Radeon RX Vega On Linux: High-Performance GPUs & Open-Source No Longer An Oxymoron

[schmidtbag]

Do you really wonder why you don't normally get samples when you start of your article by saying you won't be going into the details like other sites are (and telling your readers to go else where) and saying you don't understand the hype of unboxing etc?

I see your point (and I think Michael's dismissiveness of the packaging might be off-putting to AMD) but I agree with juno - Phoronix readers aren't here to get the full scoop of what makes the hardware unique and what it's supposed to do. We already know that stuff and it's really not hard to find that information elsewhere, so it's just a waste of Michael's time. All we really care about is how does it perform under Linux, is it worth getting, and what do we need to know about getting it for Linux. I'd say he did that fairly well.

[cde1]

This is such great news and I'm very glad all the graphics card I bought since 2012 are AMD. I hope this push for open-sourcing their driver support on Linux will continue because (at least for me) it's a huge selling point.

[Peter Fodrek]

Radeon™ RX Vega Graphics Cards and Radeon™ Packs: Next Generation Enthusiast Gaming, Available Now

SUNNYVALE, Calif. 8/14/2017







And Radeon Software brings the graphics cards to life, enabling the ultimate in performance, features and stability to ensure an exceptional out-of-box experience

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!that will keep getting better with future software updates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/rx-vega-available-2017aug14.aspx

That is special note in product press release,..



So they know, what is ;liosted here///

- Of upcoming optimizations, the 2MB page support should really benefit Vega on Linux. Linux has been using 4KB pages everywhere while AMD Windows uses larger vRAM pages where possible. With the larger page support is of similar concept to "huge pages" on the CPU. It's possible to see 10~15% performance improvements in select compute and Vulkan workloads with the 2MB page support being mainlined in AMDGPU for Linux 4.14. In select cases, the gains have been measuring in at larger.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx-vega-linux1&num=1

[FireBurn]

I see your point (and I think Michael's dismissiveness of the packaging might be off-putting to AMD) but I agree with juno - Phoronix readers aren't here to get the full scoop of what makes the hardware unique and what it's supposed to do. We already know that stuff and it's really not hard to find that information elsewhere, so it's just a waste of Michael's time. All we really care about is how does it perform under Linux, is it worth getting, and what do we need to know about getting it for Linux. I'd say he did that fairly well.

He's literally telling people to go to other sites to get information, if I was an AMD PR manager reading that I'd be like why bother sending something to Phoronix when they're just going to ignore the literature I've sent out and tell people to go to other sites

Unfortunately if sites want to get free stuff they have to be pretty friendly with the company's PR department and play the game - I'm not saying it's right - I'd love to have seen Phoronix with a 290X and a FuryX along with the other cards that are routinely benchmarked here

The amount of bitching I've seen posted in articles in the past when he doesn't get samples I just can't fathom why he doesn't go through the motions like all the other sites

[Shevchen]

Michael
Thank you very much for the test. Very impressive day-1 performance (I'm sure there is still a lot of headroom to play on) and a great day for Open Source and gaming on Linux in general.

Now, as Gamers Nexus mentioned in his last Youtube video, flashing the BIOS is right now not possible due to Microsofts "secure boot" stuff (which nobody cares for in the Linux community) which AMD agreed on supporting (I get the general idea of why) so my Q for AMD at this point is: Can we pretty please have a non-secure-boot mode (make a checkbox that we do it at our own risk if you want) to embrace the full potential of the cards?

Happy Vega day to you all!

[boxie]

I see your point (and I think Michael's dismissiveness of the packaging might be off-putting to AMD) but I agree with juno - Phoronix readers aren't here to get the full scoop of what makes the hardware unique and what it's supposed to do. We already know that stuff and it's really not hard to find that information elsewhere, so it's just a waste of Michael's time. All we really care about is how does it perform under Linux, is it worth getting, and what do we need to know about getting it for Linux. I'd say he did that fairly well.

That said, I found it interesting (in fact, was the only unboxing article I saw)

I do agree on the Linux focus though, that's his strength !

[Niarbeht]

*applauds*

[bridgman]

Do you really wonder why you don't normally get samples when you start of your article by saying you won't be going into the details like other sites are (and telling your readers to go else where) and saying you don't understand the hype of unboxing etc?

In fairness, while Michael said he didn't understand the hype of "unboxing articles" he did write a good one.

He's literally telling people to go to other sites to get information, if I was an AMD PR manager reading that I'd be like why bother sending something to Phoronix when they're just going to ignore the literature I've sent out and tell people to go to other sites

Michael was added to the sampling group a bit late so we didn't have a chance to go through architecture etc...

[agd5f]

Product launch cycles and Linux distro cycles rarely align. It's not always possible for the kernel versions most distros are currently shipping will contain usable new asic support at hw launch. For example, even with DC upstream, you'd still need a number of patches that are slated for drm-next for a fully optimal experience with vega10. To bridge this gap, one of the things we are working on is providing unified downloadable driver packages that support both the fully open stack and the pro stack.

[bug77]

Do you really wonder why you don't normally get samples when you start of your article by saying you won't be going into the details like other sites are (and telling your readers to go else where) and saying you don't understand the hype of unboxing etc?

Well, I'm not opening unboxing articles on other sites, I'm glad Michael doesn't make me do that here.

And more on topic, nice progress from AMD, but that power draw...