AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Performance On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Radeon R9 285 Tonga Performance On Linux

Announced over the summer when AMD was celebrating their 30 years of graphics celebration was the Radeon R9 285, a $250 graphics card built on the company's latest GCN graphics processor technology to replace the Radeon R9 280. We finally have our hands on a Radeon R9 285 "Tonga" for delivering the first look at its Linux performance.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=21024

[AJSB]

BTW, it seems that AMD CARRIZO will also be GCN 1.2, so , good chances that will use in the future same unified Linux driver structure.

Another thing is that it also seems that CARRIZO uses same compression techniques of the 285 dGPU to increase up to 40% memory bandwidth.

[CrystalGamma]

BTW, it seems that AMD CARRIZO will also be GCN 1.2, so , good chances that will use in the future same unified Linux driver structure.

Another thing is that it also seems that CARRIZO uses same compression techniques of the 285 dGPU to increase up to 40% memory bandwidth.

Is that so? Then I'll need to decide whether I'll buy an all-out DDR4 system with Carrizo or just an GraCa upgrade to Tonga (and then later buy an efficient DDR4 CPU/MBoard) once AMDGPU comes out.
Depends on the power efficiency of those Excavator Cores (I'm not getting my hopes up).

[peppercats]

roughly the same price as the gtx 960 will be while being beaten/tying with the gtx 760 on basically every benchmark except for the GPGPU ones where AMD almost always wins :/
considering maxwell has a huge reduction in power consumption along with the huge performance boost, I'd just wait for that instead if you want to play games.
guess AMD should count their blessings that nvidia isn't releasing the 960 this month like they planned.

[Melcar]

No point getting any AMD card now until GCN2.x makes the scene. Current GCN1.x cards are just too inefficient compared to nvidia's Maxwell. AMD better kick it up a notch to level 11.

[r1348]

roughly the same price as the gtx 960 will be while being beaten/tying with the gtx 760 on basically every benchmark except for the GPGPU ones where AMD almost always wins :/
considering maxwell has a huge reduction in power consumption along with the huge performance boost, I'd just wait for that instead if you want to play games.
guess AMD should count their blessings that nvidia isn't releasing the 960 this month like they planned.

Trolling much? The GTX 960 doesn't even exist yet, it has been delayed to Q1 2015, and there's no official price yet, only speculation.

[PublicNuisance]

Need to get better games for tests. No Metro Last Light, Serious Sam 3, Witcher 2, Natural Selection 2 or Borderlands 2. CS Source and Xonotic. Who buys a $300 card for those ? On the other hand I'm always glad to find another Linux review site for hardware.

[Michael]

Need to get better games for tests. No Metro Last Light, Serious Sam 3, Witcher 2, Natural Selection 2 or Borderlands 2. CS Source and Xonotic. Who buys a $300 card for those ? On the other hand I'm always glad to find another Linux review site for hardware.

As mentioned many times (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTUyNTU et al), if these newer games on Linux would allow for more reproducible benchmarking in an automated manner, I'd be happy to use them. Aside from Metro: Last Light (which has a benchmark mode on Windows but wasn't found in the original Linux release but have been told by Valve that the MMLL developers are porting it over), don't allow for automated benchmarking that meet my requirements. While CS:GO and Xonotic might not be games you play, at least they are able to stress modern Linux OpenGL drivers quite well.

[liam]

I really hope this new driver initiative helps amd improve their drivers, even relative to windows.
The changes to Maxwell seem mostly due to increased scheduling efficiency. How much of that is due to hardware vs driver is hard to say, but seeing as how the 285 gets very close to Maxwell in terms of efficiency for certain games suggests, to me, it's largely a driver issue and this fixable.
Relying on the drm interface may suggest some changes/improvements to catalyst.

[przemoli]

Need to get better games for tests. No Metro Last Light, Serious Sam 3, Witcher 2, Natural Selection 2 or Borderlands 2. CS Source and Xonotic. Who buys a $300 card for those ? On the other hand I'm always glad to find another Linux review site for hardware.

LOL Witcher 2 have BAD gfx?

Man did You SEE the game?
Anyway Witcher 3 is just around the corner (Q1 2015)...