Windows vs Linux ‘Counter-Strike’ benchmark

Recently, ‘Counter-Strike: Source‘ is made available in the Linux Steam store. This popular shooter has been around since 1999, and available in different flavors (CS 1.6, CS:S, CS:CZ, CS:GO). The classic version of the game counts over 10K servers today in Linux Steam client. How does the top shooter perform on Linux Ubuntu? Can the game keep up with Windows? …

Measurements

To get an insight at the performance between the two systems performance and do safe measurements  the following method is used; A demo is loaded 7 times, the average fps per session is saved. The outer two -min/+max values are left out. The result is the average of the 5 remaining values.

7x runs per session
165.1	167.9	165.6	166.8	166.4	165.7	168.2
average fps out of 5 =			166.5

 

 

The results are based on 180+ benchmarks!

 

System specifications

The benchmarks are run on ‘Windows 7 Ultimate’ and ‘Linux Ubuntu 12.04’ using the current Nvidia driver. Which is v313.96 on Windows, and build v313.09 on Linux. Both systems use the default configuration and setup. No additional changes were made to the default system configuration.

CPU	AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3210 MHz
Motherboard	ASUS M4A87TD
Graphic	nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (GK106) [AsusTek] @ 1137 Mhz
Memory	4096MB Kingston PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM @ 668.9 MHz
Hard Disk	PLEXTOR PX-128M5S

 

Graphic settings

Linux high settings

On Windows, ‘Counter-Strike: Source’ has more advanced graphics options. It supports an higher version FSAA and Anisotropic filtering compared to Linux. The graphic configuration files have been modified so each operating system uses the same settings so we can asure fair benchmark results

Features	High	Medium	Low
build	5198	5198	5198
ram	4035	4035	4035
cpu_speed	3200	3200	3200
width	1920	1920	1920
height	1080	1080	1080
Model Detail	High	Medium	Low
Testure Detail	Very High	Medium	Low
Shader Detail	High	High	High
Water Detail	Reflect All	Reflect World	None
Shadow Detail	High	Medium	Low
Antialiasing mode	8x MSAA	2x MSAA	None
Filtering mode	Anisotropic 16X	Anisotropic 4X	Trilinear
Motion blug	Enabled	Enabled	Enabled
High Dynamic Range	Full	Full	Full
AASamples	8	2	1
AnisoLevel	16	4	1
SkipMipLevels	-1	1	2
ShadowDepthTexture	1	0	0
MotionBlur	1	1	1
Windowed	0	0	0
Trilinear	0	0	1
ForceHWSync	1	1	1
NoWaitForVSync	1	1	1
DisableSpecular	0	0	0
DisableBumpmapping	0	0	0
EnableParallaxMapping	0	0	0
ZPrefill	0	0	0
ReduceFillRate	0	0	0
RenderToTextureShadows	1	1	0
FlashlightDepthTexture	1	0	0
RealtimeWaterReflection	1	1	0
WaterReflectEntities	1	0	0

Overall Linux performance

After we turn on all the fancy features at the Nvidia Settings manager and enable each feature in CS:S we toggle a graphic feature on/off. To see it’s effect on the game performance.

Comparison Windows vs Linux Benchmark

This session compares Windows and Linux game performance. The benchmark is divided into 3 segments; low / medium / high – using the graphic setting you find above.

The average FPS of each session is displayed below. Grouped by matching graphic settings  low / medium / high – with and without bloom.  Red represents Windows, and blue is Linux.

Windows always gives you a higher average fps compared to Linux, but not by much. However if you turn on full-bloom effects – the performance on Linux drops quite a bit. But the overall performance is pretty much the same.

Bloom benchmark

It seems bloom effect have a big effect on the game performance. If the gamer are happy with all the shiny and glows in games is a whole different story. But bloom, effects game performance that’s for sure.

There are three bloom settings; no-bloom / basic-bloom / full-bloom. There is an additional setting “Use bloom-effect when available“. Not sure what it’s for, but it’s effects is minimal.

Only ‘full-bloom‘ has serious effect on the average FPS.

Conclusion

Valve has done a good job porting the game to Linux. It performs pretty much the same as it would on Windows, however bloom effect have a negative influence on game performance with high settings! Windows features more  advanced graphics options. CS:S supports a higher version FSAA and Anisotropic filtering compared to Linux. But overall the difference between the two is very slim – only a couple fps (1-2%)

The benchmark results are based on the default system configuration and no optimization or tweaking to gain performance have been applied. Compared with maximum image quality and using the same settings on both systems.

• Similar performance on both systems
• Lots of graphic settings
• Graphics are pretty much the same

• Windows got higher FSAA/Anisotropic filtering
• DirecX vs OpenGL
• Bloom is causing FPS  drop at high-settings

When one aims at performance and tweaks around a bit, you probable get a whole different result. Maybe something you can test: later this week ‘Counter-Strike: Source’ giveaway!!