Sapphire Radeon R7 260X: A Great Linux Graphics Card

[djdoo]

Hey Michael now that you have there the A10 7850K APU and the RadeonHD R7 260X how about testing the Dual Graphics feature with Catalyst??
It would be very interesting to see first if it works and if it is, how it performs under Linux!

[Michael]

Hey Michael now that you have there the A10 7850K APU and the RadeonHD R7 260X how about testing the Dual Graphics feature with Catalyst??
It would be very interesting to see first if it works and if it is, how it performs under Linux!

I don't think it works under Linux... or I haven't figured out how to properly enable it, since so far the efforts have been to no avail.

[djdoo]

I don't think it works under Linux... or I haven't figured out how to properly enable it, since so far the efforts have been to no avail.

I think it is more or less like what used to be called Hybrid Crossfire so the amdconfig from a terminal should do the work like it does with classic Crossfire setups?? I used to have Hybrid Crossfire with Catalyst with an integrated Radeon HD 4250 and a discrete Radeon HD 3470 back then. Just guessing...

[schmidtbag]

I don't think it works under Linux... or I haven't figured out how to properly enable it, since so far the efforts have been to no avail.

Aside from djdoo's comment, another thing to keep in mind is most full-screen graphical tasks in linux don't use crossfire. I tried about 10 different games on my crossfire setup and none of them worked. The only thing that worked was the Heaven benchmark.

[Kivada]

You generally want the quietest, coolest, most energy efficient hardware for HTPCs, which also has just enough power to display accelerated video.

Why would I want that? That'd be fine if you where never going to play a game. But if you game you get decently fast hardware and really good aftermarket cooling and it ends up being as quiet or even more quiet then your rinky dink hardware with th stock cooler.

So what you end up with a slightly larger HTPC case, it's not much bigger then my surround sound amp. If you are going through the trouble of building an HTPC you may as well build an actual theater in your living room. Nothing better then waking up the neighbors when watching something like Machete Kills or playing Metro: Last Light.

[GreatEmerald]

Why would I want that? That'd be fine if you where never going to play a game. But if you game you get decently fast hardware and really good aftermarket cooling and it ends up being as quiet or even more quiet then your rinky dink hardware with th stock cooler.

So what you end up with a slightly larger HTPC case, it's not much bigger then my surround sound amp. If you are going through the trouble of building an HTPC you may as well build an actual theater in your living room. Nothing better then waking up the neighbors when watching something like Machete Kills or playing Metro: Last Light.

I don't game on HTPCs. There are desktops for that purpose. Desktops with keyboards and mice.
You really can't get any more quiet than passive cooling. And more powerful hardware means higher energy draw, which means increased electricity bills.

[Kivada]

I don't game on HTPCs. There are desktops for that purpose. Desktops with keyboards and mice.
You really can't get any more quiet than passive cooling. And more powerful hardware means higher energy draw, which means increased electricity bills.

You can passively cool midrange GPUs. In fact I'veen top of the line GPUs run fanless, the 8800GTX with a Thermalright HR-03GT and an HR-11 backplate cooler managed to stay just under max operating temperatures under load.

You can passively cool lower midrange CPUs as well, especially if you under volt them.

You can get PSUs like the Seasonic X series that run fanless unless they get too hot.

A 120mm-250mm 800RPM @ 12v case fan is inaudible.

The power draw under video playback is negligible.

Don't limit yourself artificially, the HTPC can be allot more if you put some effort into it.

KB/M suck for allot of games, hence all of the Linux games on Steam that have controller support. Also I have a "TV tray" for a bluetooth KB and Mouse for the few games that don't map well to a controller.

In the battle between my recliner couch or Lay-Z-Boy and my desk chair my ass always chooses the recliner couch or Lay-Z-Boy.

[baconite]

Driver issue

Phoronix: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X: A Great Linux Graphics Card

For those in the market for an affordable mid-range graphics card that will run just fine on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions while having the choice between the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver and the binary but high-performance Catalyst driver, meet the Sapphire Radeon R7 260X. Our Linux hardware review for today is looking at the Sapphire 100366L Radeon R7 260X 2GB graphics card.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19808

Hi, I purchased this card soley based on this review (i needed a card fast). The card works great under Windows, but for any Linux installation, the sound comes out scratchy, low, and echoes.

Weirdly, I was able to run Unigine Heaven video test perfectly fine for video, but the audio was still the same scratchy sound.

I've used both the open sourced drivers and ATI's drivers, with same results.

I really know nothing of Linux and how to troubleshoot.

I really like Linux Mint, so I stuck with that, but I had to set modeset = 0 when booting off the Live ISO just so I can install the OS.

I also had to turn off the screen saver, because every time it went to screen saver, it froze the machine. Completely froze it. I could not open a terminal or do any of those keystroke commands when the GUI is frozen. Nor could I telnet into the box when it's frozen (i am able to from another machine when I'm actively logged in)

Could anybody help?

Thanks,

Randy

[ttfisker]

Phoronix: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X: A Great Linux Graphics Card

For those in the market for an affordable mid-range graphics card that will run just fine on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions while having the choice between the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver and the binary but high-performance Catalyst driver, meet the Sapphire Radeon R7 260X. Our Linux hardware review for today is looking at the Sapphire 100366L Radeon R7 260X 2GB graphics card.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19808

This is NOT TRUE. I bought this graphics card and although I did make it work with ATI drivers in Linux Mint 16 it doesn't work on any other Linux distro I tried; OpenSuse, Ubuntu 12,14 and Fedora. I tried all that with installing ATI drivers (fglrx) from their website but they made a black screen. I did make it work with Linux Mint but it was a big job. Method in Linux:
1. Download the proper LInux driver from AMD website
Terminal:
2. sudo Xorg -configure
3. cd ~\Downloads folder or wherever the driver folder is extracted to
4. sudo sh ./amd-driver'
5. In Linux Mint 16 an installation wizard appears but not in Ubuntu 14.04
6. In Linux Mint 16 once the FGLRX drivers are installed I had some bezels on the screen. In order to temporarily remove them, go to amd catalyst center and resize one monitor at a time to the lowest resolution and then back up to the highest to remove the bezels. For a permanent full-screen, no bezel; you have to change some files. I think in the /etc folder. Google it.

For Fglrx on anything else than Linux Mint 16 that I tried it didn?'t install and I had to reinstall Linux after it hang on bootload.
So annoyed I trusted Phoronix and bought this card. Should have got a NVidia instead or one of the supported ATI's from Ubuntu hardware list!

[Panix]

It should work in Ubuntu 14.04, too, no? I've had problems with the 'black screen' problem when installing Nvidia drivers, too. Except, that is usually due to using a newer driver than one already in the repo - i.e. a 'more-up-to-date' video driver. Or, alternatively, using a driver that is directly from the Nvidia site - in other words, not pre-packaged by the distro devs. I think that is how you describe it? If not, someone can correct me????

Anyway, did you post to the Ubuntu forums or go to one of the Ubuntu IRC support channels? Maybe somebody there has had the same issue or has gone through the same install process with Catalyst/fgrlx? I found these urls/links so maybe they might help somewhat???:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2219517

http://wyldeplayground.net/ubuntu-cant-install-amd-radeon-r7-260x-graphics-driver-on-13-10/

http://linuxg.net/tag/amd-catalyst/

Steps from above link:

http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-the-amd-catalyst-14-6-beta-drivers-on-ubuntu-14-04-and-derivative-systems/

AMD developer support forum sections including Linux topics:

http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=488&FTVAR_SORT=replies&FTVAR_SORTORDER=asc

The askubuntu site is said to be good for support answers or ideas?:

http://askubuntu.com/

http://askubuntu.com/search?q=R7+260X