15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison

[chrisb]

I would be very interested in seeing these tests redone on Haswell when it gets released next month... I don't think Phoronix has done any direct comparisons of discrete cards vs Intel since the Open-Source Linux Graphics Card Showdown a year ago (?) and I'm sure there's been a lot of driver changes since then.

[Vim_User]

I understand what your point is, just your point is stupid, if you wanted to play under linux games and you dont care about freedom at all, why would you buy a amd card. So because you had a windows and then switched to linux for gaming.

I switched to Linux in 2008. If you can use a web search engine (or just look it up on Wikipedia) you will find out that that was long before the release of the HD6870 I currently own.
Your point is invalid.

So switching for linux for gaming is also retarded. So your points are just stupid. Your desitions are stupid, so dont blame amd for your stupidness.

Non sequitur. Also, at which point did I say that I switched to Linux for gaming? I just want to have the same driver quality that I can have on Windows.
So again, your point is invalid. By the way, before calling other people stupid, learn how to use a spellchecker.

Who migrates from windows to linux, when he dont cares about freedom to play games? ???????

This sentence doesn't make sense at all.

How can somebody so stupid. I mean you could migrate to linux, if you dont care tooo much about games, and its good enough.

I must conclude that for you it is impossible to work with a system and play games on it, it seems to be mutually exclusive for you. But you forget one thing. May be I am (just the possibility, I am not) a 3D designer. What would I think of the low quality of AMD drivers?

Btw, if you dont pay the money for windows lisenses you can invest that money for a bigger grafic card.

So because AMD makes shitty drivers I should even give them more money instead of playing my games on Windows in better quality? Now, that would be plain stupid.

I understand that you want say "fuck you" to amd because you want more fps with the drivers, but thats just the stupidest reason to say fuck you to a company.

And here we see again that you indeed didn't get the point. I am not complaining because of a few FPS. I am complaining because AMD thinks that Linux users don't deserve a driver that has the same quality as on Windows. If a company giving you low quality because they just don't care that is a very good reason to say: Fuck You!

Lets say it would be the other way around, lets say amd would have extreme fast linux drivers but very slow windows drivers.

People would either be totaly stupid and buy it, and dont know about the difference, or they would look a review, BEFORE they buy the hardware, and then dont buy it.

Again, black and white thinking. Just imagine that we would have the same quality of drivers on both OSes. None of them has to be inferior.

But everybody who would buy then amd hardware to play in windows games, and would bitch about the speed of the cards afterwards, when amd would not have advertised (this card has the same speed than the nvidia card for the same price) or something like that.

I am not complaining that my card isn't as fast as a similar Nvidia card. Well, at least that is not my main point. I am complaining that an AMD card that is more than twice as fast than a years old Nvidia card gets blown out of the water by that old card because of shitty drivers.n Again, I do not complain about the hardware, you seem to have serious difficulties to get that.

You cant magicly assume that each linux drivers must have the same speed than the windows driver?

There is no magic involved. I do not expect that a Windows driver is exactly as fast as a Linux driver, I am also not compalining about every driver, but here we do talk about serious differences in performance on AMD cards, which can only be explained by low quality drivers, something that can be solved if AMD would care. But why should they if no one complains, if you just eat what you get, regardless of the quality.

Btw, even if you dont compare the intel driver to the faster amd hardware, the intel driver is even slower than the intel windows driver.

So again you have to say fuck you intel too.

I would. But this article is not at all about Intel, so complaining here about Intel is just plain stupid.

BTW, who hinders you to buy a nvidia card, and sell your amd card in ebay or something like that?

Why? I bought AMD, so I have the right to complain about the product quality if it is poor. You can be sure that I will not buy AMD again as long as the driver situation is like it is now. And if you look into Linux forums or the Steam forum you will see that I am not the only one who has made that decision.

I could see somebody saying to amd fuck you because of powermanagement and video encoding, but the last is now gone and the first thing is also a update coming.

I have said fuck you AMD for lack of power management. It makes many laptops unusable with the free drivers, especially those with older cards, like the HD3200 or HD4200. Funnily, for those people the new support for video decoding is still not existent.

But "fuck you" for not enough fps is so spupid.

OK, may be I should phrase it so that even you understand it: I no complain FPS. I no complain hardware. I complain driver quality. Uggh.

Whats then next, do you also say fuck you to amd when the freebsd drivers are not fast enough, or hurd drivers? You cant just except same level of fps for every os on the planet, and so not for this 2% desktop os Linux.

Yes, I can. The hardware is the same. The driver quality differs. The underlying OS can not be at fault, just because the Nvidia drivers prove that the hardware can perform on the same level on different OSes. Not so hard to understand with a little bit of logic, I would think.

Because thats true, thats one reason more to except instead of that from companies to give out the specs, so 3rd party people write the stuff thats needed.

Nvidia proves it wrong, so again, your point is invalid.

And it seems better free drivers are not needed that fast for amd hardware, it seems there are more 3rd party guys out there who develop nouvou in their free time then radeon drivers, but thats not amds fault they basicly hire everybody that makes some bigger improvements to the driver. Thats basicly more than we could hope for, but on the other side, they dont release ALL specs at the same time. (even now most of them shoudl be released).

I am talking about the proprietary drivers. Releasing specs that free drivers can be developed does not magically improve the proprietary drivers.

And here NVIDIA fails, to deliver anything, you can say I dont care to much about your freedom, but even you must agree that if nvidia would release that driver always opensource it would have at least slightly advantages.

Again, this is not about releasing specs, this is about AMD's poor proprietary drivers.

But forget it makes no sense to talk to some guy who switched to linux to play games to talk about freedom.

I administer Linux servers, develop in house solutions using self created single purpose Linux systems and use Linux at home exclusively on all my machines, except my workstation, which also is my gaming system. It also has a Windows install for exactly that purpose, gaming. So if you think that I switched to Linux to play games you couldn't be more wrong. Talking about freedom has nothing to do with that and doesn't make sense in the context of this sentence.

Especialy with a changable card I dont get why you would fuck amd,

Because I gave them my money, so I have the right to complain about the product quality.

if you would have a notebook with a fusion or igp card in it I could understand that argument, that you dont want to buy another notebook just because of the gpu

Oh, wait, this is exactly the problem with my notebook with AMD IGP, which by the way is not meant for gaming. Here AMD just thought that this IGP now is obsolete and does not let me use something newer than kernel 3.4 or Xorg-server 1.12. And I can't switch to the free drivers (and I would do that) because the free driver does overheat the machine (yes, bug is reported) and does not support video decoding for this chip (HD3200).
You realize that some people have more than one machine?

but a seperate graphics-card? Just sell it, and invest the money you dont pay for windows ontop of that money and have a more expensive amd or in your case more likely nvidia card

OK, next time you buy something good (the AMD card is good, again, no complaining about the hardware) and the company you bought from thinks that you don't deserve good support, just sell it and buy something different? So you mean, give them money for shitty support and them give them more money because the shitty support forces you to buy an even more expensive product? Now you are just plain stupid.

and shut up...

Nope, I won't. I have bought that hardware and I won't let AMD treat me as second class customer just because I use Linux. If you want to do that that is your problem, not mine.

So, let us resume what we found out: You don't get what I am complaining about, but call me retarded and stupid. What does this tell us about you? Think about it, although I still don't expect that you will get it, not now, not in the future. Some people are just to dumb.

[curaga]

@Veerappan

How about gimp? 2.8 had some opencl support.

[CFWhitman]

Pitfall for Intel, and what's the ideal platform?

There is one pitfall with Intel other than basic performance. Some of the integrated GPUs released under the Intel name are made by PowerVR and have basically no Linux support at all, other than some reverse engineered support thanks to a few determined individuals. Just be careful to avoid these, and you will get the expected performance.

As I see it:

1. Intel would be good if their GPUs were more powerful, though there is room for improvement when it comes to video playback support.

2. Nvidia will give you the best results on new hardware as long as you don't mind using binary drivers.

3. AMD will give you the best results for old hardware (though there is an in between point for which you still may get better results with an Nvidia binary driver).

As it stands, there is no ideal video solution.

Nvidia may give you closest to ideal results for the moment. However, I don't see the situation with Nvidia ever changing from what it is now. They are making no effort to change anything other than improving their binary drivers even more. The Nouveau effort is great, and I applaud those participating, but Nvidia is not involved.

On the other hand both Intel and AMD have some potential to become an ideal solution. Intel mostly has to improve their GPUs themselves. They seem to be trying to move in that direction. We'll see how that works out. AMD has to improve their binary drivers, which they seem to be making somewhat half-hearted efforts to do (though the attention generated by Steam for Linux combined with their Nvidia rivalry may be helping a bit there), and/or greatly improve the open source driver support, which seems to be happening, but it has far enough to go so that it is taking somewhat longer than we might like. Just improving the open source driver probably won't ever be enough because it will most likely always be behind for new GPU series (unless of course AMD actually switches to the open source code base for their own development, which I consider highly improbable to say the least).

At least the progress in Linux video support is for the moment happening fast enough to keep things interesting.

[pingufunkybeat]

Stupid people like me who criticize AMD....

It is OK to criticise AMD and their drivers, but you do it in a stupid way.

First you claim that AMD does not develop FLOSS drivers, then I list 4 people who develop it on AMD's payroll, then you say that they should be ashamed.

That is stupid.

If you don't want to look stupid, focus on specific things you are unhappy with, and offer constructive criticism instead of hallucinating things and spreading claims every child can refute.

Here are things that are not great with AMD's drivers: OpenGL 4, OpenCL, dynamic powersaving. HD7000 could use some love too (although it's usable much better than Michael claims). These are concrete things. Criticise that instead of making silly claims about what you think paid devs writing free drivers should be ashamed of. :facepalm:

Again, with community driver "radeon" this tools are provided by the community (not AMD).

Again, with HD4000 and up, the "community driver" was primarily written by AMD employees, then improved by the community.

You can stop repeating that particular piece of disinformation now that you know that it's wrong.

[Hamish Wilson]

Despite the fact that the Nouveau driver developers deserve praise for what they are doing with so very little, I am glad to see AMD overall doing better if only to put an end to this nonsense that Nouveau was a better driver than AMD's despite the lack of official support for it due to Nvidia hardware being so much easier to program or other such nonsense that was being posted here before. It was never true, and AMD do need to get praised for what they are doing.

I have been fairly happy with the performance of my Diamond Radeon HD 4670 for quite awhile now, but with recent updates things have been getting even better. About the only games I wish could be a bit faster (or at least a bit more consistent) are the id Tech 4 games, with everything else running pretty much smooth as silk. All this alongside proper Linux integration for ease of maintenance, and we already have a very competitive driver. So I will join in in thanking Deucher, K?nig, Stellard, Marek, Vadim, bridgman, and all the rest that have allowed this all to be possible.

[YAFU]

Item 1: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...eon_linux.aspx
Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/open-source/ (scroll down to "Graphics Drivers")

Ohhh! AMD meets 1,2,3,4 ... 5,6,7 and 10000. AMD/ATI is so perfect ... Stupid people like me who criticize AMD....

If you want to argue about proprietary driver quality (Item 1) at least at first visit nVidia support forums: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/
As you see doesn't fix crash in proprietary driver for eight months is normal for nVidia: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/t...3-2-0-4-amd64/

Sure, you're very clever to want to refute my points by posting some nVidia bug report. I'm sure that AMD/ATI has no bug report for fglrx/Catalyst or "radeon" on bugs.freedesktop.
nVidia is far to be perfect, but AMD/ATI is worse.

My points are about official support. Pay a couple of developers or collaborate with the community is NOT official support. If you have any complaint about the operation of the community "radeon" driver on the hardware you have paid, you will want to write to AMD/ATI to complain about it. AMD sent to you to ask for community support. And if you have one of these cards:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...2&lang=English
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._legacy2&num=1

AMD/ATI will respond simply: "no longer supported" (as happened to me).
Also when you looking for official support, in addition to the driver you are looking for a good official GUI configuration tool. Again, with community driver "radeon" this tools are provided by the community (not AMD).

I've always had problems with amd drivers in my old radeon 4650, now I use a nvidia gtx 660 and I have no problem. I do not want free drivers slow, I want a driver provided by the company to which I paid my money, and give me good support. Freedom or not ... I prefer stability and performance. By the way, my radeon 4650 has no support for new kernels and xorg, thanks amd.

That's what trying to say. But you already see, AMD seems to be perfect for some.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

I have the next order of priorities for a hardware company:
1 - Good "official" driver support for GNU/Linux (Proprietary or Open Source)
2 - Maintain the basic "official" support for older hardware for a reasonable time.
3 - That the company "officially" develop OpenSource drivers.
4 - If not officially develops OpenSource drivers, at least collaborate with the community.

In my point of view, nVidia meets "1" and "2", and with Optimus support on the way there will be no doubt.
AMD only meets with "4"

Lolwut?
Item 1: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...eon_linux.aspx
Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/open-source/ (scroll down to "Graphics Drivers")

AMD provides programming guides, developer support, and significant code contribution to the X/DRI open source graphics drivers.

If you want to argue about proprietary driver quality (Item 1) at least at first visit nVidia support forums: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/
As you see doesn't fix crash in proprietary driver for eight months is normal for nVidia: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/t...3-2-0-4-amd64/

[pandev92]

I've always had problems with amd drivers in my old radeon 4650, now I use a nvidia gtx 660 and I have no problem. I do not want free drivers slow, I want a driver provided by the company to which I paid my money, and give me good support. Freedom or not ... I prefer stability and performance. By the way, my radeon 4650 has no support for new kernels and xorg, thanks amd.

[jrch2k8]

well in my case i always noticed fglrx seems to be inneficient in OpenGL in linux and windows[depends the driver version] but the AMD OSS driver is so far very good, rock solid stable and fast enough for all my current needs. In fact im happy enough that i changed my 4850X2 for an 7770 OC from MSI so i can test radeonsi driver[have glitches but it got to the point is peachy for KDE SC 4.10.2 and UVD with Glamor], and in my office i got an 5770[coding station] to replace my old 8800GTS from nvidia and so far is awesome.

so, my dearest and many thanks to marek, vadim, christian, tom, and all the other members of the r600g/radeonsi team, you are doing a great job