Rise of the Tomb Raider – Vulkan Performance Review

Disclosure: The Linux developer provided us a free Steam game code for review purpose but I already bought the base game (no DLC’s) at Steam in 2016 when it is still a Windows-only PC game.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was originally developed by Crystal Dynamics using their in-house game engine called Foundation Engine. It was released for Windows last January 29, 2016 then brought to Linux by Feral Interactive on April 19, 2018. Rise of the Tomb Raider is the 2nd PC game to only use Vulkan on Linux and it is Feral Interactive’s 21st game for Linux since June 2014.

Features

• Leap, climb and zip-line your way through beautiful but lethal environments. Stalk wildlife, scavenge for supplies and explore the landscape as you hone your skills in brawling, hunting and survival.
• Configure Lara’s weapons and ammo to perfect your balance of stealth and action, from bows and shotguns to poison arrows and improvised explosives. Use the environment to your advantage as you scale trees or dive underwater to ambush enemies.
• Traverse the precarious depths of immense challenge tombs as you solve huge, multi-layered environmental puzzles and evade deadly traps to uncover the secrets within.

Test Results

A high-end gaming PC is not required to enjoy Rise of the Tomb Raider but it still requires a decent gaming PC. Shown below is a game play video of Rise of the Tomb Raider running on Radeon RX 580 8GB paired with Core i7 7700 3.6 GHz (No Turbo). Take note that video recording using OBS has a performance penalty and it makes the game play look like it’s full of stuttering. The frame rates you see in the HUD will be about 15% higher without video recording and actual game play is smooth.

The save files of my Windows play through is not compatible with the Linux version so I wasn’t able to play right away the Valley Farmstead area and the Threshold of Kitezh area which we use for hardware benchmarking. However, I have already played for more than an hour the Soviet Installation up to the point of the Helicopter chase and the gaming experience was great. At 2560 x 1080 resolution using High image quality preset, I get about 40 to 60 FPS depending on what is happening on the screen. Feral Interactive has done an excellent job on developing the Linux version of Rise of the Tomb Raider.

(Update 2018APR22: I was able to test the Valley Farmstead area and I get around 45 FPS when running the game at 2560 x 1080 resolution using High preset.)

The game features 5 image quality presets – Lowest, Low, Medium, High, and Very High. There are also individual graphics settings which you can tweak if you want to maximize performance. In addition, Very High image quality preset does not set everything to maximum. Texture Quality, Sun Shaft Shadows, Specular Reflection Quality, and Pure Hair can still be set to a higher setting. If you want to play using maximum settings at 2560 x 1080 resolution, I think Feral Interactive’s recommendation on Radeon RX Vega series is just right.

The game officially supports only Ubuntu 17.10 but I did not encounter any game crash or serious problem on my gaming PC running on Ubuntu MATE 17.10. I’m also happy to report that Radeon RX 580 8GB runs this game without any graphical glitches on the Mesa 18.0.0 driver. This is another milestone for Linux gaming.

For the CPU, Feral Interactive seems to be playing it safe with Core i7 3770K as a recommended CPU. The CPU usage on my Core i7 7700 is around 30% only and disabling Hyper Threading does not have any significant performance penalty.

Closing Thoughts

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the much needed games on Linux and I can say with confidence that it should be on your games-to-buy list if you are a big fan of action games or the Tomb Raider game franchise. It improves upon the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider and performance is great on Linux using Mesa (open source driver). You can buy it at Steam for ₱2,599.00 but it’s currently on sale for only ₱857.67 up to April 24, 2018. If you want to give more support to Feral Interactive, you can also buy the game at The Feral Store for $59.99. Steam Play is supported which means you only buy Rise of the Tomb Raider once and you can play it on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Remember to read this guide if you will play the game on Linux and on Windows to make performance comparisons and you want to make your purchase count as a Linux game sale.

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