AMD Radeon R9 290 On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Radeon R9 290 On Linux

AMD unveiled the Radeon R9 290 graphics card at the beginning of November as one step down from the new flagship Radeon R9 290X graphics card. Numerous Windows reviews praised the graphics card for its great performance, but what wasn't clear at the time was how the Linux performance and compatibility was for this new $399 USD graphics card. AMD hadn't offered any review samples to Phoronix for conducting any Linux-based testing and benchmarking, but it's more clear now why that didn't happen: the Linux performance isn't stellar. I bought an XFX Radeon R9 290 and now there's many Linux benchmarks coming out of this graphics card that's riddled by what might be driver issues. I already regret having purchased the AMD Radeon R9 290 for use on Linux; the graphics card is hot, power hungry, noisy, and the OpenGL results aren't too good.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19349

[AJSB]

If i read correctly what AMD said about these cards....


The 290 cards series DON'T run hot.

They were specially designed to run at 95?C.

If for some reason , a 3rd party cooling solution for example tries to make it run cooler, the driver/card pushes performance till card reaches again that temperatures....OTOH, if a cooling solution is inefficient and card wants to push over 95?C, performance of card is cut.

[Guest]

Why does the 7850 in-particular seem to fall behind other cards in a few tests?



That's probably the most severe benchmark, but there's others where it also ranks lower than expected.

[kokoko3k]

Why does the 7850 in-particular seem to fall behind other cards in a few tests?

That's probably the most severe benchmark, but there's others where it also ranks lower than expected.

Gpu test usually gives weird results, i don't trust it too much...

[mum1989]

If i read correctly what AMD said about these cards....


The 290 cards series DON'T run hot.

They were specially designed to run at 94?C.

If for some reason , a 3rd party cooling solution for example tries to make it run cooler, the driver/card pushes performance till card reaches again that temperatures....OTOH, if a cooling solution is inefficient and card wants to push over 95?C, performance of card is cut.

+1
Old NVIDIA GTX480 run hotter, near 96?C

But I think catalyst driver is bad.

For theses card, we need a Metro last light bench !

[Michael]

For theses card, we need a Metro last light bench !

The benchmarking support found on the Windows version of Metro isn't in the Linux version, as I've stated many times already.

[chithanh]

the Linux performance isn't stellar. I bought an XFX Radeon R9 290 and now there's many Linux benchmarks coming out of this graphics card that's riddled by what might be driver issues.

It's probably due to the Catalyst 13.11 beta 6 driver for Linux which is quite behind the Windows version 13.11 beta 9.2. AMD seems to release their beta drivers for Windows much more frequently than for Linux.

[pete910]

May I ask why you don't use the scores from valley/heaven ect. and use FPS ?

You may have covered this before and I missed it. I presume its the avg FPS of the benchmarks that are used in your results?


Pete.

[blackout23]

It would be great to have Windows 7 benchmarks overlayed over the Linux bars, so people can easily see how much they gain/lose by using the hardware on Linux. I can imagine that on the NVIDIA side there won't be much of a gap, if at all. The windows benchmark would indicate what the potential of the card really is.

[schmidtbag]

If i read correctly what AMD said about these cards....


The 290 cards series DON'T run hot.

AMD never said that wasn't hot, they said that temperature was safe. 95C is extremely hot for electronics, but depending on how they're made, some electronics can handle that temperature better than others. However, it almost seemed as though Michael wasn't expecting these temperatures, which I thought was a little weird.

While I appreciate him buying the GPU for testing purposes, I'm honestly not at all surprised about the results. It wouldn't surprise me if AMD devs just simply turned on the computer with this GPU to see if it'd at least work with Unity and then never touched it again. I'd say the market this GPU appeals to is smaller than the linux PC community, and for those who do own this card while also running linux likely dual boot with Windows. So, it's no surprise why this card feels pretty neglected.

Knowing AMD, their workstation GPUs are almost always identical to their gaming GPUs but with a different BIOS. Whatever the FirePro version of the R9 290 is, I'm installing that card's BIOS to this GPU would offer better performance, considering AMD seems to put a little more attention to linux workstation graphics.