AMD's Radeon Gallium3D Starts Posing A Threat To Catalyst

[DrYak]

2) Modern graphics cards are not included.

This benchmark is about the fact that the R600g driver has caught up with Catalyst.
More modern graphic cards use the RadeonSI driver (that one, although it is making progress, is currently not at the same level as Catalyst).

Michael explained it in the first paragraph of the article, actually.

[max0x7ba]

No Unigine benchmarks

Nice work, however:

1) The games used for benchmarks are obsolete. At least add Unigine Valley benchmark.
2) Modern graphics cards are not included.

-- Maxim

[ogyct]

Just want to add, that my radeon hd4570 is also getting to the point, where games are really playable. Even dota 2, which is based on relatively new technologies is getting closer to what it feels like on windows. It still has some graphics artefacts, fps is around 20-30 in average, but the game wasn't playable at all before.

Thanks to open source drivers developers!

[agd5f]

No OpenCL on HD4xxx either (at least not on the 4890), due to it using some funky OpenCL implementation.

Pre-evergreen asics do not have a native compute interface so you have to implement OpenCL over the 3D interface. Someone could write a helper lib to implement compute over 3D in gallium.

[GreatEmerald]

If you wanted OpenCL, you would need an HD4xxx or later gpu.

No OpenCL on HD4xxx either (at least not on the 4890), due to it using some funky OpenCL implementation.

[Rallos Zek]

Holy $%!7, did anyone catch gkh's comments about window's driver development (it's around 39:35 in the above video)? They apparently don't have a stable internal api either. There goes the annoying criticism of linux that if only it would keep its internal api stable like windows

+1 Thank you for catching this, and yes those people have egg on face.

[smitty3268]

So how exactly are you freer than let's say in the Microsoft business model if everything is done by corporations? You would say that you can fork anytime, but can you actually do that? Can you take a 100 million LOC and jump right in writing code? If the code gets written by a big company, even if it's open source, you still get to do what they tell you since you don't have any manpower. It's just Microsoft with another name.

You could, i don't know, contribute to the upstream project?

Crazy, isn't it?

Of course, if the people running the project don't take contributions, then there isn't a huge difference. That's exactly why a lot of people don't like the stuff Canonical is doing, for example, or the projects Oracle/Sun have taken over like OpenOffice. But even then, you can still download the source and make your own modifications locally, even if you can't support an entire fork.

Really, come on. This is FOSS 101 stuff here. I know you're just trolling, but this is ridiculously stupid.

[Ibidem]

buy a card that can use r600g. you won't be disappointed.

Depending which it is. If you want to get UVD, an HD5xxx is probably your best bet: HD3xxx and older and the early HD4xxx series don't have supported UVD.
If you wanted OpenCL, you would need an HD4xxx or later gpu.

[bridgman]

Amount of testing and optimization done for the VLIW4 based GPUs. The only GPUs that used VLIW4 where the HD6900 series, the VLIW5 based hardware was still in use in the low end R7 250 and under series and in the Richland APUs.

Actually Trinity and Richland are VLIW4 as well -- Llano and Ontario were VLIW5. Kabini is GCN.

[duby229]

Show me where?!? All I read are complaints about the RadeonSI and the 'major' distros don't have it supported or installed via default.

Also, the joke that AMD supports Linux is still going on?!? LOL! I agree with what you post here - "Just look at Catalyst -- there are *so many* loose ends -- unfinished features, broken options, plenty of stuff that just flat out *doesn't work* -- and from what I can tell there's no desire to actually fix those things." Does anyone here besides the ''AMD' employees' (FOSS ppl) disagree with that?!? No. So, that is the driver segment that actually gets full funding from AMD? But, it's constantly broken by design.

I only buy used cards. I don't want to reward AMD OR Nvidia. I'm looking at buying a used AMD card to try since my Nvidia card is really ancient but I am anticipating being disappointed. I don't know what the big fuss is with gaming on Linux. UVD and 2D performance rarely is included in the benchmarks. Doesn't anyone use their computer to watch videos or stream video in Linux?!?

buy a card that can use r600g. you won't be disappointed.