[HN Gopher] Steam-on-Ampere
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Steam-on-Ampere
Author : marcodiego
Score : 54 points
Date : 2023-09-05 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tedunangst wrote:
| A lot of indie games also use open source game engines, which
| allow (relatively) easy DIY native ports.
| pzmarzly wrote:
| Box86 instead of qemu-user-static? I'd love to see a benchmark
| comparing these two.
| als0 wrote:
| Same. It's a shame that Steam is purely coded for x86/amd64 and
| doesn't try to use either of these tools on ARM.
| Alupis wrote:
| I think that's a bit harsh of a criticism.
|
| Up until very recently gaming on ARM was a non-starter. Even
| today, majority of the Steam library probably cannot run on
| ARM even if they tried.
|
| We can't dig Valve here, especially given the impressive
| amount of work they've already plowed into gaming on Linux in
| general.
|
| To abuse a meme I find funny - "let [Valve] cook".
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Even if Steam could run on ARM my outsider's understanding
| is that essentially nobody codes to the Apple GPU system.
| So the number of compatible games would be extremely
| limited.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| The Asahi Linux team recently completed an OpenGL
| 3.1-compliant driver for Apple's ARM-based Macs, and is
| now working on a Vulkan-compliant driver, so hopefully
| that will change in a year.
| mnd999 wrote:
| The only OpenGL 3.1 compliant driver iirc.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Steam works very well on macOS/ARM64 (M1 or later). I didn't even
| know it used Rosetta until I checked out due to this article,
| this specific sentence:
|
| > The bummer is that the Steam portal that runs on Linux is
| purely coded for x86/amd64 based system, that is why the Steam
| Deck is based on AMD.
|
| Bummer to only see Nvidia GPUs in this article btw. They're only
| better bang for buck for AI/ML (obviously, thanks to CUDA, and
| therefore it makes sense Ampere focuses on these) and for 4k.
| Steam Deck needs to do neither as its 720p.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Nvidia hardware "just works" for a lot of ARM-based systems.
| ARM has been a big priority for Nvidia since the start, and
| their Linux drivers are plug-and-play on multiple arches and
| OSes. Prior to that, their hardware was in PDAs and laptops
| from pre-2010 using Nvidia-designed ARM SOCs.
|
| What else would you really put in one of these systems? Intel's
| cards are very fresh and probably won't focus on ARM for quite
| some time. AMD's hardware and user sentiment is great, but
| their drivers are flaky enough already on x86.
|
| > Steam Deck needs to do neither as its 720p.
|
| So was the Nintendo Switch, and it sold like gangbusters.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Yeah, sadly AMD seems to not be making much investment into
| the Arm ecosystem, whereas Nvidia's proprietary drivers have
| been built for and tested on multiple Arm systems (likely due
| to Nvidia building their own Arm silicon for years now).
|
| There aren't many changes required to get some amount of AMD
| GPU support going in Linux on modern Arm systems, but I'd
| still consider support 'experimental' there.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| An ARM SOC on the steam deck would be really interesting in
| terms of battery life. But I guess game compatibility is the
| issue.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Right; I expect any energy efficiency improvements would
| probably be swallowed up by having to run qemu binfmt or such
| because basically every single game you're going to play on
| it was targeted to x86
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not really... the GPU would still be the main driver for the
| consumption
| Jochim wrote:
| > and for 4k.
|
| AMD seems to be doing pretty well on raw performance this
| generation. The 7900XTX is about PS200 and PS500 cheaper than
| the 4080/4090 respectively and often comes out much closer to
| the 4090 in benchmarks.
|
| They still haven't cracked ray tracing though. Their
| implementation performs much worse than comparable Nvidia
| cards. Hopefully they'll figure it out before ray tracing
| actually takes off.
|
| I can see adoption being fairly slow though due to AMD's
| partnerships with console manufacturers and Nvidia's absurd
| pricing on the cards that can achieve decent ray tracing
| performance.
|
| It's disgusting how high GPU prices have risen though. My first
| build included 2 top of the line AMD Radeon R9 290X cards for
| less than the cost of a single 4070 Ti.
| jfim wrote:
| For those confused by the title, there's Ampere computing (which
| makes ARM processors) and Ampere the Nvidia GPU generation (eg.
| A100). This is about steam running on the former though x86
| emulation, and also can use the latter GPU architecture.
| Arcuru wrote:
| Is Steam capable of delivering aarch64 native games? For
| instance, is it correct to assume that a game developer can
| upload both an x86 and aarch64 version?
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| i mean really, the dev can stuff whatever they want in a steam
| depot and point at it as the thing to run, so yes
| ekianjo wrote:
| Its already happening for a while. Some games have both
| binaries
| Thaxll wrote:
| Yes please, encourage more game on steam to have their
| gameservers compiled for arm.
| nodesocket wrote:
| I've been waiting for Steam to come out with a M1 (arm64) version
| as it's the last application I have installed that uses Rosetta.
| I haven't been holding my breath, since arm64 is not a priority
| for Valve. Hopefully this accelerates adoption of arm64 gaming.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Even if the Steam launcher were aarch64-compatible right now,
| you still need to emulate for all the games, and I don't see
| those getting ported soon if ever
| zamadatix wrote:
| Not all, just the vast majority... but the same could be said
| on macOS for x86-64 Steam games anyways. Funnily enough, many
| games on Steam beat Steam to the punch already and launch as
| aarch64 even though the launcher client is emulated.
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(page generated 2023-09-05 23:01 UTC)