NVIDIA Slaughters AMD Catalyst On Linux In OpenGL 4.x Micro-Benchmarks

[przemoli]

We don't have to imagine the opposite, though. AMD laid off 25 Linux dev staff in 2012. If they had kept that team, maybe their drivers would be competitive on Android, Steambox, and Linux.

I purchased AMD desktop CPUs almost exclusively from 2002 - 2012 because they always provided great Linux support and good to great performance per dollar. Sadly, GPU support has always been a completely different matter.

Those where not GPU people.

AMD do hire new GPU people.

[deppman]

We know what happens when AMD lays off Linux devs though....

Well, I can't talk for radeonsi users, but evergreen/north islands work great. The driver is still in development, obviously, but it's in a great state already, and things keep improving (for example, there are more performance features in Linux 3.16).
You can imagine what would happen if AMD hired more FOSS driver devs...

We don't have to imagine the opposite, though. AMD laid off 25 Linux dev staff in 2012. If they had kept that team, maybe their drivers would be competitive on Android, Steambox, and Linux.

I purchased AMD desktop CPUs almost exclusively from 2002 - 2012 because they always provided great Linux support and good to great performance per dollar. Sadly, GPU support has always been a completely different matter.

[asdfblah]

maybe a driver who works well (amd opensource is better than fglrx), nvidia have the best drivers

Well, I can't talk for radeonsi users, but evergreen/north islands work great. The driver is still in development, obviously, but it's in a great state already, and things keep improving (for example, there are more performance features in Linux 3.16).
You can imagine what would happen if AMD hired more FOSS driver devs...

[alazar]

So what is the problem with AMD? Catalyst being utter crap or the gaming industry developing with nvidia? If it was the last case, FOSS drivers wouldn't be so better than Catalyst, no?

[rikkinho]

hm

nVidia has the best support for linux? I can go to irc.freenode.net and talk to the FOSS AMD driver devs directly. What's better than that?

maybe a driver who works well (amd opensource is better than fglrx), nvidia have the best drivers

[rikkinho]

well i explain

You know I felt the same when I upgraded from a GT 630 to an R7 260X starting of the year. However I soon realized that it's got a lot to do with the games as well. I have all of the source games from valve and they work exceptionally well on my AMD card but when I run games from other vendors (Metro LL for example) they seem to be crap. Instead of people being so quick on pointing figures at AMD, should instead try and answer the question, why do games from valve span so perfectly on the entire GPU spectrum while most games from other vendors behave horribly? Valve clearly took their time to port their games and it clearly shows! I can say the same thing about games build using unity.

valve games 1 year ago work really bad with amd cards, after so much time is normal see some improving,... the problem is simply a new game arrives and you need a year of waiting to play the game, and don't compare a geme like metro with source games, look my example i can't play cs condition zero with a 6770m (last year) but i have good fps with a intel hd 3000, after change to nvidia i never had such type of problems

[asdfblah]

nVidia has the best support for linux? I can go to irc.freenode.net and talk to the FOSS AMD driver devs directly. What's better than that?

[Marc Driftmeyer]

This test is not intended to benchmark different vendors/ gpus. It reflects a specific problem and a couple of solutions to achieve the best performance (least driver overhead).
This blog post is basically click bait.

Exactly.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

You know I felt the same when I upgraded from a GT 630 to an R7 260X starting of the year. However I soon realized that it's got a lot to do with the games as well. I have all of the source games from valve and they work exceptionally well on my AMD card but when I run games from other vendors (Metro LL for example) they seem to be crap. Instead of people being so quick on pointing figures at AMD, should instead try and answer the question, why do games from valve span so perfectly on the entire GPU spectrum while most games from other vendors behave horribly? Valve clearly took their time to port their games and it clearly shows! I can say the same thing about games build using unity.

The fact most people don't grasp what you have tells me how ignorant they are regarding the chain of responsibility from hardware to driver to application. Pissing on a device company when the talent writing the game is either geared for a specific vendor to leverage marketing advantage, or neither and it is just a lack of actual game programming talent, truly shows a lack of both understanding and maturity on the parts of the shills proclaiming one vendor over the other is crap.

[krasnoglaz]

I had multiple system-wide crashes on a daily basis the last time I tried an AMD card. Spent parts of a couple of weeks debugging with engineering assistance - all problems consistently pointed to the card. Switched it out for an Nvidia card and never had a problem again. I don't even run games or graphics intensive software under Linux - just some simple business stuff. Nvidia and Intel are smooth as silk - I figure why should I put myself through the misery with AMD? However, I respect them for trying, and I know AMD has a lot of fans for good reason. I just won't be one of them anytime in the near future.

Same story. Replaced AMD 7950 with GTX 780, and core hangups have stopped. Now I can have month+ uptime easily. And games work flawlessly now.