Linux Support Expectations For The AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series

[piotrj3]

I have been waiting for this launch for so long. But now I have more questions. In order to use some features you need the Windows app. Will there ever be way to get the equivalent functionality in Linux? If I stick the card in a windows machine tune it there will it remember the setting when I move it back to Linux?

"AMD Smart Access technology" - What exactly is that? Is it letting the CPU directly access the Infinity Cache? If so I saw a YT video yesterday where some one had seen some code pushed referring to the Infinity cache so maybe support is on the way.

They really glossed over the parts I was most interested in. AV1 decode, how the compute cores have changed etc. But some thing I saw today was that it looks like it has hardware denoising. I can't imagine where you would get noise in a computer generated image. But if this is for photo/video work I could be super excited.

In raytracing, denoising is necessery. Thing is in raytracing you create rays of photons, calculate their reflections, change of color upon reflection until they reach the camera. Thing is if you create too few rays, image will be having a lot of randomness. Like 100 rays could create you 100 pixels, but that is not enough to create whole image. As well rays are fairly unpredictable in physics realistic model (DXR or VulkanRT uses it) rays. So even if per each pixel you would send one ray, it is... still not enough because a lot of those rays won't reach realistic color because they will bounce unpredictable way (because of for example diffusion). If you would use statistical significant number, then that randomness would be overwhelmed, but GPUs are not fast enough for that. So instead we use small amount of rays, and after use sophisticated denoise algorithms that remove that randomness from image. In nvidia case, Nvidia does use deep learning for that and tensor cores.

[agd5f]

Smart Access Technology works just fine on Linux. It is resizeable BAR support which Linux has supported for years (AMD actually added support for this), but which is relatively new on windows. You just need a platform with enough MMIO space. On older systems this is enabled via sbios options with names like ">4GB MMIO".

[Michael]

Smart Access Technology works just fine on Linux. It is resizeable BAR support which Linux has supported for years (AMD actually added support for this), but which is relatively new on windows. You just need a platform with enough MMIO space. On older systems this is enabled via sbios options with names like ">4GB MMIO".

Thanks for clarification, updated.

[ms178]

Smart Access Technology works just fine on Linux. It is resizeable BAR support which Linux has supported for years (AMD actually added support for this), but which is relatively new on windows. You just need a platform with enough MMIO space. On older systems this is enabled via sbios options with names like ">4GB MMIO".

Thanks, but does this mean that every platform which supports these PCIe features will get this feature enabled with a 6000 series GPU? At least I took away from the presentation that this will be limited to AMD's 5000 series of CPUs, 500-series chipsets and the 6000 series GPUs only. My Haswell-EP/C612 platform should support all the necessary PCIe features and broader platform support for this feature would make the GPUs more appealing to more people (if the benefits could be realized there, too).

[agd5f]

Thanks, but does this mean that every platform which supports these PCIe features will get this feature enabled with a 6000 series GPU? At least I took away from the presentation that this will be limited to AMD's 5000 series of CPUs, 500-series chipsets and the 6000 series GPUs only. My Haswell-EP should support all the necessary PCIe features and broader platform support for this feature would make the GPUs more appealing to more people (if the benefits could be realized there, too).

I don't know what windows does exactly, but on Linux at least, it will work on any platform with enough MMIO space. I suspect windows would behave the same way (although I think windows has stricter requirements about BAR resizing compared to Linux so you may need a sbios update for your platform to make windows happy).

[zxy_thf]

I don't know what windows does exactly, but on Linux at least, it will work on any platform with enough MMIO space. I suspect windows would behave the same way (although I think windows has stricter requirements about BAR resizing compared to Linux so you may need a sbios update for your platform to make windows happy).

Off topic, could you confirm the status/schedule of Vulkan RTX support on Linux? and how about RoCm for Big Navi?
Really want to give them a try, but not sure If the software is ready or not.

[pal666]

i'm more curious about power drain. so far amd still suffer from that. and its still weaker than nvida at performance (at higher power consumption)

why do you ignore article and post your imagination instead? it clearly states that amd videocard with total board power of 300 watts is faster and 1.5 times cheaper than novideo videocard with 350 watts tdp which probably translates into 500 watts of total board power

[pal666]

AMD drivers are always big question mark

novideo drivers do not exist at all, no questions needed

Also keep in mind AMD in benchmarks used some "smart memory" "rage mode" which probably aren't raw performance.

also keep in mind that they showed both results and they are faster both ways.

[pal666]

"AMD Smart Access technology" - What exactly is that? Is it letting the CPU directly access the Infinity Cache?
If so I saw a YT video yesterday where some one had seen some code pushed referring to the Infinity cache so maybe support is on the way.

infinity cache is l3 cache, you can't access it. smart access is some kind of direct memory access

They really glossed over the parts I was most interested in. AV1 decode

i think it was stated earlier that they have av1 decode

, how the compute cores have changed etc.

they gave percentage by which cores are faster

But some thing I saw today was that it looks like it has hardware denoising. I can't imagine where you would get noise in a computer generated image. But if this is for photo/video work I could be super excited.

afair it was software(shader) denoising for noise from ray tracing

[pal666]

Even if you buy AMD, why would you buy 6900XT, when 6800XT exists, with same memory, a lot cheaper, and only slighty slower

even if you are imbecile why would you buy 3090 when 6900xt exists which is a lot cheaper, a lot less power hungry and faster? or 6800xt exits which is several times cheaper, a lot less power hungry and only slightly slower?

and on top of that official benchmarking figures don't rely on some "smart memory" or "rage mode OC" in 6800XT

smart memory is available on any modern hardware and 6800xt showed both results(and both were faster)

. Why would you put 350$ more on card that can't do anything more.

why would you put $850 more on card that can't do anything more? why would you buy 3080 which is slower, more expensive, more power hungry and has half of memory? i have an answer: because you are nvidiot

They are both 4k gaming cards without anything beyond it and at 4k diffrence between them will be small. They are both not capable of 8k due to VRAM, they both have all exactly technologies etc. At least 3090 has vram for some 8K stuff and specific features like DLSS to make it possible.

it has more vram because alternative would be 12gb which would be less than on 3 times cheaper competition. it will not help you get 8k(nothing will btw). i plan to use these "4k" cards on 1080p 240 hz monitor to have constant(rather than average) 240 fps

there is literally no point to buy 6900XT

some people want to buy fastest card. right now it is 6900xt. and it is much less power hungry than competition and 1.5 times cheaper but for nvidiots price is only a point when comparing amd cards vs amd card, any novideo card has some magical qualities which make price irrelevant

, when 6800XT or RTX3080 exist, you can just buy any of those some great versions with maybe water cooling or literally the best air cooling model on market, slighty OC 6800XT/RTX3080 and you are almost the same tier performance without them being loud.

3080 is more power hungry than even 6900xt. and 6800xt has same total board power as 6900xt. i.e. you can't get less loud by buying next cheaper amd or novideo card(you can by moving two steps to 6800) . since you've asked, i'm looking for water cooling without fans(i.e. passive except for pump)