NVIDIA Is Still Killing AMD Over Linux OpenGL Performance

[pandev92]

a real gamer play those games when they come out, 10 years ago... metro last ligth and serious sam 3 sucks i don't know who call AAA to metro

10 years ago you was a kid

[Bucic]

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...645#post292645

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1kctc1/kde_software_compilation_411_released/cbnup1j

Maybe that guy on reddit is wrong with the explanation(?), but I can only say, I don't see any tearing with kwin and vsync set to full screen repainting (on ivy bridge + x.org 1.14), but with kwin + xrender compositing I see horrible tearing.

I've replied here re tearing

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74598-Intel-Linux-Driver-Still-Working-To-Address-Tearing/page2

and thanks for the link to the forum post!

[brosis]

First of all there is no Black or White situation for me. I like open-source software but I will not make my life harder just to support it.

Secondly, Nvidia binary drivers are free and as long as they are free I DONT CARE if they are open or proprietary.

Would you pay for a "open" but not "free of charge" driver? Personally not...

Nvidia blob is not free, it is freeware. Freeware means proprietary with EULA that allows free distribution only under conditions. So it is not even free to distribute, only if you follow restrictions in EULA.
There is huge power behind "care", because you still "care" about product features/price and the "care" we understand stretches beyond features/price of current product.

And if company has consumed major intellectual and financial base with consumers having no care outside of "features/price", this company will be capable to produce cards at very low price per unit and will cut features / dictate just the price to beat the concurrence that has much higher entry barrier.
You will start "caring" when Nvidia starts cutting OpenGL features, because they want it, like they did in the past. But there will be no alternative, and any possible alternative will be immediately cared of by price reduction even below the cost of production!

Intel and AMD are rebuilding the whole OpenGL and kernel driver stack under open license, it is similar to rewriting the whole infrastructure from scratch. This is why I care about GPL, as the whole limitation is due to proprietary actions, not-caring about license, in the past by developers (Directx worked a little better, so why care about OpenGL?)

Nvidia is to GPU market like windumbs to OS market. If you don't care beyond "feature/price" you are doomed to complying and repeating the whole opensource "crusade" in feature catch-up over and over.

[verde]

Then why even use Linux? It is so easy to just be in the Windows world, where the NSA can spy on you and you have to pay the same company every couple years to get the latest versions of the same software. Where if you don't like the network traffic algorithm, you kind of have to deal with it because the whole OS is a black box.

Same can be said of gpus - oh, your hardware is old. So we're not supporting it anymore. Have fun! Or, a new API comes out - like opencl - oh hey, yeah, we're a competitor, we're not going to support it. Or maybe we are going to do software crippling of certain hardware parts to make larger margins with the same silicon. Such an easy way to raise profits, and if the drivers are blobs and undocumented, hey, not like you can do anything about it right?

Or your parts don't work with non-Android kernels. Because our driver is a big fat blob of who knows what running on your cpu. But hey, its convenient, so why care? Or more appropriately, its convenient until it isn't, at which point you are absolutely fucked.

First of all there is no Black or White situation for me. I like open-source software but I will not make my life harder just to support it.

Secondly, Nvidia binary drivers are free and as long as they are free I DONT CARE if they are open or proprietary.

Would you pay for a "open" but not "free of charge" driver? Personally not...

I don't pay for my OS and I don't pay for my drivers. Open or not its OK for me. I don't have security concerns about Nvidia. I believe Linux kernel is more possible to have a backdoor than Nvidia binary driver.

If I had an 8600GT I would be able to play Wargame European Escalation. With my Radeon 2600 PRO I can't!

[verde]

a real gamer play those games when they come out, 10 years ago... metro last ligth and serious sam 3 sucks i don't know who call AAA to metro

die...

[zanny]

It's not wise to mention such things waving your pro-AMD banner, you know... Does AMD declaring anything older than radeon 5000 'legacy' ring a bell?

That is exactly why I mention it, and is exactly why I only even look at AMD for hardware I can run on open drivers. They demonstrate one of the many issues with proprietary drivers while also being the only discrete gpu option with open source ones (can't really say free, because you need the firmware blobs).

Maybe that guy on reddit is wrong with the explanation(?), but I can only say, I don't see any tearing with kwin and vsync set to full screen repainting (on ivy bridge + x.org 1.14), but with kwin + xrender compositing I see horrible tearing.

My main rig uses hd4600 under Arch, I have no tearing on 2x screens with automatic vsync, on opengl 3.1 + raster graphics. Hell, I never knew it was a problem, and I built this new pc around 4 months ago, so whatever fixed it has been in mainline Arch for a while.

[ChrisXY]

1. The plague of tearing on intel is common across linux desktops. You claim kwin to be superior while every article I've read on the subject state that full-screen repaints is just a workaround making any other affected compositor as real™ as kwin is. For Gnome Shell's Clutter it's CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling and CLUTTER_VBLANK=True options.

While we're at it it's worth highlighting that some genius behind the intel tearing bollocks is responsible for tearing on linux desktops unfixed for over a year! Until Xorg 1.15 and Mesa 10 land in distros of those affected by the issue.

2. I failed to get any interesting results on intel's preferred method of repainting.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74598-Intel-Linux-Driver-Still-Working-To-Address-Tearing&p=292645#post292645

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1kctc1/kde_software_compilation_411_released/cbnup1j

Maybe that guy on reddit is wrong with the explanation(?), but I can only say, I don't see any tearing with kwin and vsync set to full screen repainting (on ivy bridge + x.org 1.14), but with kwin + xrender compositing I see horrible tearing.

[Bucic]

Again, that's false when talking about the HD 4000 series. Mesa has better OpenGL compliance, the performance is on par with Catalyst, the power management is on par with Catalyst, video acceleration is much better than on Catalyst, most of the other features are supported on OSS drivers as well (including PowerXpress).

'on par' normally means 'eoughly equal', but for OSS fans it usually means 'it's almost 80% as fast in some cases, less than 80% as fast in other cases', so could you back what you're saying with some article on the subject?

Whenever I'm tempted to compare my hd 3650 with catalyst legacy 13.1 vs OSS driver I recall all those times I tried just to get some mere 30% performance on OSS driver.

[GreatEmerald]

The Catalyst driver remains superior when it comes to OpenGL compliance, OpenGL performance, power management, video acceleration, and numerous other features like AA/AF modes, CrossFire, PowerXpress, and much more.

What I meant in my previous post was one shouldn't even mention AMD and decency in supporting graphics in one post.

Again, that's false when talking about the HD 4000 series. Mesa has better OpenGL compliance, the performance is on par with Catalyst, the power management is on par with Catalyst, video acceleration is much better than on Catalyst, most of the other features are supported on OSS drivers as well (including PowerXpress).

[Bucic]

You're proving zanny's point here. The fact that AMD declared things as legacy has all the bearing on closed drivers and no bearing on OSS drivers. In fact, the HD 4000 series on OSS drivers is pretty much up to its ripening stage at this point. It has almost complete feature parity with Catalyst.

My point is the OSS driver is useless for gaming even on 'well supported' chipsets (r600?) and I said nothing that contradicts that.
zanny's point is the OSS driver is worth buying and AMD graphics for whatever use, I don't know, and that OSS driver guarantees support. So his point is valid only for non-gaming user cases. And I may be too generous here:

The Catalyst driver remains superior when it comes to OpenGL compliance, OpenGL performance, power management, video acceleration, and numerous other features like AA/AF modes, CrossFire, PowerXpress, and much more.

What I meant in my previous post was one shouldn't even mention AMD and decency in supporting graphics in one post.