Performance games with AMD R9 280x

[kentosama]

Hello, I'm new into this forum. I signed up to get information about the AMDGPU driver for Linux. It has been several months since I left Windows 10 for Linux (Debian).

I never liked Windows, but since I had built a PC to play in 2013, I was forced to use it. When I learned that it was possible to play all my Steam games under good conditions thanks to Proton and that my development tools would also work under Linux, I decided to definitely switch to Debian.

I realized that the performance at stake is miserable. I encountered a lot problem with several games, including mainly Tomb Raider. GPU usage is regularly low and the framerate below 30fps in most games.

I don't know if it is a bug with mesa or if it is just less efficient than DirectX. I found it strange never to hear the graphic card fans working and that the GPU usage doesn't exceed ~ 60%. For example, in Tomb Raider, if I look towards the slum, the GPU usage is less than 30% and the framerate is at 12fps (ultra settings). If I look in the opposite direction like the waterfall, the framerate goes up to ~ 30 fps and the GPU load goes up to ~ 60%.

I noticed the problem in most games and that is why I suggested a bug with mesa and / or the amdgpu driver.

My graphics card is an R9 280X and the processor an AMD 8320. I moved to Debian sid in to get mesa 19.3.2 and the kernel 5.4. I did not notice any change. I compiled mesa from git with llvm 9 (mesa 20) and it's the same.

Some games like The Witcher 2 or Dirt Rally use the GPU at 100%, but the performance is not good. Performance with Proton games is also worse than under Windows. A game like Dead or Alive 5 always worked at 60fps and more, but with Proton I have drops at ~ 40 fps.

So I don't know if this is normal.

Are there people with an R9 280X or similar card who could share in-game performance?

Thank you in advance.

[kentosama]

I found a strange thing with Dirt Rally. If I set 8xmsaa before starting a race, the performances are miserable: ~ 12 fps. If during the game, I set xmsaa to 0, I immediately get + ~ 60 fps. If I set again 8xmsaa, the performances are between 50 and 60 fps.

[Dosenpfand81]

I'am still running a 7950 (same as yours) and amdgpu performance is abysmal , not even 50% of the win driver in some cases , it's a lot better with the standard driver but then it lacks Vulkan support .

[kentosama]

I understand, I should be happy that some games at times use 100% of the GPU. Can we hope for improvement in the future?

[Dosenpfand81]

Well Valve finally stabilised it's ACO compiler for GCN which should increase performance BUT ironically AMD is about to drop GCN1.0 support for AMDGPU

[Dosenpfand81]

Unfortunately is can't find a proper replacement for my 7950 . I don't even care if Nvidia or AMD bit they are either too expensive or too slow for the price ....

[bridgman]

BUT ironically AMD is about to drop GCN1.0 support for AMDGPU

Where did you hear this ? We have never said anything like that.

[Dosenpfand81]

It's from this article

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-Might-Drop-GCN-1.0

It sounded like it would make sense given the current state of AMDGPU for gcn 1.0 and the fact that AMDGPU-Pro doesn't supports GCN1.0 consumer cards anyway.

[Dosenpfand81]

Where did you hear this ? We have never said anything like that.

But it eases me a bid that you don't know about

[bridgman]

What I do know is that Christian mentioned in a post about something else (UVD on SI with amdgpu ?) that we were discussing the possibility of dropping SI support from amdgpu (at developer-to-developer level).

It boils down to a tradeoff between:

(a) hacking radeon-style memory management into amdgpu for SI only so that UVD support can be enabled,
(b) extending radv support to radeon kernel driver for SI only so that SI support can be dropped from amdgpu, or
(c) maintaining the status quo, where you need to run with the radeon kernel driver for video acceleration and use amdgpu for Vulkan support

Option (c) seems like one which will become less acceptable over time, although there are a couple of races that affect it as well:

- increased use of Vulkan as the only game option on Linux -vs- SI boards being retired/replaced (this one doesn't feel like the timing will work)
- increased use of Vulkan as the only game option on Linux -vs- CPU encode/decode being sufficient (this one seems potentially more likely)