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  • #11
    Originally posted by uid313 View Post
    I've heard that AMD drivers really suck.
    "I've heard <ignorant, half-baked, over-generalized statement>."
    There seems to be a lot of that going around the internet...

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    • #12
      Originally posted by DanL View Post
      "I've heard <ignorant, half-baked, over-generalized statement>."
      There seems to be a lot of that going around the internet...

      Its not that they have bad quality nor the open nor the closed. Its just that AMD solution Card+Driver doesn't even start some first rate games via Wine. Catalyst+HD2000-HD6000 doesn't start Tera_Online and shows multiple D3D errors, wile every nVidia Cuda card works fine with the closed drivers. Even Intel has better shape final solution than AMD. I prefer the open Intel cards that behave like 0.35(FMAC)-0.5(MADD)tflops Radeons and they play many more things. Also Nvidia its the best for gamers (i will not buy closed card again tho), and their compilers offloading many parts on the GPU and have static shader compiling support to, so they are faster and more compatible.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
        Expeditions: Conquistador that uses Unity 4 (I'm a beta tester), actually runs faster when using r600g than when using fglrx. It's still a bit slow at times, but then it's also a bit slow in the same places on Windows as well. I have no clue how that works, but it's amazing. And I'm not even using the latest Mesa release (although I am using some extra tweaked settings in xorg.conf.d). Of course, it's a circumstantial case, but I find it mighty impressive.
        Yes, the open source AMD drivers ultimately get better than fglrx.

        1. The power management of the open source driver is better in that with fglrx on my ATI Mobility X700 (r300g), if I'm plugged into power then the GPU goes into "High performance" mode and doesn't give an option to be bumped down into power savings mode unless I unplug the power cable. This is true in both Windows and Linux. With the open source drivers, I can have the system always boot the GPU into power savings mode and then later I can manually bump it into high performance whenever I want, regardless of whether I'm on battery or not. Love it. This gives a lot of control over how hot my laptop gets when I'm on battery or plugged into power. So I have a lot more control over the "power profile" of the GPU.

        2. WebGL was never supported or runnable by fglrx on my hardware. The ancient fglrx driver for R300 hardware is blacklisted by web browsers that run WebGL due to complete system lockups. The AMD open source graphics drivers support it.

        3. Some humble bundle games would lock the whole PC up when playing while using the 6 year old fglrx driver which is the latest fglrx driver for my hardware.. Except for missing MSAA, the games run just fine on the r300g open source driver.

        4. The AMD open source drivers' 2D acceleration in web browsers is far better than the fglrx driver. When I run my GPU in power savings mode with fglrx, scrolling through webpages like Engadget with tons of large photos is a bit choppy.. Using the open source drivers, it's as smooth as silk and still has the advantage of power savings.. It's pretty impressive.

        5. Same thing is true in 2D accelerated file managers such as Dolphin that do thumbnail previews. Folders with thousands of photo previews, scrolling is smooth as silk.. With fglrx, it's not unless I run my GPU in high performance mode which seriously cuts battery life and adds heat.

        Things the r300g graphics driver doesn't have compared to the 6 year old fglrx:
        1. Somehow still missing about 15% of 3D performance in games. (Yes, I've tried S3TC and HyperZ, still doesn't account for it)
        2. No MSAA support.

        I'm not really complaining though.. The 5 points above more than makes up for the 2 points below.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by Sidicas View Post
          Yes, the open source AMD drivers ultimately get better than fglrx.

          1. The power management of the open source driver is better in that with fglrx on my ATI Mobility X700 (r300g), if I'm plugged into power then the GPU goes into "High performance" mode and doesn't give an option to be bumped down into power savings mode unless I unplug the power cable. This is true in both Windows and Linux. With the open source drivers, I can have the system always boot the GPU into power savings mode and then later I can manually bump it into high performance whenever I want, regardless of whether I'm on battery or not. Love it. This gives a lot of control over how hot my laptop gets when I'm on battery or plugged into power. So I have a lot more control over the "power profile" of the GPU.

          2. WebGL was never supported or runnable by fglrx on my hardware. The ancient fglrx driver for R300 hardware is blacklisted by web browsers that run WebGL due to complete system lockups. The AMD open source graphics drivers support it.

          3. Some humble bundle games would lock the whole PC up when playing while using the 6 year old fglrx driver which is the latest fglrx driver for my hardware.. Except for missing MSAA, the games run just fine on the r300g open source driver.

          4. The AMD open source drivers' 2D acceleration in web browsers is far better than the fglrx driver. When I run my GPU in power savings mode with fglrx, scrolling through webpages like Engadget with tons of large photos is a bit choppy.. Using the open source drivers, it's as smooth as silk and still has the advantage of power savings.. It's pretty impressive.

          5. Same thing is true in 2D accelerated file managers such as Dolphin that do thumbnail previews. Folders with thousands of photo previews, scrolling is smooth as silk.. With fglrx, it's not unless I run my GPU in high performance mode which seriously cuts battery life and adds heat.

          Things the r300g graphics driver doesn't have compared to the 6 year old fglrx:
          1. Somehow still missing about 15% of 3D performance in games. (Yes, I've tried S3TC and HyperZ, still doesn't account for it)
          2. No MSAA support.

          I'm not really complaining though.. The 5 points above more than makes up for the 2 points below.
          Yes damn right! But on the other hand R300g is the "golden age" hd2000-hd4000 isn't that fun. Maybe in 1-2 years.

          Comment


          • #15
            Originally posted by Sidicas View Post
            Yes, the open source AMD drivers ultimately get better than fglrx.

            1. The power management of the open source driver is better in that with fglrx on my ATI Mobility X700 (r300g), if I'm plugged into power then the GPU goes into "High performance" mode and doesn't give an option to be bumped down into power savings mode unless I unplug the power cable. This is true in both Windows and Linux. With the open source drivers, I can have the system always boot the GPU into power savings mode and then later I can manually bump it into high performance whenever I want, regardless of whether I'm on battery or not. Love it. This gives a lot of control over how hot my laptop gets when I'm on battery or plugged into power. So I have a lot more control over the "power profile" of the GPU.
            For me, this works out quiet nice lately. I use a Plugable docking station via USB with an external monitor (DisplayLink).
            The open driver is programmed to use he highest memory clock if an external monitor is connected to DVI, with the DisplayLink (Fedora uses the fbdev driver) it behaves as if there is no external monitor.
            The problem, with a very low memory clock (<=150MHz with low profile), the pictures on the external monitor lag a little and get a little corrupted from time to time. For example scrolling a website in Firefox, parts of the screen might overlap.

            What I really wait for, is the time when we can tell it which clockspeed to use manually. Then I would put the memory clock on half speed and the gpu clock maybe 1/4 or so

            Comment


            • #16
              Originally posted by disi View Post
              What I really wait for, is the time when we can tell it which clockspeed to use manually. Then I would put the memory clock on half speed and the gpu clock maybe 1/4 or so
              Have you tried rovclock? You just have to be careful with it as being too aggressive seems to cause hardware instability.

              script for Radeon Mobility X700 only...
              Code:
                      
              start)
                              echo "low" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
                              #Must sleep here.  Changing clocks before power_profile change finishes can 
                              #cause hardware instability.
                              sleep 3s
                              rovclock -c 180 -m 150
                              ;;
                      stop)
              
                              echo "high" > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
                              #Must sleep here.  Changing clocks before power_profile change finishes can
                              #cause hardware instability.
                              sleep 3s
                              rovclock -c 357.75 -m 330.75
                              ;;
              I've been running that for several months now, clocking up for gaming and watching videos. Clocking back down for writing e-mails / web browsing.. and it works great.
              Last edited by Sidicas; 17 December 2012, 05:54 AM.

              Comment


              • #17
                In this topic I have seens some reports of impressive open-source performance. I think it is indeed true that the Gallium drivers are quite fast, but... not everybody is as lucky as you when it comes to power management. Some cards from AMD and NVIDIA start in a low power level by default. Other cards are in a high power level by default. Because dynamic power management isn't implemented or working yet in open drivers this is causing huge differences in performance between cards, and that's also why the open drivers are reported to suck; that's on cards which are in a low level by default or allows no manual setting of power levels yet, or reported by people who don't want to change the level manually every time.

                Comment


                • #18
                  Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
                  It's funny, because it seems like most of the people claiming it sucks are like you - nvidia users who haven't even tried the AMD driver because they've heard it sucks so much.
                  I own both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, and in my experience AMD's driver support is quite lacking. Although Nvidia only supports a closed source blob, you can usually be sure that all advertised features work as expected and with good performance. With AMD, no matter if you use the open source or closed source drivers, not so much. Fortunately the open source driver is advancing quite nicely lately.

                  IMHO, AMD should focus driver efforts on one codebase. I don't really care if that is fglrx or the radeon open source drivers, but the duplicate effort currently going on is wasting resources without getting good results.

                  Comment


                  • #19
                    Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
                    It's funny, because it seems like most of the people claiming it sucks are like you - nvidia users who haven't even tried the AMD driver because they've heard it sucks so much.
                    Yes, the tireless FUD trolls are doing their damage.

                    I've been on Free AMD drivers for years now. The major remaining issues for everyday users are dynamic power management and performance. On the other hand, they are stable and reliable, and finally catching up on full OpenGL support.

                    If you can live with a 30% performance drop for a while, and don't mind switching power modes by hand before you play a game, they are a good choice for most people.

                    Comment


                    • #20
                      Originally posted by brent View Post
                      I own both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, and in my experience AMD's driver support is quite lacking. Although Nvidia only supports a closed source blob, you can usually be sure that all advertised features work as expected and with good performance. With AMD, no matter if you use the open source or closed source drivers, not so much. Fortunately the open source driver is advancing quite nicely lately.

                      IMHO, AMD should focus driver efforts on one codebase. I don't really care if that is fglrx or the radeon open source drivers, but the duplicate effort currently going on is wasting resources without getting good results.
                      Can you run an external monitor via USB on NVIDIA or AMD binary drivers? Like 'Plug&See'?
                      I asked because NVIDIA recently got xrandr support...

                      Comment

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