Who's daring enough to...

[pete910]

Get a R9-290 for use with Linux


Going back from personal experience when I got my 5870(week of release) Loads of people said I was nuts.

But to be frank , I've had only 2 issues under *nix. 1 been that weird firefox black background bug and 2. An LGP port of x3 didn't work with it(side note, Egosoft's port works well)


All the issues that people seem to be having I've never had.

So ... (confession time)

I pre ordered a 290x with the option of cancelling if price/performance isn't to my liking


Anyone thinking of having one too?



Pete.

[DarkFoss]

I already have 2 7970's so probably not.. until I can run FAH on Linux with AMD either through Catalyst or the open source drivers. Linux will have to remain a vbox install. It's been over a years since I last had it installed

[Ruse]

And what the hell would you even do on Linux with it?
Watch glxgears spinning?
Play the 42923 gazillion shitty indie games?
Use it to GPU ... compute ... things... like... uhm... like spinning desktop cuebs.

No seriously.
There is no point.
There are still no proper games on Linux, and the driver is still playing catch-up.

If AMD will get the open-source driver on par, AND there will be games/apps, you can buy the card then.
The price is lower, and the card will work. Win-win.

But currently, it makes no sense.
We are yet to see the yaer of the Linux desktop.
If you really want to buy a GPU for playing Team Fortress 2 on Linux all-day-week-year, get a 6xxx, 7xxx card and that's it.
(It's a boring game, but L4D is worse. Yes I did a fatal mistake and bought both of them back then.)

[Agross]

I have two APUs that barely work. Getting the latest cutting edge from AMD is like asking for trouble. I was an early adopter with a Trinity laptop and it still doesn't work ok in linux and I was an early adopter with my A10-6800K Richland which still only works ok with the beta catalyst driver ... Getting a Rxx is completely out of the question even if I have the money to spend. I will only buy a dGPU from AMD when the drivers will support integration of the APU iGPU and dGPU - which might be never the way things are going ...

The one in a notebook is paired with a discrete radeon GPU and neither the open Radeon driver nor the proprietary Catalyst can use the iGPU + dGPU. I seriously doubt that pairing a Rxx dGPU with my desktop APU will work since it didn't worked with a borrowed 7xxx series card in which case I bought an APU for nothing and I could have opted for an Intel CPU with shit iGPU and a discrete card ( like nVidia ).

Also, Mantle : I heard that NRA is worried that AMD is running out personal firearms to shoot itself in the foot and will cancel all contracts they have and move to Northtrop for heavy weaponry.

Given the sorry state of affairs when it comes to drivers and developer tools, launching YAPGAPI ( Yet Another Proprietary GPU API ) for your 6% market share GCN cards of 50.000.000 Steam users is questionable at best. They bullshited everybody on Rxx product launch by implying that Mantle will be available on P$4/XBONE only to be shoot down ( for obvious corporate politics reasons ) in mid-takeoff. AMD payed EA to optimize Frostbyte for BF4 and C&C while Nvidia is paying Ubisoft and others for AC4, Watchdogs, Batman and so on.
And, now, heavywheigts of the rendering engines world are saying ( obvious ) things like this : http://www.dsogaming.com/interstitia...ficant-change/
AMD is betting the farm ( and 8M$ payment for writing a rendering backend for Mantle in Frostbyte for a company in AMD's position IS betting the farm - for example, how much did AMD spend to bringing Bulldozer optimizations in GCC or LLVM, or in Linux Radeon drivers ) on on BF4, the new C&C and the new NFS ( these are the "AAA titles" coming out on Frostbyte and could possibly benefit from Mantle ).

[pete910]

@Agross

WTH, bit of a rant that came across as to me

"Play the 42923 gazillion shitty indie games?"

In your mind they maybe shitty, If you don't like them don't play them, go back to win and play COD 40 million

Not a huge fan of TF2 I admit, But it seems popular so they got something right with it don't ya think!

L4D2 runs fine on mine I admit. (I do like this "shitty" game sorry for not been a COD fanatic )

SS3 however does get heavy on my 5870 when multi-player in big fire fights, Wargame:EE also fine when just starting but if my settings are to high when all hell breaks lose(lots of units etc) it don't like it.

the X series I play do play fine on it though but I doubt X rebirth will tbh.

NS2 that's a hard one to call, bad optimised engine/code seems to be the problem with that, not sure if tri sli'd titans would cure that just yet.

Don't have an apu so cant comment, don't see the point of one if your planning on gaming on ether platform tbf.

On a side note , ever thought I might want BF4 , I do spend 99% of my time in *nix, but I do duel boot to win for PS2 and BF3 (4 when released) and although the 5870 did manage the beta on medium fairly well to my surprise(1680x1050 rez ) it's not going to do the game justice or be playable at 1080p is it!

What I don't do is buy a new card/system every year or release cycle. I tend to get a flagship/best I can afford at the time and make it last. which the 5870 has managed quite admirably till recently, especially now wanting to go duel monitor.

Am I delusional as to think the 290x will be as good in *nix as it is in win, No!.

Do I think it will it be an improvement to my current card in the games I have in nix and plan on getting, Yes!.

@DarkFoss

Are you referring to folding at home?



Pete

[DarkFoss]

@DarkFoss
Are you referring to folding at home?

Pete

I am indeed

[pete910]

I am indeed

Mine states its ready, but FAH throws this all the time.

01:37:25:WARNING:WU01:FS01:Failed to get assignment from 'assign-GPU.stanford.edu:8080': Empty work server assignment
01:37:25:ERROR:WU01:FS01:Exception: Could not get an assignment

Luxmark tests it fine as well!


Pete.

[lockheed02]

Get a R9-290 for use with Linux


Going back from personal experience when I got my 5870(week of release) Loads of people said I was nuts.

But to be frank , I've had only 2 issues under *nix. 1 been that weird firefox black background bug and 2. An LGP port of x3 didn't work with it(side note, Egosoft's port works well)


All the issues that people seem to be having I've never had.

So ... (confession time)

I pre ordered a 290x with the option of cancelling if price/performance isn't to my liking


Anyone thinking of having one too?



Pete.

I want to replace my GTS250 with a nice new one. But next year. And I admit one of the R9 or R7 is very tempting ... but the 7xxx are also candidates ...

Lockheed

[DarkFoss]

Mine states its ready, but FAH throws this all the time.

01:37:25:WARNING:WU01:FS01:Failed to get assignment from 'assign-GPU.stanford.edu:8080': Empty work server assignment
01:37:25:ERROR:WU01:FS01:Exception: Could not get an assignment

Luxmark tests it fine as well!


Pete.

Yeah thats because AMD GPU's are not supported using Linux too buggy too many crashes.. Only Nvidia GPU's can run FAH natively. AMD will remain blacklisted until either they fix their Linux Catalyst drivers or the open drivers are good enough to support FAH.

[Acidphase]

Linux Steam

I'm not going to get into the ATI vs Nvidia bit here but I own both to be clear.

It's no secrete that Nvidia and their developers have far better linux support than of ATI so no point arguing this people. Simply pointing this out helps no one and normally just turns intoa flame war of company vs company.
With that out of the way more pressure needs to be applied to ATI and I think Valve is doping this well not just with ATI but a multitude of companies. Some won;t even budge though look at the mess that Creative has created with their arrogant additude out of the clear blue with complete refusal to even take a look at supported their new SoundCore3D chip (ca0132). However Linux Steam has been putting out some impressive accomplishments as well as their up coming Steambox.

Overall though anything new AMD/ATI cards have to offer having it in Linux right away is a rarity and even more so having it working in a stable way is even more rare.. However performance wise My 5970 card works pretty damn good in Linux in crossfire mode with most applications/games had very little problems with the exceptions of a few problems like GLSL shaders in games Like Aion which barely work in Linux under wine to begin with.

In the steam client I have great success with both companies so while ATI lacks in their driver support they make up for it in muscle which is a shame really that their developers just don;t go at with a competitive approach even for simple things like crossfire support which needs an overhaul on how it's implemented, configured , and installed.
So rushing out to get the newest and best card and running it on linux don't expect to see huge margins of performance increased especially when they come from new features and or instructions because the applications themselves aren't written to take advantage of them which also holds true in windows. However it would help the Open Source community a great deal to have a reference to work with to help point out the glitches and bugs which will eventually in some near or distant future help the Open Source community.
This is true for Nvidia too however it seems that the linux developers at Nvidia seem to be more involved and perhaps just might be because of personal preferences there for roll out updates much more in tune to what the community is askign for.