Rise of the Tomb Raider

Testing both Tomb Raider Reboots under Mint 18.3

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I took the liberty of installing Tomb Raider and Rise Of The Tomb Raider under Mint to see how well they perform (if at all) on my hardware. The good news is that the programs actually run AND offer a nice framerate even with eyecandy turned up.

This is my overall score on ROTT with Ultra settings:

Now for the previous game:

There’s this weird glitch that won’t let me use TressFX even though it’s selected, but other than that I seem to be getting good performance on both games thus far. I’ll be trying other games too, but wanted to start with some of the most graphically demanding.I do say I also like the option of choosing which display that I want to play the game on before launching, that and the introduction of Vulkan as an optional mode to run ROTT in (what I used for the benchmark).

Getting these to run in Big Picture mode with the Steam Controller was also a therapeutic experience. It felt no different than when I played these titles in Windows while chilling in bed with my favorite controller.

Gaming under Linux still has some catching up to do, but every time I look into gaming under it the quality improves all the time. My library is definitely much larger than it used to be; I still remember when I only had a handful of Gold Source games and not much else, when TF2 introduced Tux, the first screenshots of Left 4 Dead 2 on a Linux desktop, and other companies like Croteam, 2K and others releasing their ports as well. It’s good to see more and more companies and indie developers look into different OS’s and bring some competition into the fray, and it’s amazing to see Open Source drivers arrive at a point where they are performing better than the proprietary ones thanks to AMD. Ever since reinstalling I’ve only gone over to Windows to play something that won’t run natively (usually of the Metal Gear or Platinum persuasion), but other than that my business has been conducted under Linux mostly during the week days.

Ryzen up to the challenge

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I’m happy to say my new build has passed with flying colors, literally:

I’ve been quite happy with the setup so far. I’m still running at stock at the moment, everything has been running stable with only a couple Windows 10 quirks that doing a couple regedits can easily fix. I’ve already done some benchmarking in 3DMark and a couple Tomb Raider games. Here are my results with both running on the highest settings with Tessellation disabled:

I’ve run 3DMark, but for whatever reason it doesn’t recognize my graphics driver (currently 18.4.1 non beta), will try to run more tests at a later date. I tested Wolfenstein II since it was designed with Ryzen and Radeon in mind, and I can say it runs on Uber settings above 100FPS! :meeseeks: Whereas before it stayed in the 60 FPS range on high, definitely happy with the results. I can’t wait to see how this thing handles large video rendering projects! :happy:

My next goal is to purchase an external Blu-Ray burner, for backing up data (and experimenting with PS3 emulation) but that isn’t a requirement at this time. I’m going to try and take a break from spending lots of money and only save it for the small stuff. As it is I’m coming back up on renewing my webdomain. :rick:

In other news: Microsoft is still as clueless about PC Gaming as ever

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Microsoft doesn’t have much in terms of games on their App store, but if anyone is contemplating buying either their version or the Steam version it’s pretty much a no brainer.

You can buy Rise of the Tomb Raider from Steam, or you can buy it from Microsoft. The price is the same, but as How-To Geek recently explained, the games themselves are not. The Windows Store version does not allow vsync to be disabled, and it always runs in “borderless fullscreen” mode, which can potentially limit performance. Even more problematic, because Microsoft Store games are built on the new “Universal Windows Platform” rather than as conventional executable files, modding isn’t possible, nor can it be added to your Steam library, which means you can’t play it with the Steam controller.

Not that I would have much of a reason to mod a Tomb Raider game (since most of them don’t offer much other than graphical changes if even that), nor would I want to buy anything from Microsoft’s store. As far as I’m concerned Microsoft turned a blind eye to PC Gaming a long time ago. I’m sure they’re still kicking themselves for not taking Gabe’s idea for Steam back when it was just a concept.