Radeon RX 480 Linux Testing Is Happening Right Now

[chuckula]

Interesting timing.
My GTX-1080 (EVGA custom version, not Founder's Edition) showed up today and it works beautifully right out of the box, including a factory OC.

It will be very interesting to see how the Rx 480 does next week. Good luck with the benchmarking.

[aelo]

How good are the drivers compared to the ones for Intel GPUs? Is it stable enough and is video decoding possible once you update to the kernel version 4.7? I'm asking because I'm wondering if I should upgrade from the current on-board graphics I'm using (i7-6700k), but I would only do that if the drivers are reliable and support 4k video decoding. Another question is also if I have to use certain distributions like Ubuntu LTS or if it is finally possible to use something more up-2-date like Fedora?

thanks in advance!

[elect]

As soon as the open source driver is available on Fedora, I'll run to buy this card. I don't care even if the Gflops/price ratio isn't better then for a 1080, just for the fact that AMD is releasing a good card, with an open source driver and at a low price, these are three perfectly good reasons why I'll buy this card!

Idem!

I hope we'll get also the same overclocking capabilities on linux..... I can't wait

[oskar-n]

Great to see that AMD has started to send you cards.
I like the progress that AMD has made in open source and I've been thinking of buying a card.
I look forward to the review.

[scottishduck]

Why would a good card have an embargo all the way up to launch

[remm]

You should not sign any NDAs IMO, other websites have published way more than this already.

[juno]

What about R470 and R460? For me is R470 most interesting card of R4xx line up.

They are not released on 29th but a bit later

Why would a good card have an embargo all the way up to launch

It's not just about the product itself but also fairness for the reviewers. We all want and demand good reviews. A NDA gives reviewers the time to test the product elaborately. Also, smaller or even 1-person teams like Michael profit a lot from that, as bigger teams might aquire and compile data faster, publish and get all the early attraction, "stealing" other sites' traffic.

You should not sign any NDAs IMO, other websites have published way more than this already.

No, reliable ones have not.
I see no problem in signing a NDA if it contains nothing that would falsify the results like a prescription which exact applications and scenarios might be tested against which other products and which might not. Some vendors actually do that.

[przemoli]

Michael
Noise measurement - do You have some workable solution but lack funding or R&D would need to be conducted first?

[dibal]

Please take a look at the video decoding capabilities and multi monitor setups.

[Adarion]

Oh sweet.

Noise level (done by ears, subjective impressions).
Heat.
Power consumption (if full system then in comparison with something else).
blob vs. freedom stack (though the latter one should be given full kernel / mesa patch level to be fair)
The usual automated tests 3D and 2D.
And maybe one or two manual tests of popular programs (whatever the crowd here demands).
Comparison w. MS-W might be interesting.
Check for feature availability and possible rendering errors.
Which video outs are available?
Also multi monitor setup might be interesting.
Maybe take off the cover if possible to show some of the inner parts.

Have fun testing!