New AMDGPU Details & Looking Forward To Major Radeon Linux Improvements In 2016

[eydee]

To summarize: either you buy a new card and hope they won't mess it up like with Catalyst, or you're f...ed. Question is, if people want to use current tech and have to buy a new card, why would it be AMD? There is still no proof that this new driver model will be any better that the old one. In its current state it is even worse and performs worse.

[Sethox]

Ok, First step is done. AMD is talking to the "press"/people that can deliver unbiased opinions. Now we can only wait and see if it comes true, I obviously think that it's going to take longer than planned but doesn't matter. The REAL good news for LINUX is that Vulkan is ready, now the rest is just politics. The next good thing is when Vulkan is going open source (if it ever will), then the community will know what it does therefore improve it in every level they can.

In the end of it all, never get hyped but be respectful for the communication/PR (at least that is how it goes with me).

[sabun]

I just realized, if Vulkan support is only coming attached with the proprietary driver, and this same proprietary driver is going to drop support for older cards (with the exceptions of the 285,380,Nano and Fury), doesn't this mean that all HD7000 series upwards to R 300 series card owners won't have Vulkan access on Linux?

I understand that in some unknown point in the future open source support is supposed to come, but for now, wouldn't that mean that Windows users of those same cards get Vulkan support but Linux users won't? Or is the Vulkan driver separate from the proprietary/mesa driver stacks, and will reach us Linux users on the same hardware regardless of AMDGPU?

[kilobug]

To summarize: either you buy a new card and hope they won't mess it up like with Catalyst, or you're f...ed. Question is, if people want to use current tech and have to buy a new card, why would it be AMD? There is still no proof that this new driver model will be any better that the old one. In its current state it is even worse and performs worse.

Well, that's if you want proprietary drivers. If you want free software drivers (which I do, for many reasons), AMD is a much better choice, and you'll still get support for old hardware for a long while. Even my current pre-GCN card (hd6850) still sees regular improvement in r600g, and while they'll definitely focus more on radeonsi, it'll continue for a while.

[whitecat]

and you'll still get support for old hardware for a long while. Even my current pre-GCN card (hd6850) still sees regular improvement in r600g, and while they'll definitely focus more on radeonsi, it'll continue for a while.

AMD guys are obviously focusing on their radeonsi/amdgpu drivers, that said the older cards (r600g) still lacks functionality and performance to play current AAA Steam games. During the last 6 months, AMD contributed to the r600g with a 23% ratio, the other 77% are by independent developers and other companies.

[Guest]

To summarize: either you buy a new card and hope they won't mess it up like with Catalyst, or you're f...ed. Question is, if people want to use current tech and have to buy a new card, why would it be AMD? There is still no proof that this new driver model will be any better that the old one. In its current state it is even worse and performs worse.

The open source drivers support pre-GCN-1.2 hardware such as R9 290/390 nicely - the only problems being their stability (my machine hangs while playing certain Steam games) and the lack of compute shaders.

Hint: Instead of the highly-insulting f**k word I would suggest the usage of Battlestar Galactica's frak word. Thanks.

[M@GOid]

I see some commenter have difficulty in understanding the choice for a AMD card. Is the OS driver. That's it, nothing more. Once you start to use a well supported card you don't want to go back to proprietary. The desktop experience is so much better, everything works right out of the pendrive. And the games work nice too, if they are OpenGL3.3. In a few months OpenGL4 games will be as good as too (Metro Redux is already playing nice).

If I cared for closed source drivers or every grain of performance from a GPU, I would still have a Windows partition. Even the glorified Nvidia drivers can't do nothing against poor ported games. So at last to me, is opensource or GTFO. If you don't care for opensource, why use Linux after all?

[sabun]

If you don't care for opensource, why use Linux after all?

I use Linux because it grants me the freedom to use either open source or proprietary, or both

[oleid]

Question is, if people want to use current tech and have to buy a new card, why would it be AMD?

Well, Intel has no graphic cards and if you want OSS and/or working legacy support, AMD is the only option. NVIDIA's legacy drivers regularly break on desktop usage and don't get fixed.

[Maxjen]

So, AMDGPU is coming in H1 2016, but the Vulkan support will be there as soon as the specs are out. Does that mean Vulkan support doesn't depend on AMDGPU? And I think I've read that you can use Vulkan with Wayland, so could we have Vulkan on Wayland before AMDGPU?