AMD's Initial Radeon Driver Changes For Linux 3.12

[CrvenaZvezda]

Alex, any chance we could ever see a Radeon Settings Panel / Radeon Control Panel? For display management (multi-monitor) the various DE's handle that themselves, fine, but what about for tuning power settings? Enabling CrossFire if it would ever get written and merged? Fine-tuning MSAA? Changing handling setting of module options? etc etc etc.

Not asking AMD themselves to write it-- there's no reason another contributor couldn't do it. I'm just wondering if the idea has come up already in team talks for the paid staff, or if it's come up on mailing lists, or anywhere else you've noticed.

This I would sponsor with money! Nothing like a pretty GUI when doing graphical stuff.

[Ericg]

Uh... I have a HD6950 card. Guess that is related to R600? Northern Island?

Darn those milages. I wish they would come in just one size!

I think the 6950 is GCN... aka RadeonSI, so you're in the "Wait a little longer camp." But Alex might prove me wrong and tell say you're actually in the R600g camp (figuring out which is which is a pain in the ass even when you DO know where to look -.-)

[duby229]

Uh... I have a HD6950 card. Guess that is related to R600? Northern Island?

Darn those milages. I wish they would come in just one size!

the 6950 is a Cayman GPU. which is one of those VLIW-4 architectures. Where as Northern Islands is a VLIW-5 architecture. The Southern Islands is one of those Scalar (GCN) architectures.

[Ericg]

the 6950 is a Cayman GPU. which is one of those VLIW-4 architectures. Where as Northern Islands is a VLIW-5 architecture. The Southern Islands is one of those Scalar (GCN) architectures.

If thats true then Crvena, just wait till Kernel 3.11 and Mesa 9.2 hit your distro's repos and you should be pretty good on performance.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I'd rather have video decoding and openCL worked on first before CF, thankfully, both of which are supposedly WIP.

That's certainly a good prioritization.

But something to consider.... or rather ponder... would crossfire have any affect on openCL?

At least theoretically, two cards would be faster than one, but if video isn't working in pairs then what about compute?

[CrvenaZvezda]

If thats true then Crvena, just wait till Kernel 3.11 and Mesa 9.2 hit your distro's repos and you should be pretty good on performance.

Woohooo!

Then I just need to wait for openSUSE to get there

Thanks for the answers!

[boffo]

Woohooo!

Then I just need to wait for openSUSE to get there

Thanks for the answers!

You don't need to wait on opensuse.
You can download the mesa 9.1.8 http://software.opensuse.org/package/Mesa from the xorg reposity
install the kernel 3.11rc from puntostroy http://software.opensuse.org/package/kernel-desktop
install the latest kernel firmware from puntostroy http://software.opensuse.org/package/kernel-firmware
Don't forget to add the radeon.dom=1 at the boot.

It works for me, but there are on ARUBA.

[Ericg]

Woohooo!

Then I just need to wait for openSUSE to get there

Thanks for the answers!

Yeah just make sure to remember to set

radeon.dpm=1

on the kernel config line in grub

[bridgman]

would crossfire have any affect on openCL?

At least theoretically, two cards would be faster than one, but if video isn't working in pairs then what about compute?

You don't need Crossfire for OpenCL because the API explicitly supports multiple GPUs. You need Crossfire for graphics because most usage scenarios need multiple GPUs to appear as a single GPU to the API.

[duby229]

Yeah just make sure to remember to set

radeon.dpm=1

on the kernel config line in grub

Yeah, I have a 6850 that was idling at 140f now it's idling at 98f. That's just so good to see. I love it.