Intel recently announced a big driver update for their Arc GPUs on Windows, because their DirectX 9 performance wasn’t as good as it could have been. Turns out, they’re using code from the open source DXVK which is part of Steam Play Proton.
DXVK translates Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 to Vulkan. Primarily written for Wine, the Windows compatibility layer, which is what Proton is made from (Proton is what the majority of games on Steam Deck run through). However, it also has a Native implementation for Linux and it can be used even on Windows too. So it’s not a big surprise to see this. Heck, even NVIDIA use DXVK for RTX Remix.
Windows gamers benefiting from open source technology for gaming on Linux. My my, the turntables!
This is actually very good news.
For years, there was this idea in minds: “who would use Wine? is there any need for ReactOS?” when they had slowly but surely built the massive open source compatibility layer for Windows.
And in certain areas, they now seem to have surpassed even Microsoft’s own efforts. Yes, Windows can run applications even as old as from Windows 1.0 times. Yet, their driver ABI was not as stable. And here we are…
(Let’s also not forget DOSBox and ScummVM which are used commercially on gog.com)
I agree, this is pretty cool and it means that now there’s a genuine incentive for windows development to improve the FOSS tooling! This is rare but hopefully it can pave the way for more projects like this such that everyone benefits from FOSS.
Alfman,
Only one question remains:
This also affected Steam Deck releases. When you enter the competitive world, game developers would like to have “full root access” to your system, and don’t like open source alternatives.
sukru,
That’s an interesting point you bring up. However I’d point out that, as with most forms of DRM, the restrictions are often worse for legitimate users. There will be both false positives and false negatives. Innocent users are being banned, meanwhile the cheaters and code crackers will still manage to bypass them anyways. This has always been the case.
Rather than falling back on DRM & user restricting mechanisms, I think game studios should focus more on people’s underlying motivations. It’s the same thing we saw with music & movies: DRM never managed to stop hackers, But when studios started offering legitimate services that were as convenient and accessible as the “black market” alternatives, these took off and there was huge demand for legitimate services.
I’d actually like to see games take the a similar approach. Invite the hackers onto separate servers with their own tournaments so they can still have fun with the game and encourage them to build fantastic mods and work on AI while lessening the motivation to break into the regular game tournaments.
Unfortunately a lot of games are designed around “grinding” to reach a goal, which is a bad game mechanic in the first place and it creates motives to cheat and turn to the black market. This is NOT the user’s fault but the game designer’s fault! They should recognize why the game is motivating people to turn to hacking and focus on making the game better by fixing the mechanics and eliminating human busywork like “farming”. Maybe give everyone an in-game bot companion or something such that they don’t feel the need to rely on external hacks to improve gameplay.
All gamers win this way, but unfortunately many game studios don’t actually want to fix their games at all. They want gamers to pay more and making games a chore is one of the ways they do it. Honestly, the black market almost seems justified to me in these cases. They’re not the ones creating the problem, rather they’re the byproduct of the problem.
Unfortunately it is very easy to cheat by modifying driver code, and there are already hacks for sale for many popular games.
I would argue cheating is worse than rootkits. And that is probably already a very bold statement. Yes, that is an unreasonable tax on those who only play single player, co-op, or with known friends. And a very small minority is essentially spoiling everyone’s fun.
Take this “hitbox” modification for example. This is actually for research, than hacking, but people are already using it for nefarious purposes.
https://youtu.be/zrp4SyRBPLM?t=209
And of course there are kits that will render enemies behind walls, etc:
https://youtu.be/HukHwAV-ylw?t=45
These cannot be “fixed” on the client side. Especially if the hacks are running as a hypervisor, and translate GPU calls, or network packets to give unfair advantage.
The only solutions would be things like a separate path for multiplayer (secure boot in “game mode”?). Or going “console only”, or similar drastic measures.
sukru
I know, and honestly I think it’s silly of them to think they can block it with invasive spyware. They can’t stop a determined hacker. IMHO they should be doing more to change people’s motivations so they don’t seek out hacks in the first place. And as for hackers, encourage them to use their skills in more productive & challenging ways. The hackers want to prove their stills, give them an area in which they’re welcome to do it and proudly compete against each other in the open. Cheaters against normal players is not fun because it’s not fair, but cheaters against cheaters could be genuinely interesting!
For single player games, I have to side with the gamer. There’s no moral objection whatsoever.
For multiplayer games, I side with the operator of said server. Unfortunately many game studios have replaced user controlled servers with centralized servers run by them in order to change subscription fees. It used to be a lot easier to mod servers before games moved into centralized data-centers. There is so much innovative potential on user operated servers and they were often able to improve gameplay over the original game.
I think game studios are doing players a disservice if they don’t give them official creative outlets to use their skills to change the game. I understand cheating can ruin the experience for non-moded users and underground cheating needs to be discouraged. But to a hacker, when a game publisher tries to militarize the game to block cheaters, attacking the game’s militarized defenses becomes the new game..
They can try and fix it with tech, but we know they will always ultimately fail, which is why I think they might try to fix it by better understanding people’s motivations to redirect their efforts more productively.
Alfman,
We still cling onto “good old days”. However gaming as mainstream has moved on.
During Counter Strike, Quake 3 Arena days, I would go the computer lab, and there would be matches available. Running your own server was the norm, and almost everyone knew each other. (Those who would cheat would be easily shunned by the social circle).
Later when Team Fortress 2 and Halo were popular, LAN parties still existed, but most people had their own PCs. So it was a mixture between dedicated servers, online server browsers, and early Xbox Live. You could still have control on the environment, and run a server without needing “anti-cheat”. Clients could be open source and modified as such. Or, you could just join a random server hoping nobody was cheating.
Today, even custom Minecraft servers are being shut down. With so much anonymity on the Internet, and really terrible people taking advantage of this, companies want to build “safe spaces”. At least give the illusion of it (“what about the children?”).
Unfortunately, most gamers no longer have the expertise nor the patience to run their own dedicated servers. If I were to guess, maybe only 1% of the market would prefer that over a curated live service.
I am not sure how to fix this, as long as the gaming customers prefer the current status quo.
sukru,
Well, we’re not going to agree then, haha. We were kids doing it, it wasn’t really too difficult. What changed is the studios reshaped technology around their own agendas, such as microtransactions, for better or worse. Gamers have given up a lot of creative control in the process. Another objection is that publisher servers are taken down after they’ve made their money and our experiences get lost to time. I know my subjective opinion isn’t very important, but I still find corporate gatekeeping sad and regressive to computing.
Alfman,
No worries. It is expected that we’d disagree on this.
(And, why is OSNews asking me to log in back again, multiple times per day?)
I imagine that they’ll check for unmodified versions of the official Intel releases. Otherwise, their only option is to block Windows users with Intel Arc GPUs.
ssokolow,
Some of them already have steam specific versions. So, yes, it could be possible. However this depends on active participation of game developers.
sukru,
You’re right, this fact is very problematic to non-cheaters whose only crime is running an unblessed OS or driver, etc. They might make up the minority of the market so the studio has little incentive to address it, but it creates huge barriers to entry for new operating systems and new hardware through no fault of their own, which is extremely bad for the state of competition.
This is what I feel I am up against as a lineage OS user. It would be wrong to paint all developers as guilty, but when so many app developers are acting collectively to discriminate against minorities using DRM like SafetyNet, it creates a very strong tide that keeps alternatives marginalized indefinitely. Even the lineageOS developers themselves are decidedly defeatist with respect to discriminatory apps, telling users to give up on custom ROMs and switch back to stock “For apps that inhibit functionality, you can always install your device’s stock software and relock your bootloader.”…
https://www.lineageos.org/Safetynet/
This is disappointing to say the least. Maybe they feel they cannot compete in an arms against google or fear retaliation, which is understandable, but I still think alt-os users deserve to try. To this end Magisk and other tools exist to return control to owners, which IMHO is as it should be.
Alfman,
This goes beyond unblessed devices. Ask me about my frustration with Xbox 4K UHD player, Samsung UHD TV, HDMI 2.0 cables, but missing HDCP 2.1 worries… (All fixed with a ~$10 device that downgrade HDCP, or of course visiting a torrent site).
Unfortunately some legitimate worries like having fair online matches, or adding basic copy protection, can easily go too far. And it prevents regular people with or without alternative operating systems from enjoying the content they paid for.
Netflix, for example, did not work at all on Linux for a very long while. No reason other than studios being too picky. And even today, I know of no streaming service, except YouTube, that will stream commercial 4K content on a PC. Not even on Windows and Edge. (Correct me if this has changed).
sukru,
Indeed.
It’s not that I don’t sympathize with this, but game hacking is going to continue regardless and there’s even a viable business model as long as there’s a demand. The harder it is, the more money successful hacks are worth. It often seems like the DRM hurts innocent users like me more than hurting hackers helping cheaters for a profit.
I don’t keep up with these regularly. The one I tried this year before ATT and HBO split was HBO max because ATT subscribers had been getting it for free, but lineageOS owners were not welcome even with valid credentials. On linux it did work with nothing more than a browser, although I don’t have a 4k display or TV so I didn’t test that.
I don’t have netflix, but as far as I know netflix is still trying to block modded devices. I’ve read that some Magick users are able to trick it into working. but it’s dependent on lots of variables, YMMV.
Intel (and/or Microsoft. I don´t know how it works nowadays) will digitally sign the binaries so it will be an official Windows driver. There shouldn’t be problems.
jgfenix,
You are right that every driver has to be digitally signed now to run on windows. However the “anti-cheat” DRM rootkits, which are themselves signed, use their own heuristics to indicate go or no-go for content. In short, it’s not up to intel or microsoft, but rather a 3rd party.
The more discriminating these anti-cheat systems become in the war against cheaters, the more it hurts users with unique configurations regardless of whether they were cheating. If you have a rare USB deivce, audio card, GPU, whatever, owners are at an increased risk for failure even if drivers themselves work well with windows.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/fortnite/fortnite-s-new-anti-cheat-system-seems-working-cost
They even canceled a whole event over their own anti-cheat DRM bugs…
But if you are part of a niche subset of the community, you could end up being left in the cold and too unimportant to them.
Thom Holwerda,
The wording here seems funny to me 🙂
Tables have turned == turntables ?
Alfman,
“How the turntables” is a common idiom now 🙂
https://english-grammar-lessons.com/how-the-turntables-meaning/
That explains it, I don’t watch much TV and didn’t get the joke.
My big question is this…who the hell, other than YTers wanting views that is, is buying ARC GPUs? I mean its seriously stupid when thanks to the cryptopocalypse you can buy RX 580s for a hundred bucks and I’ve seen RX 6600s new sub $200 as well as GTX 1070s and a scattering of 1080TI.
I know as someone who builds PCs Proton or not lets be honest, any of the above cards is gonna ROFLstomp an ARC 750 and for the price of the A770 you could get an RX 6700XT or 3060 that will stuff the 770 in a locker and steal its lunch money.
So unless you love competition sooo much you are willing to get royally hosed on price vs performance or are the biggest team blue fanboi on the planet I really see no point in buying a standalone Intel GPU, they just don’t have a good value.
bassbeast,
I think the crypto collapse is a big factor. These were obviously in the works during the massive shortages. ARC could have brought a lot more value a year or two ago given the severity of shortages.
I think some consumers who are cost sensitive may still opt for arc GPUs, since they’re technically more affordable. But I agree that I’d like to see better performance. It’s my hope that intel sticks with it long enough to bring more performant GPUs to market. Without enough competition we’re getting screwed.
Uhhh I don’t know if its the same over where you live but here in the states the Arc A750 is going for $389 and the A770 is going for $430, that is just insane considering how much performance you are leaving on the table. at just $200 USD you can get an RX6600 new, the 6650XT which has more SPUs and faster mem for just $299, and the RX6700XT with 12Gb of RAM for $10 less than the A770.
So yeah IF you could find them at MSRP then sure, but scalpers are treating the ARC chips as some sort of collector novelty item so are selling them for frankly Nvidia levels of mark up while you can get new graphics cards that smoke the ARC chips so hard it isn’t even funny for sometimes hundreds less.
I get that they were planning on crypto prices being insane thus letting them sell subpar for a hefty profit but honestly when you look at the benchmarks for the ARC to be a even halfway decent buy you’d need the A750 to be a sub $150 card and MAYBE $250 for the A770. Neither are frankly in the $300, much less $400 USD range of performance.
bassbeast,
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=a750&Order=1
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=4841&d=a770&Order=1
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=4841&d=RX+6700XT&Order=1
Alfman, beat me to it by a minute 🙂
bassbeast,
It is currently available for $290 at newegg: https://www.newegg.com/intel-arc-a750-21p02j00ba/p/N82E16814883002 . Yes, not the best retailer, but still in stock. And comes with a recent game (CoD MWII), and some software which may or may not be of value. (If you are in the market for those, potentially a $100 value could be imagined).
If you are not looking at used cards from miners, this actually nicely compares to 6600:
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Arc-A750-vs-AMD-RX-6600/m1947734vs4128
So, there is a market for them.
All ARC GPUs, down to the lowly A380, include hardware AV1 encoders. Only the 4080/4090, and 7900 include hardware AC1 encoders, and they’re all much, much, much more expensive than ARC GPUs.
ARC GPUs are also much smaller / thinner, and don’t require (as many?) extra power connectors.
With one big caveat though: This is true only for the few Windows gamers who will opt for the pile of junk that is Intel Arc cards.
Which begs the question: Who are you people? What’s the reason for buying an Arc card, bad price-to-performance ratio and bad drivers and all? I’d understand if the Arc cards had come out during the crypto boom, but now there are better options from Nvidia and AMD and they are readily available. Arc would make sense in a world where AMD cards didn’t exist, but AMD cards do exist.
Which brings me to my other point: Nvidia and AMD won’t ditch the proprietary native Direct3D 9~11 portion of their drivers that they have been refining for more than a decade, especially given how much of a performance penalty DXVK imposes on Arc cards compared to native DirectX 12 running on an the same Arc card, hence why I think the caveat is important to mention.
A long time ago, a friend of mine was working on Linux drivers for an ST Microelectronics graphics chip. He helped unify the common code between the Windows and Linux drivers for it.
Based on my GTA V Linux experience, Proton does things incorrectly to keep up the frame rate, so this is just bringing the incorrect implementation to Windows. E.g. when the fps drops to zero the game doesn’t keep going in the background, but it does on Proton. The visuals look worse, etc. Basically this is Intel applying a quick fix for their driver problems, and people will notice this.
If you are a big game studio then you basically desire for graphic card drivers to be open source and for you to being able to contribute to upstream. As you can fine tune and optimize it just the way you would like. And therefore yes as seen here hardware companies can benefit too. As they in return can offer better graphic drivers.