RADV ACO Lands NGG Geometry Shader Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: RADV ACO Lands NGG Geometry Shader Support

Adding to the growing list of Mesa 20.3 features is now RADV ACO supporting NGG GS. Or rather, the Radeon Vulkan driver with the ACO back-end now supports geometry shaders with Next-Gen Geometry (NGG) as found on newer AMD GPUs...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RADV-ACO-NGG-GS

[schmidtbag]

I'm going to have this weird sense of pride if RDNA2 ends up being faster and more stable on Linux than on Windows. At this rate there's a pretty good chance that's going to happen.

[ernstp]

AMD will probably sort out NGG for RDNA2 on Windows...

[skeevy420]

I'm going to have this weird sense of pride if RDNA2 ends up being faster and more stable on Linux than on Windows. At this rate there's a pretty good chance that's going to happen.

My RX 580 is more stable on Linux than Windows so RDNA2 being that way wouldn't surprise me one bit.

[Volta]

I hope ACO is default in Linux distributions instead of slow, stuttering llvm crap.

[skeevy420]

That is my experience as well (Navi). But that might be because the Windows driver is more complex and has more features: image sharpening, power and fan tuning, screenshots, streaming, video color tone adjustment, 30-bit RGB color support, etc.

Maybe, but my monitor can't even go into standby on Windows without crap going wrong. Monitor goes on standby, I wake it up, and the monitor blanks on and off every two seconds until I power cycle my monitor. I think it's because I'm using HDMI and HDCP goes wonky around the time my monitor goes into standby or wakes up. All I know is that it doesn't happen on Linux at all.

It gets old dealing with the same bug every time you leave your system for 5 minutes.

[wizard69]

That is my experience as well (Navi). But that might be because the Windows driver is more complex and has more features: image sharpening, power and fan tuning, screenshots, streaming, video color tone adjustment, 30-bit RGB color support, etc.

I've had similar experiences with the 5500XT. The card has ran well since the machine was built except for the well known early driver issue that seemed to kill all platforms. I have to wonder if this is an example of better reliability by trying to avoid doing everything.

[aufkrawall]

That is my experience as well (Navi). But that might be because the Windows driver is more complex and has more features

The Windows driver is still more buggy when you keep the additional features out of consideration.

image sharpening, screenshots, streaming, video color tone adjustment

Available in 3rd party tools (which are usually much better anyway).

power and fan tuning, 30-bit RGB color support

Available via sysfs.

[mcoffin]

I honestly had no idea that this wasn't already supported since it's been supported by AMDVLK for so long. I primarily use mesa with the exception of one or two edge-case games, since it generally offers better performance, but this is nice to see! I wonder if mesa will expose primitive ordered shaders or not, as AMDVLK chose not to.

[DadSchoorse]

I honestly had no idea that this wasn't already supported since it's been supported by AMDVLK for so long. I primarily use mesa with the exception of one or two edge-case games, since it generally offers better performance, but this is nice to see! I wonder if mesa will expose primitive ordered shaders or not, as AMDVLK chose not to.

Because geometry shaders are not commonly used and the NGG path isn't needed or really faster on current hardware. So why implement something that's optional and a decent amount of work?