Features Still Being Sought By Open-Source AMD Users

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Crossfire X

Perhaps the article contains a misnomer:

considering the rather small proportion of AMD CrossFire Linux users

Really? Doesn't Crossfire X involve using a like-generation card with an onboard like-generation APU core or chipset?

So would that not make every single owner of an APU a potential Crossfire user for just having a single card, should they have one?

Actually, it seems like the name I'm looking for is Hybrid Graphics. But my point is this, between Llano, and even more importantly Trinity, as well as Richland, there's a whole lot of Crossfire users out there who don't even realize it. ? ? Am I wrong on this?

Actually, maybe the name is Hybrid Crossfire X? Forget the title. I think everybody knows the technology I'm referring to.

[pingufunkybeat]

The OpenCL stuff does not sound very important.

That's a very strange statement.

OpenCL is crucial. It is what turns a toy for children playing games into a powerful computer for scientific calculations. Nvidia is making a killing off their CUDA technology, just because they were there first and still have better support for compute tasks.

OpenGL support is already at an OK level -- though further improvements are very welcome. OpenCL is not really functional. That's a huge gap. That's the next big thing (tm), the gaping hole, the last remaining piece of the puzzle where the open driver is severely lacking.

At this point, I'd argue that robust OpenCL support is more important than all other aspects combined, multiplied by some positive constant greater than zero.

[jrch2k8]

Perhaps the article contains a misnomer:



Really? Doesn't Crossfire X involve using a like-generation card with an onboard like-generation APU core or chipset?

So would that not make every single owner of an APU a potential Crossfire user for just having a single card, should they have one?

Actually, it seems like the name I'm looking for is Hybrid Graphics. But my point is this, between Llano, and even more importantly Trinity, as well as Richland, there's a whole lot of Crossfire users out there who don't even realize it. ? ? Am I wrong on this?

Actually, maybe the name is Hybrid Crossfire X? Forget the title. I think everybody knows the technology I'm referring to.

well in laptops you can switch gpu's to save power in PC you can crossfire with certain models and the APU GPU , some gaming laptops come with crossfire option but is an batery murderer.

in the case of gallium is different to your normal windows scenario, for example LLVM/R600g/RadeonSI/iLO/nouveau support sharing code through gallium and all is 100% open, meaning you can actually distribute the job between CPU[LLVM]/GPU AMD[r600g/radeonSI] and an nVidia card[nouveau] as long as you do it at gallium dispatcher level, don't use hardware specifics and all the involved drivers are normalized to the same Opengl revision[at least as my rudimentary understands of gallium allows][note that if intel and nouveau used LLVM for shaders this would reduced the error surface a lot].

the point with distributable workloads in GPU is that for now is not that important, at least until all main drivers reach stable OpenGL3.3 for ovbious reason, you can't crossfire if both of your GPU support different versions of GL or have specific glitches waiting to be fixed unless you like funky rendered images in your monitor

[newwen]

What about Eyefinity?

Can this be implemented by the compositor or does it have intervention by the drivers?

Anyway, for triple (or more) screen setups crossfire is a must. Otherwise the performance is really sluggish.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

well in laptops you can switch gpu's to save power

Right, switching from some powerful nVidia or AMD GPU to the onboard Intel chipset is called(IIRC) Optimus, but that is already being worked on. I'm not sure as to its final status, but there were recently patches pushed into the AMD driver, reported (IIRC) within the last month here on Phoronix.

you can't crossfire if both of your GPU support different versions of GL or have specific glitches waiting to be fixed unless you like funky rendered images in your monitor

What I'm getting at is a GPU and an APU.

So if you have two Radeon HD 6670's, that's Crossfire.

But if you have one Radeon HD 6670 card and an AMD Llano A6-3500 APU, this is also Crossfire. The reason is because the Radeon chip that's integrated into the APU is more or less the same family of chips. So it gets recognized and helps process the graphics.

I found a chart online which illustrates some of this:



Some people are quick to say that there is not a lot of demand for Crossfire because not a lot of people go out and buy two cards, and there is at least a potential for that idea to be faulty. Considering APUs, just because people are not outspoken, there is probably a greater need for this in the OSS driver than people realize.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

What about Eyefinity?

Alex talked about this in another discussion. Eyefinity is supported.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...538#post350538

[newwen]

Alex talked about this in another discussion. Eyefinity is supported.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...538#post350538

According to that thread, randr uses a single large surface for multi-head, but Eyefinty does additionally bezel compensation. I'm not quite sure that randr can do the same.

And with Wayland, a fullscreen app will bypass composition, so there won't be any logic available to do bezel compensation in the most needed case (gaming). In this case, bezel compensation should be implemented in the client, in some library like mesa3d.

[jrch2k8]

Right, switching from some powerful nVidia or AMD GPU to the onboard Intel chipset is called(IIRC) Optimus, but that is already being worked on. I'm not sure as to its final status, but there were recently patches pushed into the AMD driver, reported (IIRC) within the last month here on Phoronix.



What I'm getting at is a GPU and an APU.

So if you have two Radeon HD 6670's, that's Crossfire.

But if you have one Radeon HD 6670 card and an AMD Llano A6-3500 APU, this is also Crossfire. The reason is because the Radeon chip that's integrated into the APU is more or less the same family of chips. So it gets recognized and helps process the graphics.

I found a chart online which illustrates some of this:



Some people are quick to say that there is not a lot of demand for Crossfire because not a lot of people go out and buy two cards, and there is at least a potential for that idea to be faulty. Considering APUs, just because people are not outspoken, there is probably a greater need for this in the OSS driver than people realize.

this is in my post, read it again. the point is we are not there yet, i mean OSS drivers have improved a great deal but there are many GPU specific glitches that are WIP that will make crossfire unbearable, for example with kernel 3.10 you can't crossfire an APU with external GPU even if the software were there simply because APU can't reclock which translate your external GPU will get the job too fast and your APU GPU won't have enough horse power to render in time and the frame will be discarded even before is rendered, convert it crossfire into an useless battery killer which get me to point A again is too soon to make crossfire a priority.

another thing is that the shaders have glitches or performance issue between generations[they are getting fixed really fast but still] that again will make crossfire a tear-fest simply because in 1GPU go full steam and the other fallback to software in some operations, additionally ASPM is not completely stable yet and in some mobos can really hurt your I/O between the APU and the GPU[or GPU/GPU] which once again take me back to Point A is too soon to make crossfire a priority.

another point is most games worth of crossfire require OpenGL 3.3 or superior which is not here yet, so even if someone make crossfire available today probably this apps/games won't use it by default or will require code changes to activate it in Opengl 3.2 or inferior codepaths which goes back to point A

the conclusion is due very technical issue is not feasible just yet to focus in crossfire, is not an conspiracy or the good AMD devs wanting to fuck you because they hate you

[GreatEmerald]

To me the most sought-after feature is still UVD for RV790. It's the flagship of the legacy cards, after all. And I happen to be using it in an HTPC, where lowering the CPU usage means lower temperature and thus lower noise. But at least last time I checked it was being worked on.

Right, switching from some powerful nVidia or AMD GPU to the onboard Intel chipset is called(IIRC) Optimus, but that is already being worked on.

No, Optimus is NVIDIA DGP + Intel IGP. The AMD side, that is, AMD DGP + Intel IGP is called PowerXpress.

[chrno]

My only wish: an option to permanently disable the freakishly annoying HDMI overscan-compensation. This should be easily doable by setting a bit in the vBIOS. That's all. Thanks.