Linux Desktop, How good is Vega / Polaris

[lichtenstein]

Just FYI, the result from my 3.5y old 512GB samsung sata ssd pro 850, about half full:
write: 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 2.36636 s, 454 MB/s
read: 1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 2.02261 s, 531 MB/s

I'll report the evo 970 result once I get to that.

[lichtenstein]

Thanks. I understand you prefer to compile your own and I respect that. I'd like to avoid it if I can (I've been down the kernel optimization hole once before, it sucks out my time "oh, can I remove THAT, I don't need that..." etc. With Manjaro I can have the latest (mainstream) kernel without much fuss (and the latest of pretty much all the software I use). So I'll give it a go.

All parts but the EVO just arrived (damn!) and I'll be putting it together soon. I got an external hdd here which I might use to install an OS to verify all is well (the evo and, of all things, the displayport cable should arrive on Monday, I'll use hdmi for now). We'll see when I find the time today.

[lichtenstein]

Right, so I put (most of) it together to see if it all works. It does (cpu/ram/graphics, all there, bios update via internet (wow, fancy!) worked too), I was able to boot into a manjaro usb live session. I didn't bother to install anything yet, the ssd should arrive tomorrow. I moved around a bit (xfce so it's familiar except for the theme), kernel 4.19, amdgpu. It all works fine, no glitches, tear free, etc. I'm actually surprised . I'll know more when I get it installed and get some work done.

Fyi, the graphics card, while being a vega 56, is flashed with the vega 64 bios so it appears as such. I'm curious how good it will perform in games.

Also, it seems the fan control has some sensible defaults: the graphics card fan (while it went really up during boot) was quiet during desktop operations (so is the ryzen stock cooler).

[lichtenstein]

Good idea, will do (I was planning on doing some stress testing anyway), with stock cooler and ref vega overclocked to 64 levels it will be loud . Atm, all BIOS settings are at their defaults so no xmp for the ram (runs at 2133), no PBO for the cpu. I want to establish a base line of stability. Once I'm reasonably sure that it works with the default settings, I'll crank it up. Can't wait for the evo to arrive tomorrow.

[lichtenstein]

Do you know how to monitor the gpu, clock speeds, temps, fan speed and the like?

[lichtenstein]

Manjaro installed fine. The EVO 970 delivers 1.4GB/s writing and 3.1GB/s reading in the dd test above. I'm still testing the rest.

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

Not sure why you guys were talking about wip-kernels and stuff.... I was using my (Polaris) RX480 for two years now with the Arch Linux default Mesa and Kernel and never had any problems in daily use.


The only thing that changed was performance and compatibillity in games which increased as well as having hardware encoding now with the GPU (and e.g. OBS Studio).

[lichtenstein]

Hey, thanks for the input. What games do you play? Do you experience stuttering? Because I do (2700x+vega 56). I get high frame rates but quite a few extreme frame drops.