Radeon Software For Linux 20.50 Released With RX 6700 XT Support

[skeevy420]

Nothing so think-y. Ray tracing support was in the 20.50 branch but it wasn't working properly and needed some more time - but we needed to get 20.50 out ASAP in order to support recent Ubuntu 20.04 updates, specifically the move to 5.8 kernel, so we disabled RT and pushed the release out.

Speaking of drivers not working -- whatever TF AMD driver Windows is pushing with the latest Insider Dev Build is freaking horrible. Doesn't detect HDMI audio and text goes all wonky when scrolling in Firefox. Replacing theirs with 21.3.1 fixes both those. Just throwing that out there for yourself and other people here. I imagine that more here than just me runs bleeding edge Windows and Linux.

And because Windows decided to do that first I got to sit there for almost an hour with no audio while doing the Insider update. I was trying to watch Clone Wars, dammit.

[JoshuaAshton]

Nothing so think-y. Ray tracing support was in the 20.50 branch but it wasn't working properly and needed some more time - but we needed to get 20.50 out ASAP in order to support recent Ubuntu 20.04 updates, specifically the move to 5.8 kernel, so we disabled RT and pushed the release out.

It's been literally half a year since this feature launched on Windows.
I really don't think that excuse is acceptable given the timeframes here.

If NVIDIA had done the same thing, I think people would be much more annoyed -- and rightfully so.

It's really hard to take AMDGPU-Pro (and even AMDVLK) seriously as a target as both a consumer and a developer when it gets updates every 4-6 months.
I think AMD needs to take a hard look at the way it does driver releases, that timeframe is too long and leaves bugs and missing features for extremely long periods.

To give an example of a ridiculous timeframe problem:
VK_EXT_4444_formats was available in July last year when the spec released for it in RADV, because I implemented it. NV was not far behind.
A̶M̶D̶G̶P̶U̶-̶P̶r̶o̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶y̶e̶s̶t̶e̶r̶d̶a̶y̶.̶ I was wrong! AMDGPU-Pro still doesn't have this lol. Open AMDVLK and the AMD Windows driver got this last week.
Adding support for this extension is a < 10 line change.

Now apply the above for bugs too

How does AMD see itself in this space? Is it just okay with not caring about its official drivers at all?
Because honestly, I feel like if you did care, there would be ray tracing support now, or at the very least some form of beta driver available.

[coder111]

What is the current state of GPU compute on Linux with AMD RDNA? I have 5700XT. I currently run Mesa for 3D graphics and that works well. But ROCm doesn't seem to support this card. And if I install amdgpu-pro (which is tricky on Debian/Sid), my 3D performance drops and some games start crashing.

Is it possible to get any compute support while keeping Mesa for 3D graphics?

[aufkrawall]

Now apply the above for bugs too

Totally agreed. My bug report to fix vsync flipping behavior has also just been left to rot.
Even Nvidia got it fixed (and of course Mesa just works fine anyway).

[smitty3268]

How does AMD see itself in this space? Is it just okay with not caring about its official drivers at all?
Because honestly, I feel like if you did care, there would be ray tracing support now, or at the very least some form of beta driver available.

I thought that was kind of obvious. The pro drivers exist solely to run whatever workstation apps they've been officially certified to run, and for no other reason. So adding RT or fixing bugs for non-certified apps is pointless.

The fact that RT hasn't been added to any linux drivers yet just goes to show exactly how AMD prioritizes their linux support. I still don't think they've even committed to saying that RT support will be coming to the open source drivers at all, and clearly the pro drivers are an afterthought at best.

[Svyatko]

What is the current state of GPU compute on Linux with AMD RDNA? I have 5700XT. I currently run Mesa for 3D graphics and that works well. But ROCm doesn't seem to support this card. And if I install amdgpu-pro (which is tricky on Debian/Sid), my 3D performance drops and some games start crashing.

Is it possible to get any compute support while keeping Mesa for 3D graphics?

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/548518-Leap-TW-OpenCL-on-AMD-with-Mesa-3D-headless-amdgpu-pro?p=3002062#post3002062

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/548518-Leap-TW-OpenCL-on-AMD-with-Mesa-3D-headless-amdgpu-pro?p=3004534#post3004534

ILL installing libdrm-amdgpu package for Raven APU is causing:

1. Firefox hangs sometimes during work.
2. Ark quits if trying to compress files too big in summed volume.

Possibly this is due to wrong video memory volume report for APUs.

Without libdrm-amdgpu GPU is not used by Ark for compression-decompression.
I can select "Unknown AMD GPU" in Blender for OpenCL usage, and it renders pictures, with less heat generation, but slower than with CPU.
So there is no HSA support with Linux + AMD APU (Intel may work).

With ROCm drivers system works with OpenCL load ~6 times slower than with OpenCL drivers from amdgpu-pro: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...gpu-pro-driver

[fafreeman]

I thought that was kind of obvious. The pro drivers exist solely to run whatever workstation apps they've been officially certified to run, and for no other reason. So adding RT or fixing bugs for non-certified apps is pointless.

The fact that RT hasn't been added to any linux drivers yet just goes to show exactly how AMD prioritizes their linux support. I still don't think they've even committed to saying that RT support will be coming to the open source drivers at all, and clearly the pro drivers are an afterthought at best.

they have to. intel, of all people, landed initial support for it in mesa back in november with mesa 20.3: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...Vulkan-RT-20.3
it be an absolute embarrassment for amd if they can't do it.

[smitty3268]

they have to. intel, of all people, landed initial support for it in mesa back in november with mesa 20.3: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...Vulkan-RT-20.3
it be an absolute embarrassment for amd if they can't do it.

AMD is embarrassed all the time by various driver issues, and it doesn't seem to bother them.

[fafreeman]

AMD is embarrassed all the time by various driver issues, and it doesn't seem to bother them.

well i have no problems on either windows or linux with my 6900xt when it comes to driver problems. its been very stable for me. its just an embarrassment that a big feature of rdna 2 isn't yet supported on linux when intel added initial support for for gpu's not even out yet back in november. in mesa. they'll have to land support for it very soon with now both intel and nvidia supporting vulkan ray tracing and dxvk is already working on support for it.

[user1]

I've just noticed that the Vulkan version of amdvlk-pro in this release is 1.2.159, which means it is equivalent to one of the amdvlk-open releases from November. It also means it doesn't have the low cpu performance fix introduced in amdvlk-2020.Q4.6 release from December. Why does it ship such an old version of amdvlk, while the Windows 20.50 release got one of the latest amdvlk releases?