The Extreme Cases Where A Sub-$200 NVIDIA GPU Can Beat A $550+ AMD R9 Fury On Linux

[chrisb]

Grabs popcorn.

Waits for the Astroturfing to explain everything away.

Meanwhile, nVidia market share goes thru the roof.... http://www.fudzilla.com/news/graphic...the-gpu-market

To much spin, not enough reel....

GreekGeek :-)

Did you read your reference?

Nvidia's desktop GPUs accounted for nearly 80 percent of all sales in the segment in Q2 2015, its highest market share ever. According to beancounters at the market research firm Mercury Research the GPU market is slowly dying. The latest quarter was a decrease of 11 percent from Q1 2015 and a year-on-year decline of 21.7 percent so Nvidia is the undisputed king of a much smaller kingdom.
Mercury Research notes that the notebook GPU segment also witnessed a decrease to the tune of 34.1 percent year-on-year, mainly due to the continued improvements in the iGPU segment.

I'm sure Nvidia are ecstatic at having majority share of a market that is shrinking by 21% to 34% every year.

[dungeon]

@dungeon

As you suggested: do your own renaming tests and show the results!

I suggested to MIchael to try, it works for me as you know . Well i am now on low power Kabini APU but anyway it apply by percentage on any Radeon (OK maybe just GCN ) hardware, do you want etracer diff like nvidia suggests here http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...variables.html

Renamed to openarena.x86_64:

Min/avg/max FPS: 3.67262 / 241.666 / 781.861

Orig:

Min/avg/max FPS: 4.54256 / 162.619 / 284.657

33% faster

Or supertuxkart 0.8.1 renamed:

Min/avg/max FPS: 0.631398 / 102.766 / 1402.52

Orig:

Min/avg/max FPS: 0.773303 / 75.9691 / 243.072

27% faster

And so on

[johnc]

Also: As for me, Linux is all about open-source, everything closed source is simply not an option...which means that nvidia is just not an option.

I can understand that, but people who buy these cards are going to be doing so to either play games or do some kind of work that needs a GPU, and in those cases the software they run is almost always closed-source anyway. So it ends up not really mattering for those people. So, in some ways, you're not the target consumer.

[duby229]

I can understand that, but people who buy these cards are going to be doing so to either play games or do some kind of work that needs a GPU, and in those cases the software they run is almost always closed-source anyway. So it ends up not really mattering for those people. So, in some ways, you're not the target consumer.

That doesn't much sense. In that case just use windows. I thought people were finally starting to get over that.

[Klassic Six]

That doesn't much sense. In that case just use windows. I thought people were finally starting to get over that.

Use Windo$ just because drivers have a better performance? Are you crazy?

[duby229]

We all know what AMD's stance on their linux drivers are. If you are using linux for desktop usage of any kind, use the OSS drivers. That's the way it should be. I'm not saying the OSS drivers are faster, I'm just saying they're good enough for now.

Bitching about Catalyst is like punching a brick, all you're gonna do is hurt yourself, it'll never get you anything but pain.

[johnc]

That doesn't much sense. In that case just use windows. I thought people were finally starting to get over that.

This may shock you, but... sometimes people have other reasons for using Linux than just "it's open source".

However, if a person only uses Linux because "it's open source", then don't complain about a closed-source driver for a discrete GPU. Because the only thing you're going to do with that hardware is play a closed-source game.

[duby229]

This may shock you, but... sometimes people have other reasons for using Linux than just "it's open source".

However, if a person only uses Linux because "it's open source", then don't complain about a closed-source driver for a discrete GPU. Because the only thing you're going to do with that hardware is play a closed-source game.

That might be your opinion but it definitely isn't mine. Projecting your thoughts on other people is almost always a bad idea. At least some of your thoughts are in the minority.

[duby229]

I really seriously doubt that AMD's OpenGL performance will ever be able to compete with nVidia's. I just don't see that ever happening. Improved? Absolutely, but it let's face it, OpenGL looks nothing at all like an AMD GPU. It's like trying to squeeze apple juice from an orange. But the game is going to change when Vulkan titles start becoming common. Go ahead and get your barbs in now.

EDIT: The fact that OpenGL works at all is pretty darn impressive. The overall driver experience is way better with the OSS drivers. That's what should be used. The only reason I can see for nVidia fanboys to tell AMD users that they need to use Catalyst is only so they have something to bitch about.

Meanwhile my desktop experience is definitely better than yours and my gaming experience is good enough for now.

[johnc]

That might be your opinion but it definitely isn't mine. Projecting your thoughts on other people is almost always a bad idea. At least some of your thoughts are in the minority.

No, I'm not projecting an opinion, I'm tell you a fact: it is hypocritical to say "everything closed source is simply not an option" and then playing a closed-source game without complaint.

So much of this flame-throwing about nvidia's closed drivers really sounds like a desperate attempt to find something that can be used to disqualify.