AMD Gallium3D & Catalyst Drivers Compete Against Windows

[ForkedPython]

It's called driconf.

oh

awesome will check it out !

[curaga]

*ohh and nobody has made a FOSS control center as far as im aware? This is essential for Vsync / Colour profiles / Refresh settings / AA options /Ansiostropic settings / MLAA, FXAA settings / Game profiles / frame pacing option / AMD overdrive overclocking / Fan control etc..

It's called driconf.

[Gps4l]

my experience is 2D = poor on catalyst 3D = 'Ok'

See, gaming on linux is great and its awesome to be able to do it all.. but I have noticed a trend on Distro forums and on here that a lot of people seem to be running extremley inept graphics hardware.. 4 series, low spec APU's, laptop GPU's from 3 years ago etc..

For me 2D has improved allot, it was very bad, and I have ranted about this, also on this forum.
Firefox bringing my pc to its knees is ridicules. AMD phenom II X4 and an HD5750.

And my pc is dual boot, so I can compare. Currently with the latest Catalyst drivers, there is no tearing, and I can still run games like Serious Sam 3, while tearfreee destop in enabled.
(this was impossible before)


I agree totally about the hardware. The number of people on labtops with game issues is much bigger then the once with a desktop and probably more important and dedicated vid card.
But who is to blame those people or the driver developers.
Allot claim, they can play these games on windows on the same hardware.
Although I doubt it, I do believe them.

[ForkedPython]

my experience is 2D = poor on catalyst 3D = 'Ok'

this test is good but most people who dual boot are probably aware of the cavernous gap between AMD Linux catalyst and Windows catalyst. Not just in peak frames but in terms of stutter, slow downs on specific effects..

Cant wait for the FOSS driver to match windows performance but someone rightly said .. each game has its own 'patch' and there are many games. That patch could be just to get the game glitches ironed out or it could be more specifically related to running crossfire setups.

See, gaming on linux is great and its awesome to be able to do it all.. but I have noticed a trend on Distro forums and on here that a lot of people seem to be running extremley inept graphics hardware.. 4 series, low spec APU's, laptop GPU's from 3 years ago etc..

Linux has indie games, it has source games and there are many big titles that require little 3D rendering power (such as strategy games) but for the market to respond to sales there has to be customers and a lot of people are going to want their decent GPU(s) to run well and pretty much all the time. If the FOSS cant provide that crossfire / Tri-fire patch, cant fix missing textures, slow performance from a game that WAS working well until the next FOSS driver update came along then many people will be put off.

So the guy that said 80% and no real game or hardware patch support on FOSS is probably realistic is right. Dont sing and dance when AMD goes fully FOSS unless they specifically still handle games / applications (render programs) Patches for hardware variants against each and every single driver, furthermore AMD has a sketchy history even on Windows for this.

the road is still long for AMD drivers... its miles ahead but there is some serious investment needed in the corporate AMD linux FOSS driver department

*ohh and nobody has made a FOSS control center as far as im aware? This is essential for Vsync / Colour profiles / Refresh settings / AA options /Ansiostropic settings / MLAA, FXAA settings / Game profiles / frame pacing option / AMD overdrive overclocking / Fan control etc..

[pandev92]

What graphics card were you using?

Apu a8 5600k, radeon 7650d

[ua=42]

I tried serious sam bfe3, at 720p with medium details I can play the game at 25/30 fps, with opensource drivers.

What graphics card were you using?

[pandev92]

I tried serious sam bfe3, at 720p with medium details I can play the game at 25/30 fps, with opensource drivers.

[jrch2k8]

But what is the trick in Arch? Is it only by using the latest versions of the drivers? Or is it something else?

It is good news the good performance of OpenSource drivers. It is a step forward for AMD to focus only on the radeon driver and forget fglrx. It makes no sense for AMD to some things be recommended "radeon" drivers and for other things to recommend the "fglrx" drivers. Now they have to work on better OpenCL OpenSource implementation.

well arch is a rolling distro that helps since you get new version of everything 24h after upstream release instead of wait for cycle freezes to end to upgrade, in some cases give you perf advantages that won't reach cycled distros like ubuntu until next major releases, arch always uses latest gcc which can bring additional improvements depending the release, systemd in arch is very well fine tuned oob so you gain some resources and less I/O/ram compared to other init managers.

in this case the biggest advantage is getting latest of version of drivers[lcarlier pkgbuild] and all depending libraries [arch rolling advantage] + KDE latest improvements, make your system silky smooth

[Melcar]

Source games work fine for me on my HD6850 running xorg edgers. Can even run the enhanced graphics/texture Doom 3 mods out there. I don't have anything newer than 2005 games that I care to run under WINE, but the little I have does run fine.

[pandev92]

But what is the trick in Arch? Is it only by using the latest versions of the drivers? Or is it something else?

It is good news the good performance of OpenSource drivers. It is a step forward for AMD to focus only on the radeon driver and forget fglrx. It makes no sense for AMD to some things be recommended "radeon" drivers and for other things to recommend the "fglrx" drivers. Now they have to work on better OpenCL OpenSource implementation.

I don't know really, but the game is very playable, apu a8 5600k.