AMD open source driver stability/performance

[Drizzt321]

So the big thing holding me back up until now from switching to Linux for my main desktop has been gaming. Looking at Steam Proton, seems that that's handling most stuff that I'd want to play, if it doesn't have a native Linux version.

So my next thought is going Nvidia or AMD. I'd rather support AMDs open source stance with their drivers, if they're reasonably solid overall. Prioritizing stability and solid performance, although obviously higher performance is better.

Right now I have a 1080 GTX, although I'm looking to upgrade in the near future (month or two I hope), and if I do and AMD has been solid over the last year, I'll get the 7900XTX (I'm figuring 4-7 year life span). I understand that currently the next-gen drivers are in beta branches and not in mainstream quite yet, and might be in the same state when I get it. Otherwise I'll probably get one of the 4080 flavors for Nvidia, if that's the best route to go. I'm willing to put up with a small bit of manual pain for the AMD to support those efforts.

So, what say you all, go team Red or team Green?

[Berniyh]

Stability on the open source drivers is usually quite, I've been using them for years now and it works really well. First on a Vega, now on a 6900XT.
OpenGL and Vulkan work really well with a recent mesa. Of course, the 7900 XTX is still very new, so there could be a few quirks here and there, usually this means that it's a good idea to get a distribution that provides you with a recent kernel and mesa.
Normally I'd recommend Arch Linux, but if this is your first time using Linux, then maybe you'd be scared by the manual installation method they use. They have a very good documentation/wiki though, so it's doable even for beginners, but still harder than installing e.g. Ubuntu or Mint.
OpenCL is available via ROCm, but I'm not sure whether every distribution already packages that, better check before, if you need it.
Video acceleration is available via libva, which should be available on all major distributions.
Also be aware, that although AMD on Linux did catch up a lot in recent years, there are still some things on the todo list. e.g. HDR is still ongoing effort and not complete.

Regarding performance, there has been a comparison of the performance on Phoronix. The 4000 series was unfortunately missing there, but you kind of know the difference between the 3000 and 4000 series from Windows benchmarks, so you still can draw some conclusions there.

[agd5f]

Also be aware, that although AMD on Linux did catch up a lot in recent years, there are still some things on the todo list. e.g. HDR is still ongoing effort and not complete.

HDR (or lack there of) is not something specific to AMD. This applies to all Linux GPU drivers at the moment. We are still sorting out the APIs and how compositors and applications would use this.

[Berniyh]

Good point. Still, it is something that a Windows user might expect, but we're not there yet on the Linux landscape.

[mandrake2]

I kind of followed your thinking - that AMD was more supportive of the open source community (like AT ALL!) and that I keep reading how AMD is contributing to the open source drivers for their graphics cards.

However, I have had virtually no luck getting an RX 6800 running with my new 7950X build on 3 flavors of Linux: Debian (until now my preference), Kubuntu, and Fedora. There are specific instructions aimed at getting the drivers running properly on Ubuntu at AMD.com. I've not been able to get them to work though. I have a 5950X with an RX 6600, this new build, and an i9-12900 with an RTX 3050.

The 3050 is the only GPU I can get running properly on Linux, and only on Fedora. All the graphics cards work fine as far as resolution and multi-monitors, e.g., but if you want to access CUDA or OpenCL - which I do - then you, or at least me, are out of luck.

I'm probably going to end up going with a 4070Ti on Fedora (a 4080 wouldn't fit my case!). I'm pretty irritated that I can't get Radeon GPUs working properly on Linux. I've spent a lot of time with different distros and various instructions from around the web that purport to tell you how to get the graphics cards working properly, with very little to no luck. Success seems very specific to kernel and driver versions. I watched one YouTube video that suggested the Radeon drivers needed an older kernel. An attempt to create an older kernel on a newer build yielded a system that wouldn't boot.

Nvidia famously doesn't play well with Linux, but the rpmfusion Nvidia drivers with Fedora is the only combination I've managed to get working so far.

Good luck with your endeavors.

[bridgman]

I would expect Fedora 37 to work out of the box with your 6800 (don't download and install drivers, just use what is in the install image).

Debian tends to run older kernel/Mesa and so takes a while before in-box support appears. Don't have any anecdotal evidence for Kubuntu but again I would expect 22.04 to work out of box on your 6800.

Which distro versions were you testing, and were you downloading drivers or using upstream support for each ?

[skeevy420]

I would expect Fedora 37 to work out of the box with your 6800 (don't download and install drivers, just use what is in the install image).

Debian tends to run older kernel/Mesa and so takes a while before in-box support appears. Don't have any anecdotal evidence for Kubuntu but again I would expect 22.04 to work out of box on your 6800.

Which distro versions were you testing, and were you downloading drivers or using upstream support for each ?

It's the OpenCL part that they're having problems with. Everything else works.

mandrake2

Follow this link and hopefully that'll work for you in regards to Fedora. On Ubuntu you outta be able to do something like "sudo apt install rocm-opencl-runtime".

Regardless of the distribution, you don't need the full AMDGPU-Pro stack, just the OpenCL bits and ROCM. Unless you know you have a specific use for them, I wouldn't even install distribution provided AMDVLK packages since they override RADV which can cause a lot of issues. You basically want RADV\Mesa for everything, just the OpenCL bits from AMDGPU-Pro, and their ROCM stuff. I don't actually use any of that, I've just come across the instructions a lot.

Due to how new your hardware is, in regards to your AM5 stuff, on Ubuntu/Kubuntu you might need to use a newer kernel and consider using a PPA for a newer Mesa if you play games. I have a 6700 XT and it really benefits from newer drivers. Personally, I'd go with one of the Rolling Holy Trinity -- Arch, Fedora, Tumbleweed. New hardware likes new software.

[mandrake2]

It's the OpenCL part that they're having problems with. Everything else works.

.

Correct. Standard video functionality is fine but e.g. Blender can't find a GPU that supports OpenCL/HIP. Tried on Debian, K/Ubuntu, Fedora in that order. My preference is Debian but I'm willing to go to another distro to get a fully operational GPU. I'm not a distro hopper however, so I'm only really looking at Kubuntu and Fedora. I've tried out Manjaro in the past and while it's OK I prefer a Debian-based distro, or RH-based. While I hold out some hope for Debian 12 later this year I think I'm probably going to be frustrated by that too.

The info at AMD.com for installing Linux drivers has packages for 20.04 and 22.04. TBH I've only tried 22.04 (and 22.10 but that was something I was willing to give a try even though it's not "officially" supported on the AMD.com page).

[bridgman]

Whoops, I missed that you were talking about compute.

I'm a bit surprised that our Ubuntu LTS packages don't work on Kubuntu - we might need to tweak the package metadata to include variants, not sure. What kind of problems did you run into with Kubuntu - failure to install or problems once installed ?

Fedora might also be an option - not official but we have a lot of Fedora users internally, will ask around.

I'm not sure how far up the ROCm stack we have support for 6800, but OpenCL should work for sure and I believe HIP runtime & compiler as well.

[mandrake2]

Whoops, I missed that you were talking about compute.
What kind of problems did you run into with Kubuntu - failure to install or problems once installed ?.

Kubuntu installation on 22.04.1 went perfectly well following the instructions at https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ and getting the bits from https://www.amd.com/en/support/linux-drivers. However, nothing I tried would yield a driver stack that would be recognized in Blender as supporting OpenCL or HIP. The Radeon card (RX 6600 in that case) worked well when doing normal video-out activities and running glmark2 as a test, e.g., according to radeontop.

I tried the same instructions and binaries on a Kubuntu 22.10 installation on a machine with an RX 6800. Unfortunately the drivers would not install, probably unsurprisingly: APT complained about unresolved dependencies and gave me an interesting message to the effect that an impossible situation had occurred or been requested. The machine still runs OK but I have to use the Mesa driver as you'd expect.

Do you know of any OpenCL sanity and/or stress tests (on github for example) that I can use to verify drivers once installed? Blender apparently dropped OpenCL support around version 3.0 but then re-enabled it around version 3.2. I have 2.85 (IIRC) on the Kubuntu 22.04.1 installation (Debian package) and 3.4 everywhere else (downloaded from blender.org). But it seems that maybe Blender isn't the most definitive arbiter of whether a GPU driver stack is operating correctly and fully, in particular regarding gpgpu computation. Thanks.