GeForce 700 vs. Radeon Rx 200 Series With The Latest Linux Drivers

[Kano]

@bridgman

Do you think it is reasonable to buy a highend AMD gfx card for Linux gaming? The lastest ones are not even supported by OSS drivers and fglrx you always have to patch. For 3.14 you still need

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gevans/catalyst/master/patches/06_cold-fglrx-3.14-current_euid.patch

For a final driver released over 3 weeks after a final kernel thats poor. Are you sure somebody at AMD tests that crap?

[dungeon]

Is there any plan to give fglrx a better 2d performance so we can use composite desktops without performance loss? Again, I give the example of window resizing in ubuntu 14.04 with Unity DE.

There are bugs like this, nearly all drivers are affected .

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/803296

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/1100073

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/1027211

[narciso]

There are bugs like this, nearly all drivers are affected .

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/803296

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/1100073

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...z/+bug/1027211

It's fixed with intel and Nvidia drivers.

[dungeon]

It's fixed with intel and Nvidia drivers.

I can't say that , when i read those bugs/comments no one mentioned touching any drivers, i only see comments that they tried to fix compiz here and there .

So compiz maybe fixed for the intel and nvidia drivers, but those drivers remains unchanged it seems

[narciso]

I can't say that , when i read those bugs/comments no one mentioned touching any drivers, i only see comments that they tried to fix compiz here and there .

So compiz maybe fixed for the intel and nvidia drivers, but those drivers remains unchanged it seems

Yes, you are right with that comment. The fix was on compiz side, but it's strange that only Nvidia and Intel are working right and AMD are not. So I suspect AMD driver is doing things differently.
But at least Catalyst implemented a tear free desktop that works reasonable well, with the downside of increased input lag.

[cutterjohn]

the only time i managed to get AMD working any good was on kernal 3.12 with 9.2.5 mesa and 1.7.2.3 drivers with various compositors and various vsync settings

even the latest oibaf and various kernal / mesa versions give poor vsync support with missplaced frames. It is still impossible to get smooth vsync'd 3D opengl graphics on FOSS or Catalyst in most instances

AMD suck so hard. And there internal management team should be Fired.

ohh and you still have to: force_s3tc_enable=true steam in the terminal to play Source games

even on the latest FOSS drivers which the average user wont have a clue about. What a fucking shambles


Valve have chosen Nvidia and rightly so.

Hah! At least you got it to work. OTOH on my old GT725 w/4850/Ubuntu x64 the installer and everything usually worked unless the install script was borked in some fashion, but the driver itself was of pretty poor quality at best. Video tearing up the wazoo. Bugs, bugs, bugs with more bugs(some nasty ones like hardlocking the GPU in certain rendering scenarios, which I narrowed down to either a hw design defect or a driver defect as it would do it cold start or running hot) added with every new crapalyst release.

Windows was another story, it WOULD install, but they hadn't ATT figured out how to reload the new vid driver after unloading the old one, so I got a black screen and had to guess as to when it might be done as nothing I could ever figure out would force windows to reload it, so blind restarting was required, but at least everything would actually install.

Now moving on to the present in a fit on insanity(must've been as you'll see) I decided to try out current AMD/ATI hw by building an FX-9590(thx microcenter cost 8350), ASROCK Extreme9(not many choices for that insanely overclocked/overvolted CPU) coupled with an R9 280X(wasn't going to spring for a 290 given my past ATI experiences), win 8.1 pro x64(16GB) so builds all fine, old pre-mantle catalyst drivers install fine and imagine my surprise to find that they figured out how to unload the old vid driver AND then LOAD the new one restoring by display(there was MUCH rejoicing, although IIRC nVidia's always managed this feat, yes after the GT725 I pretty well swore off ATI). Now feeling all giddy about how catalyst almost seems to kinda sorta be decentish now I again insanely decided to try out the latest window beta(alpha or gamma would be more accurate IMNHO). Use the ATI driver removal tool to scrub the old driver(yes I know guru3d DDU, but wait), OK reboot try to install 14.4 "beta" ok driver loads, and then promptly craps out trying to install their feeble attempt at GF experience or the control panel.

Start over, scrub, reboot, and again driver installs, control panel appears to install then craps out again. OK ATI xp not there, no big loss, try control panel, oops sorry crash bang.

Start over, vid driver again installs, control panel craps out, but ATI xp installs.

Gave up at that point for the moment, next try will be via Guru3D DDU scrubbing, so I stopped there not even wanting what I FULLY expected to be a worse experience trying to do the same under linux and shoved the box back into it's corner again.

(Main desktop is a 3930k/780 Ti which just works(even the nv "beta"s) win 7 pro x64/Ubuntu 13.10 x64. As mentioned above I swore off ATI after the miserable GT725 experiences, and sadly am still glad of doing so, although the fx-9590 is pretty much a dog or maybe it's more the combo of AMD CPU and ATI GPU w/crappy drivers making everything feel so sluggish. Notebooks are 780m and 765m as well, as I'll re-iterate I swore off ATI and there was no way that I was going to experiment with them in a nb again where it's difficult at best to swap a GPU and might not even be possible if it's soldered(e.g. 765m, 780m's an MXM card).)

All of that said it sounds like surprisingly that the linux catalyst drivers are in better shape than their windows drivers other than overall perf...

[peppercats]

Is there any plan to give fglrx a better 2d performance so we can use composite desktops without performance loss? Again, I give the example of window resizing in ubuntu 14.04 with Unity DE.

I don't experience any poor 2D performance with a 7850 using radeonSI or catalyst on cinnamon or XFCE DE. Try giving another DE a go and see if the problem persists?

edit:
except for radeonsi glamor bug, ofcourse.

[mmstick]

Hah! At least you got it to work. OTOH on my old GT725 w/4850/Ubuntu x64 the installer and everything usually worked unless the install script was borked in some fashion, but the driver itself was of pretty poor quality at best. Video tearing up the wazoo. Bugs, bugs, bugs with more bugs(some nasty ones like hardlocking the GPU in certain rendering scenarios, which I narrowed down to either a hw design defect or a driver defect as it would do it cold start or running hot) added with every new crapalyst release.

Windows was another story, it WOULD install, but they hadn't ATT figured out how to reload the new vid driver after unloading the old one, so I got a black screen and had to guess as to when it might be done as nothing I could ever figure out would force windows to reload it, so blind restarting was required, but at least everything would actually install.

Now moving on to the present in a fit on insanity(must've been as you'll see) I decided to try out current AMD/ATI hw by building an FX-9590(thx microcenter cost 8350), ASROCK Extreme9(not many choices for that insanely overclocked/overvolted CPU) coupled with an R9 280X(wasn't going to spring for a 290 given my past ATI experiences), win 8.1 pro x64(16GB) so builds all fine, old pre-mantle catalyst drivers install fine and imagine my surprise to find that they figured out how to unload the old vid driver AND then LOAD the new one restoring by display(there was MUCH rejoicing, although IIRC nVidia's always managed this feat, yes after the GT725 I pretty well swore off ATI). Now feeling all giddy about how catalyst almost seems to kinda sorta be decentish now I again insanely decided to try out the latest window beta(alpha or gamma would be more accurate IMNHO). Use the ATI driver removal tool to scrub the old driver(yes I know guru3d DDU, but wait), OK reboot try to install 14.4 "beta" ok driver loads, and then promptly craps out trying to install their feeble attempt at GF experience or the control panel.

Start over, scrub, reboot, and again driver installs, control panel appears to install then craps out again. OK ATI xp not there, no big loss, try control panel, oops sorry crash bang.

Start over, vid driver again installs, control panel craps out, but ATI xp installs.

Gave up at that point for the moment, next try will be via Guru3D DDU scrubbing, so I stopped there not even wanting what I FULLY expected to be a worse experience trying to do the same under linux and shoved the box back into it's corner again.

(Main desktop is a 3930k/780 Ti which just works(even the nv "beta"s) win 7 pro x64/Ubuntu 13.10 x64. As mentioned above I swore off ATI after the miserable GT725 experiences, and sadly am still glad of doing so, although the fx-9590 is pretty much a dog or maybe it's more the combo of AMD CPU and ATI GPU w/crappy drivers making everything feel so sluggish. Notebooks are 780m and 765m as well, as I'll re-iterate I swore off ATI and there was no way that I was going to experiment with them in a nb again where it's difficult at best to swap a GPU and might not even be possible if it's soldered(e.g. 765m, 780m's an MXM card).)

All of that said it sounds like surprisingly that the linux catalyst drivers are in better shape than their windows drivers other than overall perf...

There's even more problems with Windows 8.1 and installing Catalyst. I just reformatted Windows 8.1 trying to figure out why the system kept displaying graphical corruption, red screen of death, and random reboots. Apparently if you install Catalyst with express and therefore don't disable installing AMD Accelerated Video Transcoding, all the Catalyst drivers on Windows 8 will fail, apparently even the default driver shipping with Windows 8.1 fails with the same issue, despite being 'WHQL'

[ForkedPython]

Hah! At least you got it to work. OTOH on my old GT725 w/4850/Ubuntu x64 the installer and everything usually worked unless the install script was borked in some fashion, but the driver itself was of pretty poor quality at best. Video tearing up the wazoo. Bugs, bugs, bugs with more bugs(some nasty ones like hardlocking the GPU in certain rendering scenarios, which I narrowed down to either a hw design defect or a driver defect as it would do it cold start or running hot) added with every new crapalyst release.

Windows was another story, it WOULD install, but they hadn't ATT figured out how to reload the new vid driver after unloading the old one, so I got a black screen and had to guess as to when it might be done as nothing I could ever figure out would force windows to reload it, so blind restarting was required, but at least everything would actually install.

Now moving on to the present in a fit on insanity(must've been as you'll see) I decided to try out current AMD/ATI hw by building an FX-9590(thx microcenter cost 8350), ASROCK Extreme9(not many choices for that insanely overclocked/overvolted CPU) coupled with an R9 280X(wasn't going to spring for a 290 given my past ATI experiences), win 8.1 pro x64(16GB) so builds all fine, old pre-mantle catalyst drivers install fine and imagine my surprise to find that they figured out how to unload the old vid driver AND then LOAD the new one restoring by display(there was MUCH rejoicing, although IIRC nVidia's always managed this feat, yes after the GT725 I pretty well swore off ATI). Now feeling all giddy about how catalyst almost seems to kinda sorta be decentish now I again insanely decided to try out the latest window beta(alpha or gamma would be more accurate IMNHO). Use the ATI driver removal tool to scrub the old driver(yes I know guru3d DDU, but wait), OK reboot try to install 14.4 "beta" ok driver loads, and then promptly craps out trying to install their feeble attempt at GF experience or the control panel.

Start over, scrub, reboot, and again driver installs, control panel appears to install then craps out again. OK ATI xp not there, no big loss, try control panel, oops sorry crash bang.

Start over, vid driver again installs, control panel craps out, but ATI xp installs.

Gave up at that point for the moment, next try will be via Guru3D DDU scrubbing, so I stopped there not even wanting what I FULLY expected to be a worse experience trying to do the same under linux and shoved the box back into it's corner again.

(Main desktop is a 3930k/780 Ti which just works(even the nv "beta"s) win 7 pro x64/Ubuntu 13.10 x64. As mentioned above I swore off ATI after the miserable GT725 experiences, and sadly am still glad of doing so, although the fx-9590 is pretty much a dog or maybe it's more the combo of AMD CPU and ATI GPU w/crappy drivers making everything feel so sluggish. Notebooks are 780m and 765m as well, as I'll re-iterate I swore off ATI and there was no way that I was going to experiment with them in a nb again where it's difficult at best to swap a GPU and might not even be possible if it's soldered(e.g. 765m, 780m's an MXM card).)

All of that said it sounds like surprisingly that the linux catalyst drivers are in better shape than their windows drivers other than overall perf...

Thanks for the write up! Wow you bought that FX-9590 .. I feel for your loss

Yup.

It boggles my mind ( I wanted to swear here but Once in a thread is enough) How you can take something so incredible, so precise, so well formed and so expensive to manufacture so gimped by software. When this shining, nay gleaming piece of incredible 32 nanometers with billions of transistors reaches its destination, the driver that talks and uses the features HARD CODED IN CHIP sits there scratching its out of Sync arse and sniffing its fingers not knowing where that smell is coming from..

.. the smell is coming from my PC as there is no fan profile or clocking so everything is 100% or nothing.


Don?t worry with valve on the case AMD after a whole year and after sacking their entire German Linux driver team the year before that are waking up and smelling the burning silicon..

in 2034 we WILL have a working AMD driver

[brad0]

I avoid AMD at all costs, never forgiven them for dropping HD4000 or less support so soon after selling laptops with those chips in. At least with Nvidia you get very long support cycles for their binary blob which does usually work very well.

NVIDIA only provides binary blobs. Completely useless to me. Everyone I know stays away from NVIDIA like the plague and I recommend they do too.