Linux

49865 readers

1144 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

gamemode is a (trashy) game booster. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I used gamemode because it seemed like a nice performance tool; however it caused performance, stability, and issues (in TeamF2). In TF2, I had irregular frame rates and frame times.

I decided to disable gamemode to see what would happen; because it's a good idea to test every known factor. I got a consistent frame rate of 60fps and consistent frametime of 16.67ms.

GameMode is a daemon/lib combo for Linux that allows games to request a set of optimisations be temporarily applied to the host OS and/or a game process.

GameMode was designed primarily as a stop-gap solution to problems with the Intel and AMD CPU powersave or ondemand governors, but is now host to a range of optimisation features and configurations.

Currently GameMode includes support for optimisations including:

CPU governor

I/O priority

Process niceness

Kernel scheduler (SCHED_ISO)

Screensaver inhibiting

GPU performance mode (NVIDIA and AMD),

GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)

Custom scripts

Constantly changing the behavior of the CPU and priorities can be very bad for stability.

I think games should focus on optimizing their code, instead of relying on third party software.

Game boosters are known to be snake oil; FOSS game boosters are not an exception.

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think integrated graphics are particularly bad for gamemode. I now avoid it after trying it out and not seeing much benefit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think integrated graphics are particularly bad for gamemode.

I wonder what's your reasoning for this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, looking at this list, there are multiple things that could cause worse outcomes in practice.

The most problematic IMHO are the I/O prio and niceness. This is because other processes like xorg and the compositor (and maybe even kernel threads, though not sure if you can starve those) need I/O and CPU too when running a game, and they get starved by the game hogging these resources. I remember when running the original StarCraft through wine you needed to de-nice it to avoid starving the X server of CPU.

Of course some of the other stuff is also sketchy since it could increase temps and therefore induce throttling. Depends on how good the cooling is I suppose.

A low latency scheduler can increase overhead and thus reduce average fps, but should not really increase stuttering (probably the opposite), so I don't think that's the problem really.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

I wonder why gamemode is so popular that it gets included by default in Lutris and Ubuntu.