Broken 32bit OpenGL acceleration on 64bit distro

[Lucas Clemente Vella]

In a brand new installation of 64 bits Linux Mint 14, with a video card Radeon HD 4870 (it has very good support from open source "radeon" DRI driver), when I run the game Bastion (from Humble Indie Bundle or Steam), which is a 32 bit application, there is a severe performance issue in most parts of the game.

At first I thought it was an issue with "radeon" DRI driver, so I opened a bug report for them: (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62441). In there they pointed me out that the issue could be my 64 bits distro trying to run a 32 bits application. I was skeptical at first, but I booted Linux Mint 14 32 bits from USB stick and ran the game from there. Worked flawlessly.

So, it ends up being that in my 64 bits system, when I run a 32 bit application, the rendering falls back to software, and is not accelerated by my hardware, even if 32 bit Mesa libraries are available (the program runs, after all). I consider it a severe usability problem for a distribution to install 32 bit libGL.so but fails to install all the necessary requirements to have it accelerated. How the heck are the user supposed to know that, for some specific applications (32 bit ones), they must install a separated package so it can run at normal speed?

I know Mesa software renderer have great use for developers and experimentation, but it causes more problems than it helps for end users, because it masquerades the problem of missing dependencies for real accelerated graphics.

[Lucas Clemente Vella (lvella-gmail)]

Game Bastion (from Humble Indie Bundle V and Steam) runs very slowly on most parts, specially when the scene is full of special effects (rain, etc), rendering it unplayable.

The only part where it runs at normal speed is at main menu and the very beginning of the game.

[Anton Patsev (patsev-anton)]

How is Hardware?
lspci -v

[Lucas Clemente Vella (lvella-gmail)]

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV770 [Radeon HD 4870] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: PC Partner Limited Device 0851
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at fd8e0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        I/O ports at 8e00 [size=256]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at fd800000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [58] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [a0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [100] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=010 <?>
        Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci
        Kernel modules: fglrx, radeon

Notice I am using "fglrx" now, but I have decided to post this bug just after I have tried the game with the proprietary driver to be sure it was an issue with the free one. The game runs fine with fglrx.

[agd5f (agd5f)]

What version of the kernel and mesa are you using? Also is Bastion a 32-bit game and are you running it on a 64-bit distro? It could be that you have an old version of the 32-bit hardware 3D driver or that you are ending up with software rendering for 32-bit apps. Please attach your dmesg output and xorg log.

[Lucas Clemente Vella (lvella-gmail)]

Well, that is embarassing... I use Linux Mint 14 64 bits (based on Ubuntu 12.10), but for testing the hypotesis I downloaded Linux Mint 14 32 bits (i.e. the same kernel version, 3.5.0), flashed a bootable USB Stick with the ISO, and booted in it.

Then I ran the game out of the system's hard drive. It ran at full speed most of time, almost flawlessly. There was only a minor glitch at Warner Bros. logo during startup, and a perceivable slowdown when entering buildings like the Destilary (just GUI, irrelevant to gameplay).

I am yet to revert the driver from fglrx and provide the info requested (dmesg output and xorg log), but if the radeon driver is fine (as I could atest from Live USB Stick), where is the issue? A brand new installation with functional/accelerated OpenGL should be able to run 64 bits games as well as 32 bits games, right? Where is the issue, then? In the ditribution? In the packaging? Are there missing packages that I should instal manually?

[agd5f (agd5f)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I am yet to revert the driver from fglrx and provide the info requested
> (dmesg output and xorg log), but if the radeon driver is fine (as I could
> atest from Live USB Stick), where is the issue? A brand new installation
> with functional/accelerated OpenGL should be able to run 64 bits games as
> well as 32 bits games, right? Where is the issue, then? In the ditribution?
> In the packaging? Are there missing packages that I should instal manually?

Make sure your distro provides (or you have installed) the 32 bit multi-arch packages to support 32-bit apps on a 64bit system.