Ubuntu 12.10: Open-Source Radeon vs. AMD Catalyst Performance

[orome]

stock configuration

Please read the text:

The stock open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver stack was used with the Unity desktop while the only change was disabling swap buffers wait from the xorg.conf.

AFAIK, OSS driver does not switch performance levels by default so the card would be running on default freqs. The specs table also says that the driver reports OpanGL 2.1 so any advantages of opengl 3+ are gone. I don't know how much work canonical backports to it's kernels, but things like pcie2.0 were enabled in 3.6 and the test uses 3.5.

All in all, OSS driver was in pretty bad position for this test. IMO the stock configuration is supposed to be stable first anything else second, and all tests ran without lockup or crash (at least none are reported).

[Pallidus]

I don't like intel but ever since I switched to intel gfx this shit has been silky smooth

[moilami]

amd, nvidia, what?

I have Intel X4500HD. This week I get Intel HD 4000 graphics.

X4500HD served fine, except not that fine in some 3D games. HD 4000 will serve very fine even in 3D games I play (in maybe about less than once a month), which are Free Software.

Could not be more happy supporter of Intel

I look down on "me no can reveal docs nor source because me business sucks so much me would be ruined if me's competitors would get that information".

If NVIDIA or AMD can't free the source because it would affect their business, then they deserve to disappear from the face of earth because their business just sucks big time. They are hardware manufacturers to say the least.

[oibaf]

Was the LLVM compiler enabled? I'd like to see a test on r600 with and without it.

[Rigaldo]

I wonder what the purpose of 300 fps would be. As far as I have heard the human eye will only register up to 60 fps - so perhaps a better measure would be "at what resolution does the driver performance sink below ideal fps".

This might give a different readout than just completely un-needed fps that do not give any noticeable difference for the human user.

It's a measurement of performance. Not all games will run at equal or more than 60 fps under Catalyst. So on radeon you'll get much less. In these tests here radeon didn't always make the 60 anyway. 60 is actually the screen refresh rate. The eyes refresh rate is I think around 13 fps, but works much differently than the screen, and even if it didn't you'd need much more than 13 fps to see smooth transitions. Besides 60 fps is the usual refresh rate, so when you have less you'll likely get tearing, choppiness or lag(if the game doesn't skip the frames).
But again, the point is to see how much better each driver utilizes the GPU's power here .. I'd say Catalyst(as expected) wins this one ..
Of course there's tweaks to make things faster, but not everyone tweaks/wants to tweak their drivers, and mostly they don't always work well or at all and can potentially cause problems(that's why they're not tweaked by default).

[tmikov]

I wonder what the purpose of 300 fps would be. As far as I have heard the human eye will only register up to 60 fps - so perhaps a better measure would be "at what resolution does the driver performance sink below ideal fps".

This might give a different readout than just completely un-needed fps that do not give any noticeable difference for the human user.

Most of these cars have 3, 4 or even 6 outputs. So at the very least you need 60 FPS per output...

[efikkan]

Michael: If you get a chance, throw in a low end Radeon card as well. And some performance per dollar and performance per watt graphs would be cool.
I appreciate your benchmarks

[efikkan]

I don't really care for 3D performance but this is ridiculous. Why is the performance gap that big ? I mean WTF ? They do have paid developers after all.

Still I do appreciate having a stable open source driver.

Well, people have different needs. But I'm glad you realize the realities. This is what we got after five years(?) now of sponsored work. Imagine where we could have been if these developers spent their effort on Fglrx and perhaps AMD focused on open sourcing this instead? The situation for modern OpenGL support is even worse (OpenGL 3.x +), as well as advanced AA.

[staalmannen]

60 fps

I wonder what the purpose of 300 fps would be. As far as I have heard the human eye will only register up to 60 fps - so perhaps a better measure would be "at what resolution does the driver performance sink below ideal fps".

This might give a different readout than just completely un-needed fps that do not give any noticeable difference for the human user.

[smitty3268]

What really galls me about the open source AMD drivers is how much they've stalled on providing proper 3D support for Southern Islands. I thought it was here many months ago, but I was wrong.... it was just a "first cut". AMD doesn't seem to know how to really finish off the support on their open drivers -- they get it to the point where it can render a few triangles, and move on to the next chipset. And I guess the rest of the "community" built up around the open drivers hasn't invested the time this cycle to get SI running.

Months ago, I was keeping track of the number of days we went before we could get a true and proper composited 3D desktop experience with working (mostly bug-free and performant) 2D and 3D drivers and OpenGL 2.1. I recall that the first mega-patch for SI hit well in advance of how long it took for Evergreen. Well, now it looks like SI will take longer than Evergreen. Definitely not a good sign, guys.

Interestingly enough, a patch set hit the mailing list today which enables control flow on the SI driver. It'd be good to see what the current status of the driver is with that - supposedly i think it's getting pretty close now, but i don't know if it's still crashing all over the place or if it's considered stable.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2012-October/029343.html

radeonsi can run piglit reliably with it now. It fixes hundreds of tests and prevents many more from crashing.