Linux Driver Expectations For The Radeon RX Vega

[shmerl]

Yup! I just hope the launch of Vegas to drop the prices of 560s, 570s and 580s and with them some Nvidias like 1050s and 1060s...

I really hope they'll come up with decent TDP card (not more than 200 W), and comparable with high end Nvidia with that (reference GTX 1080 has 180 W TDP). I won't be buying Vega until then, and will stick with RX 480. May be they rushed Vega out, and didn't work on power design enough?

[frosth]

Ok, so just for fun, I have a Intel APU (I don't care what you wanna call it) and it works fine in Linux. So, if I plug the video cable on the motherboard, having my RX 470 plugged in, what else I need to do to offload the rendering to the Polaris card?

on arch it simply works: (mesa-git+modesetting ddx), for easy try you have to sure that both intel & radeon card work with dri3 mode.

[arek@darkfruit ~]$ xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0xc7 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 3 associated providers: 1 name:modesetting
Provider 1: id: 0x4a cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 5 associated providers: 1 name:modesetting
[arek@darkfruit ~]$ DRI_PRIME=1 glxheads
glxheads: exercise multiple GLX connections (any key = exit)
Usage:
  glxheads xdisplayname ...
Example:
  glxheads :0 mars:0 venus:1
Name: :0
  Display:     0x1256110
  Window:      0x2400002
  Context:     0x127d010
  GL_VERSION:  3.0 Mesa 17.3.0-devel (git-7ea4cda2ab)
  GL_VENDOR:   X.Org
  GL_RENDERER: AMD Radeon (TM) RX 470 Graphics (AMD POLARIS10 / DRM 3.18.0 / 4.11.0-1-amd-staging, LLVM 6.0.0)
[arek@darkfruit ~]$ DRI_PRIME=0 glxheads
glxheads: exercise multiple GLX connections (any key = exit)
Usage:
  glxheads xdisplayname ...
Example:
  glxheads :0 mars:0 venus:1
Name: :0
  Display:     0x245c110
  Window:      0x2400002
  Context:     0x2482fd0
  GL_VERSION:  3.0 Mesa 17.3.0-devel (git-7ea4cda2ab)
  GL_VENDOR:   Intel Open Source Technology Center
  GL_RENDERER: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Desktop

Amdgpu-pro-dkms-kernel rx470 + mesa drv works nice but i don't use hdmi audio for now so i choose mainline (staging for testing now ) one.
And did you try firefox with DRI_PRIME for what? I'm just curious.

bad idea because amd only and always only send a sample to phoronix if there driver is in a good status. what results in a good preview article.
this is not how journalism should work in this BIASED way... if we finance or own community driven journalism we can get bad-preview articles to.
now the driver status is bad compared to the AMD RX 480/580 release and we will only get a "bad" preview article if we finance it by our own money.
but in my point of view we should be fair comparing high-end amd gpus to highend nvidia gpus and not some crippled down slim gpu on the AMD side and the absolut highend version on the nvidia side. but to be fear it costs the community even more money.

Some people mislead foss driver with mainline driver. You can build driver from Alex's repo by yourself or grab it from community repo (if you distro has one) but still it's open source and it's available. So i don't see bad condition here.

[artivision]

First what is the default driver for sea islands, is it amd-gpu with radeonsi? Second is there an amd-staging kernel ppa?

[R41N3R]

The hole driver situation seems overly complex! I like new technologies and to play around with it... But if I would be a owner of a Vega card I would not know what to do to get some good results from this new card.

[Karbowiak]

sure, but will you pay for pro card?

Was more if RX Vega (consumer edition) supported it, it would be nice.
But lets be honest, it probably does, and it's only turned off (if at all) in the bios.

[M@GOid]

And did you try firefox with DRI_PRIME for what? I'm just curious.

Just to check performance in WebGL. A nice place to go is www.shadertoy.com

[Geopirate]

I've got a better idea: Don't spend a dime on Vega until AMD sends out a review sample for free.
Phoronix is big enough to warrant a review sample and if AMD really is that superior in Linux support they should have no problem sending a free review sample to show off their superiority to Nvidia (who does send free review samples to Phoronix).

RTG's marketing department would determine who will get a review sample. Their behavior has been at least strange surrounding the Vega launch in general. They have shied away from benchmarks and frame counters in all of their demos and publicly released information. I don't know of anyone who had a review sample of the Frontier Edition.

Honestly it makes sense for them to not send a sample to outlets like this because they don't want more benchmarks. If they already know that a 1080 on Linux using the binary driver spanks Vega on any driver, why would they give Michael a free card to verify this at launch?

Maybe it will make sense to send a card once DC/DAL is merged, they have better supply and/or they have a more competitive driver.

[Geopirate]

Michael@phoronix will get a full AMD RX-VEGA-64 to bring us this benchmarks by using PRIME instead of DC/DAL
so we will get the benchmark numbers anyway and we should not care if amd sending a card or not.

You should actually read the post I was responding to.....you're agreeing with me.

[frosth]

Just to check performance in WebGL. A nice place to go is www.shadertoy.com

Hi, it should work, just be sure amdgpu and intel ddx loaded properly. Modestting ddx has some problem with firefox, steam, chromium....with dri_prime=1. And I had to rollback to official xorg drv from arch repo because mesa-git looks broken.
www.shadertoy.com's stuff has vsync enabled so... still 60fps

[pete910]

AMD competition is good. But I will continue to buy Intel and nVidia. And encourage others to do the same. AMD is dead. But they are still useful idiots.

Trolling ?