Radeon Linux Benchmarks: Catalyst 15.3 Beta vs. Linux 4.0 + Mesa 10.6-devel

[humbug]

the bottleneck doesn't happen in any open source game so it's likely due to shitty ports.
nvidia proprietary driver is heavily optimized to deal with shitty opengl practices, AMD not so much.

Really don't think shitty openGL practices can account for these results

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=metro-redux-22gpus&num=5

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=metro-redux-22gpus&num=3

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=civ_beyondearth_linux&num=3

And if they were the main reason I would have expected AMD to be vocal about something which is damaging their reputation.
Also Civ BE is a part of AMD's gaming evolved program and the devs are supposed to work closely with AMD to optimize performance.

I was just asking brigman if there has been any progress in identifying why we see this trend of hitting a frame rate wall and not scaling in newer openGL 4 games.

[dungeon]

Also Civ BE is a part of AMD's gaming evolved program and the devs are supposed to work closely with AMD to optimize performance.

AFAIK AMD Gaming Evolved is Windows only program so not crossplatform and logo is removed from Civ BE port for Linux . Remember that Civ BE is just a port - it does not came from game developers, but from porters.

[humbug]

AFAIK AMD Gaming Evolved is Windows only program so not crossplatform and logo is removed from Civ BE port for Linux . Remember that Civ BE is just a port - it does not came from game developers, but from porters.

Ok. Thanks.

Anyway hope Bridgman can enlighten us re my query.

[asdfblah]

Good to hear as an R9 290 user.

Has there been any progress in identifying/eliminating the bottleneck which causes framerates to hit a wall at a very low frame rate in newer openGL 4 games such as Metro Redux, witcher 2, Civilization BE etc?
From the outside looks like a CPU bottleneck where the GPU is not drawing significant power, it's not working hard to produce more frames. I have tested this in my system too and my GPU temperature stays very cool under gaming loads in Linux compared to windows.

I'll ask for the most basic and obvious thing: did you try

export vblank_mode=0

?

[humbug]

I'll ask for the most basic and obvious thing: did you try

export vblank_mode=0

?

It's not a vsync problem. Check the links I posted in my previous post for confirmation via Michael's benchmarks.

Also look at the power consumption figures below

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=metro-redux-22gpus&num=4

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=civ_beyondearth_linux&num=4

Notice that the hawai GPU system is drawing very little power despite it's TDP. On windows it would draw about as much as the 780ti. This is a sure sign (along with the cooler temps) that the GPU utilization is low, it's not working hard. Due to some other bottleneck in driver/CPU I don't know.

[molecule-eye]

I was surprised how much of a difference there is. It used to be the open source was nearly as fast as Catalyst, to the point where installing Catalyst was pointless. Now I'm looking at my machines wondering if I should install Catalyst 15.3 Beta. Either there's a huge regression in the drivers or AMD's Catalyst 15.3 Beta is getting serious. Even the 6870 which is usually faster with open source seems to fall apart here.

But beware if you play Source engine games like Dota 2. I installed the Catalyst omega driver and performance was far WORSE than the open source driver on my 6870. Also compositing performance is terrible in KDE (smooth scrolling in FF is choppier compared to open source).

[curaga]

4. Optimizing the driver for frame rates much over 100 Hz is mostly useful for benchmark competitions and the open source folks don't have to care about them. Catalyst is a different story because companies still make buying decisions based on one card running 275 FPS and another running 297 FPS, even though they're both being used with a 60 Hz display.

With tomorrow's workload, that 8% difference can be the crucial separation between 55 and 60 fps.

[deft666]

please tell me , and how to install in ubuntu 14.04.02 x64 Catalyst 15.3 Beta?

[bridgman]

With tomorrow's workload, that 8% difference can be the crucial separation between 55 and 60 fps.

Generally that's not the case. Performance tuning in some areas of the driver (eg shader compiler & memory mgmt) affect workload-driven frame rates while other areas of the driver limit the ability to run very high frame rates. It's not that simple but you also can't assume that performance deltas at high FPS will translate into a similar delta at higher res or higher workload.

Work is still ongoing in the workload-dependent areas of the driver, I'm just saying that I doubt much time goes into looking at why we only run 250 FPS instead of 300.

[Detructor]

Something is wrong with that benchmark. I'm on Ubuntu 15.04 64bit with a Radeon HD 5870 and the radeon/mesa driver is waaaaay faster than the propiertary fglrx fuckup. It starts with 2D performance (gnome shell lags like hell on fglrx), goes over 'no alt-tab' in fglrx and ends in ~20 to 30 fps with fglrx in CS:GO. With mesa I got smooth framerate.

Either there is something happening in the 4.0 kernel I'm not aware of, or there is something seriously wrong with that benchmark.