for those of you who suggest its the use of OpenGL that makes Linux faster, well you’d still be wrong. Even Windows 7 running OpenGL accelerated Left 4 Dead 2 still failed to match that of Linux.

The results from the test system, which consisted of a i7 3930K, 32GB of RAM and GTX 680, are as follows:

Linux Kernel + Open GL acceleration = 315FPS

Windows 7 Kernel + Direct 3D acceleration = 270.6 FPS

Windows 7 Kernel + OpenGL acceleration = 303.4 FPS

The results show a clear victory for the Linux kernel versus Windows 7. Even when both use the OpenGL acceleration Linux triumphs, suggesting the Linux Kernel is more efficient than Windows. It is also worth noting that Windows 7 has vastly more developers and programmers working on optimising game performance, Linux has barely been touched so there is the potential for Linux to be optimised even more – probably more so than Windows 7.

If Valve can have similar successes with other titles, then we could see Linux become more popular for gamers – especially considering it is free. But this is only the first baby step on a very long  journey to overhaul an archaic obsession with the Windows OS.

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