Open-Source Radeon Performance Boosted By Linux 3.16

[stqn]

I don't really understand those who stick with nvidia. AMD is actually open-source friendly, and hires OSS devs. Nvidia, on the other hand, has lots of proprietary technology : g-sync, 3D vision, physx, only to name a few. While freesync, tressfx, and mantle are/will be open sourced.
Running Arch rolling, with open source drivers too. Radeon cards are by far the best performing IMO (excepted a few ones).

I had been looking at AMD cards and GPU benchmarks with the open source drivers for months if not years and didn?t want to hear about nvidia until I finally got tired of it and bought a GTX 660 early this year in order to be able to play Metro: Last Light, because Radeon cards with the OS driver couldn?t do the job (not at a reasonable price and power consumption level, anyway).

This was a fantastic relief for me, after having used an Intel HD Graphics (1st gen) GPU for 3 years. Games were suddenly working! And I can even make them look good! So I?m not regretting anything.

However 3 or so years from now, when comes the time to buy another card, I?ll certainly look at what?s available with Free drivers first. In fact I?m building a computer for my parents at the moment that will use an AMD APU and I?m hoping everything will be fine with the Free driver!

[scorp]

I had been looking at AMD cards and GPU benchmarks with the open source drivers for months if not years and didn?t want to hear about nvidia until I finally got tired of it and bought a GTX 660 early this year in order to be able to play Metro: Last Light, because Radeon cards with the OS driver couldn?t do the job (not at a reasonable price and power consumption level, anyway).

This was a fantastic relief for me, after having used an Intel HD Graphics (1st gen) GPU for 3 years. Games were suddenly working! And I can even make them look good! So I?m not regretting anything.

However 3 or so years from now, when comes the time to buy another card, I?ll certainly look at what?s available with Free drivers first. In fact I?m building a computer for my parents at the moment that will use an AMD APU and I?m hoping everything will be fine with the Free driver!

BTW, Metro: Last light works fine here on RadeonSI with HD7580, just played this all the last weekend

[cataphract]

You running 3.15-rc5 prerelase kernel there... 40 days old kernel . Log says it is initialized, so to me that means it work



I mean why not try today stable release like 3.15.1 or current developing prerelase 3.16-rc2?

It prints that message, but then the computer hangs. I tried with 3.15 when it hit the main arch repository and 2 weeks ago with drm-next. I think the next thing I'll try is Windows to rule out some hardware problem; I still have some Windows 7 licenses from the time I was in university (problem is windows can't normally be installed on usb, so it's a lot of work to repartion, resize, etc.). Catalyst also hangs in most games (though not, for instance, Oil Rush) -- the computer stops partially stops responding; I can still log via ssh but I can't kill the game's process or shutdown the machine, though I don't find it strange since we're talking about catalyst.

[kaprikawn]

It's probably not the best time to switch to RadeonSI (at least if you don't wont to participate on bugfixing). I have the HD7850 on Arch and here RadeonSI is suffering on the LLVM register allocation bug heavily. Currently, I can't run a lot of games, not native nor through wine.

Read this

Ouch, thanks for the heads up. I'll avoid for now.

[Kivada]

I just found out this weekend that my CPU fan has not been spinning for a long time, and I've effectively been running a Haswell i5 for months with passive cooling!

This is why you should always use oversized aftermarket air cooling and keep a temperature monitor running that posts an alert when you hit a thermal threshold. Just can't trust fans.

[dungeon]

It prints that message, but then the computer hangs. I tried with 3.15 when it hit the main arch repository and 2 weeks ago with drm-next. I think the next thing I'll try is Windows to rule out some hardware problem; I still have some Windows 7 licenses from the time I was in university (problem is windows can't normally be installed on usb, so it's a lot of work to repartion, resize, etc.). Catalyst also hangs in most games (though not, for instance, Oil Rush) -- the computer stops partially stops responding; I can still log via ssh but I can't kill the game's process or shutdown the machine, though I don't find it strange since we're talking about catalyst.

Seems like that is your bug:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76490

I can suggest you to try 3.16-rc2 and if it still does not work inform devs in that bug that it is still an issue .

But can be some hardware issue who knows, Michael tested that card in this article and does not mention any issues of that kind .

[kaprikawn]

This is why you should always use oversized aftermarket air cooling and keep a temperature monitor running that posts an alert when you hit a thermal threshold. Just can't trust fans.

Stock coolers have been fine for me up until now. But a while back my fan was making a very loud sound as it spun, so I ordered a Zalman cooler. By the time it arrived the loud noise had disappeared so I never bothered installing it (little did I know that the reason the sound disappeared was because it crapped out).

Then, this weekend, I started playing Watch_Dogs, and was getting 10-20 fps on low settings on a 770 GTX. So I googled 'Diagnose poor gaming performance' or something like that. A forum post I came across said about the CPU fan not spinning, but I didn't take it seriously because I assumed that if the fan didn't spin then it would overheat and cut out, which is what happened years ago when I was running an Athlon. But I installed the monitoring software just to be sure, and to see if there was anything else it could tell me. And sure enough, my CPU temp was at 90 degrees on a light load. I checked my fan and it was static.

The Zalman was a complete PITA to install, but I got it in eventually and now I'm getting 35 degrees under light load. I haven't tested my game again yet, but I'm expecting it to have sorted my issues.

Lesson learned.

[blackiwid]

However 3 or so years from now, when comes the time to buy another card, I’ll certainly look at what’s available with Free drivers first. In fact I’m building a computer for my parents at the moment that will use an AMD APU and I’m hoping everything will be fine with the Free driver!

I dont really get the point of using linux to play proprietary AAA games right now? And even less why people want for that task free drivers.
If you play proprietary games your system is unfree anyway so why bother using a kind of free driver?

The only except I would make to that setup would be if you use the linux to make a gpu passthrough through kvm or something. But then u dont use a free driver for the windows graphics too so it doesnt matter if its nvidia or amd.

My Setup is following have a windows pc for gaming and a kabini system for working/browsing/consuming media.

I have more then one monitor anyway have on a shortcut a cmd that disables in linux one monitor for linux and restarting synergy. Then or before doesnt matter I start the windows pc thats sleeping most of the time, and I can drive with the mouse to it and can use it. Done, the sound works from a usb-dac connected to the linux pc which has chinch input from the windows pc so I have eben sound from both machines at the same time without switching input on my receiver.

I think even for playing proprietary games buying a ps4, they now try to support the f2p games so it would be maybe ok price ratio if you dont buy games or only few.

Just keep it seperate and all is good, I just dont see the advantage of a proprietary gaming linux vs a proprietary gaming windows, and if you choose this route just use nvidia hardware and good.

[blackiwid]

The only argument for free drivers is updateabiltiy but what does that bring on a pure gaming machine? And that maybe the proprietary games have only user privileges so they cant as easily root-kit your system, but especialy if you would use steamos which every system is exactly the same the security holes would be easy and can be used to install from a vendors game or from valves steam itself a rootkit.

And is that totaly cracy idea, google sony rootkit and you you see no, its totaly reasonable to think that its not to unlikly to happen.

[Dukenukemx]

What will you do with your 6870? I have been considering replacing my aging 4850 with a 6870 for a long time, by now

I just got my 6850 and can't see any reason to upgrade anytime soon. Probably when they finally make DX12 graphic cards.

I don't really understand those who stick with nvidia. AMD is actually open-source friendly, and hires OSS devs. Nvidia, on the other hand, has lots of proprietary technology : g-sync, 3D vision, physx, only to name a few. While freesync, tressfx, and mantle are/will be open sourced.
Running Arch rolling, with open source drivers too. Radeon cards are by far the best performing IMO (excepted a few ones).

If I buy Nvidia I won't give two flips about Gsync/Physx/ or whatever nonsense they have going on. It's purely because their drivers work. I primarily use Windows for gaming at the moment, but I have a laptop with a 9600M from Nvidia and it works great in Linux. I also have another laptop with AMD graphics and while it works great with open source drivers, it isn't nearly as good as Nvidia. I won't even use Catalyst with AMD graphics, cause my personal experience has shown it to be worse then open source.