AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series Gallium3D Merged

[bridgman]

Geforces just got harder to program with Kepler, and Radeon got easier with GCN

Writing an efficient compute application definitely got easier with GCN, and we believe that implementing an optimized shader compiler got easier as well, but writing a driver was probably 10x as much work as it would have been if SI were just another evolution of the R600=>NI architecture. Maybe closer to 20x.

[bridgman]

I haven't seen any indication that writing a driver for GCN is any "easier" than for VLIW, except when it comes to seriously optimizing the shader compiler.

The VLIW hardware actually worked out real well from a shader compiler POV, since most of the IR operations were on 3- or 4-component vertices and fragments and so each IR operation could be translated directly into a single 3- or 4-slot VLIW instruction.

[Kano]

Well somehow there do not exist any fast opengl drivers for ati cards. Not even using win where you can compare opengl against dx11 you see good drivers. For linux you see lots of artefacts using rage with wine (hd 5670 if you forgot it). It would be just too funny when oss drivers would beat fglrx in some years...

[Kano]

no, i used heaven on win7 to compare opengl+dx11. but heaven+fglrx is even slower than win+opengl. win+dx11 scales with cf.

[allquixotic]

that’s for sure! i play very well with the radeon driver and my hd4770 card.

the point is the catalyst makes headache and it doesn’t worth it!

in your right words the catalyst is a "directX" driver! not a openGL driver.

Yeah, and this is why I'm waiting for RadeonSI to be viable. But in the mean time, I have to use fglrx, where I scroll the browser window and have to wait almost a whole second for the driver to catch up. I get a better rendering performance on the Intel driver on my little 965GM.

[garegin]

the only time i got good performance with a FOSS driver other than intel's was with a dell with a 7xxx chip. the effects were so smooth and fast. I was really impressed. honestly i've never had performance issues with intel drivers from 965 and on. nouveau on the other hand is a crapshoot of kernel panics and artifacts.