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Radeon On Linux 3.8: Minor For Now, New Code Coming

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  • #11
    Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
    Except that OSS drivers, even at this point, are better than the closed blob in some regards. Consider their rock-solid stability, perfect integration with the system, light weight and standards compliance. There are plenty of people for whom these are more important than raw power.
    Yes, and that is why I use them, even though I consider myself to very much be a gamer. The performance and power management could be improved, but other than that I find it to be a far superior experience to any proprietary blob driver (the PM is not even that much of a problem for me when using the power profiles). The maintenance burden is just that much lower. On a laptop I am perfectly fine and may even prefer an Intel GPU but on the desktop I still want the performance benefits of a dedicated chip, which can even be felt using the FOSS drivers. I am happy with my AMD card and I am continually grateful for the work that is still going in to better support it.

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    • #12
      The only thing I'd like is better power management, my card is running pretty hot (but I never compared with the proprietary drivers, so there might be not much left to do).

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      • #13
        Originally posted by manmath View Post
        Thanks for the devs who are working really hard to make something good. But, my comment was not mean for them, it's for AMD. It does put efforts on OSS but the result is so minismal that it can be ignored. For example what's the use of open source drivers for certain chips if they are ~40% feature complete and ~20% performing after 3 years of release of those particular devices. Does it really make any sense (on the part of AMD, not the devs)?

        AMD, please compare the case with Intel and nVidia. But i doubt if you really care the meagre linux/unix userbase.
        What does AMD owe you and the rest of the FOSS Community? Not a damn thing. Intel has a garbage GPU solution, but hey! It's open source. Intel has tens of billions to toss at projects while AMD is working getting back in the black [which they will this upcoming 3rd quarter] yet you whine about AMD not opening up their proprietary stack for Intel to covet?

        Grow up. Businesses have to make money.

        Wake me when Linux creates a stable ABI and has desktop penetration above a pimple. All the server penetration is being driven by AMD, Intel, IBM, Oracle whose data clients could careless about advanced Audio and Video performance for gaming.

        If AMD hits its stride like they are positioning for 2013 you'll see a much improved Catalyst and FOSS will get a lot of freebie coding, but keep whining they don't pull their weight. I'm sure they're more interested in Valve as those guys making their games scream on Windows, OS X and Linux for the Catalyst driver means more GPGPU sales and more jobs for AMD to have a future against Intel.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by Marc Driftmeyer View Post
          Wake me when Linux creates a stable ABI and has desktop penetration above a pimple.
          Absolutely right! Agree 100%. But a stable abi from Linux and a sizeable desktop penetration is just a pipe dream. Intel knows it yet releases better drivers. Users expect something similar from AMD. Most (include me) are aware of AMD's opensource efforts. No denying. But the reality is it is not substantial yet to make OSS AMD drivers a compelling reason. Well, I'll keep waiting for stable/better drivers from AMD (doing so for last couple of years)!

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          • #15
            Originally posted by pankkake View Post
            The only thing I'd like is better power management, my card is running pretty hot (but I never compared with the proprietary drivers, so there might be not much left to do).
            You can try smth like that with opensource AMD drivers:
            echo profile > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
            echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

            This will downclock 1st GPU to lowest frequency it can do. It's enough for desktop effects, etc. But 3D games will suffer a lot.3
            If you have more than 1 GPU, replace card0 with desired target.

            To get full clocks again, you can use
            echo high > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
            This forces GPU to run at full speed. Desirable for 3D games, etc.

            There is also dynpm method instead of profile (echo dynpm > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method) which meant to switch frequencies automatically, based on load. But it's seriously borked at the moment. For me it only toggles to medium power state (which is 4 times higher freq than low so a lot of heat for nothing) and can cause screen to blink a bit on reclocking. Also GPU load detection isn't very great and sometimes GPU does not switches to highest clock even under serious load. Hence less FPS in games, etc. In fact I fail to understand why AMD can't spend some time reworking this code. It's probably not the hardest part but one of most annoying issues so far.
            Last edited by 0xBADCODE; 09 December 2012, 12:33 PM.

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            • #16
              Actually I'm already using the first trick, it works - I'm losing 1 or 2 degrees.
              I still think it's quite hot.

              dynpm didn't work for me either.

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              • #17
                There is a nice Gnome Shell extension to make switching power profiles easier:

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by manmath View Post
                  Absolutely right! Agree 100%. But a stable abi from Linux and a sizeable desktop penetration is just a pipe dream. Intel knows it yet releases better drivers.
                  Yes and I will maybe if they have a cheap Intel prozessor with a vaapi enabled chipset availible when I buy a new computer switch to them from nearly only amd systems in my live... because they have this feature...

                  BUT, whats that shit about stable abi, what does that have to do with anything, Intel and AMD have zero problems with a always improving abi with their free drivers only this proprietary instable garbage drivers seems to need them... because the developermodell is weak so they are slower to react...


                  So maybe you are right, maybe most users dont care if a driver is free or not... but they care if their driver always break... so it will not happen if you flamewar 1000 forums around the clock for 1000 years the linux abi will stay "unstable" if you will call it that way... so because of that, users indirectly will need free drivers... so yes users care if not because they understand or not if they get good and therefor free drivers.

                  I would not even care if nvidia card users would see on the linux-boot screen a message you bought a hardware from a company that wants to enslave you, linux doesnt support such modells so buy another card or you cant use linux.


                  UPDATE:

                  Or at least a kind of message that you have to press enter at the first boot or so... or in the installation, that says something like you will not have a good user experince because nvidia does not support free drivers... so I dont have to hear again somewhere linux is so bad because linux has bad drivers. No linux-beginner cares about fps in a shooter they have windows for gaming anyway at least till now and in the mid future maybe in long-term that changes with steam... but till now they have problems with the unstable nvidia-rootkit...
                  Last edited by blackiwid; 09 December 2012, 06:51 PM.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by Deathsimple View Post
                    Yes, that's exactly what it means. But we still need to add the matching support on the alsa side.
                    That's awesome! I can't wait for HD audio support. Any idea where someone could watch for progress on this front?

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                    • #20
                      AMD starts pushing stuff for the "real" 8000 series.




                      For now it's mainly the PCI IDs for the OLAND family, but it seems they are preparing for more.

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