AMD A10-7850K Kaveri: Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu Linux

[GreatEmerald]

It does not necessarily lead to other games running slower...
They use something like: if (name_of_the_running_app == "foo") then apply_optimizations_for_foo()

And yes, this actually happens

And sometimes apply_optimizations_for_foo() calls disable_graphical_features_for_foo(), which increases FPS at the cost of image quality...

Hardcoded optimisations are a really dumb idea overall. Profiles should be used instead.

[wargames]

And sometimes apply_optimizations_for_foo() calls disable_graphical_features_for_foo(), which increases FPS at the cost of image quality...

Hardcoded optimisations are a really dumb idea overall. Profiles should be used instead.

I absolutely agree. I was just mentioning that this actually happens. And this is probably one of the many reasons they are reluctant to open source their drivers.

[mitcoes]

more results to compare

I would like to see the K10 compared to new Intels and price/performance, you never put

I love this K10 offer, perhaps I will buy one BUT ...

I want to read benchmarks vs ATi and Nvidia GPUs + ATI and Intel CPUs and Intel CGPUs at the same price range and some higher and some lower

Price / performance - Even price use to change is a benchmark everybody has to do at their mind. Why not do it easy for readers?

[guido12]

@_SXX_, nightmarex, GreatEmerald

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll now look into the performance/cost numbers for the <= 65 W TDP desktop Haswell and Kaveri chips. I don't really plan on doing heavy GPU intensive stuff so I was mainly concerned with crashing and weird display anomalies.

[Guest]

Are the Catalyst drivers really that bad in terms of system stability? I've been wanting to slap together a mini-PC and was considering using an AMD APU.

Stability-wise, fglrx is fine, in "most" cases. The only instability I've experienced consistently was when messing with games in Wine (osu! and Guild Wars 2; both on a 7850 and a 7660G + 7670M laptop), and that was fixed by using a CSMT-patched Wine.

As for in-consistent instability, my 7660G + 7670M laptop (with 7670M in-use in Catalyst; Muxless laptop) sometimes locks up during the boot animation before switching over to the desktop. No idea why. On Ubuntu, I noticed if I switch the boot splash over to the text output, it seems to transition over to the desktop more consistently than if I leave it at the boot splash, but this could be a coincidence. This doesn't happen on the open-source driver.

But overall, I don't quite see the huge fuss over how unstable fglrx is. Sure the open-source driver is better in both of those situations in-terms of stability, but at a performance cost (and on my laptop, there's excessive color banding).

[blakehechtman]

OpenCL on A10-7850k Ubuntu

I have been trying to install the catalyst 13.30 driver on my Ubuntu 14.40.
I have tried multiple kernel versions and have managed to install the driver on all of them.
However, I fail to load the fglrxdrm module and thus the system tried to go back to software rendering and fails due to the lack of installed libraries.
I really don't care if the machine can run graphics as it will mostly be a headless machine running OpenCL.
I can easily post some more information.

[synaptix]

Those games use the same engine - Source Engine, so all those games should show the same bugs. In this case you can benchmark just 1-2 games.

This is true, but they all have different builds of the Source engine. DOTA2 has a newer Source engine build than Team Fortress 2 does, for example.

Of the games that use Source engine, DOTA2 currently has the largest development team and the absolutely newest version and builds of Source engine. DOTA2 also properly utilizes multiple cores correctly and puts quite a strain on the GPU.

[Darksurf]

crossfire?

Has anyone been able to get the A10-7850K and the Gigabyte R7 250 2GB DDR3 to crossfire in linux? I can't get it to freaking work! Both devices DO work, but not crossfire! I've been fighting this for weeks!

[cutterjohn]

hey guys, how's this going? I broke my rule from my old MSI GT725 and built one AMD machine (FX-9590(got it for the same price as the 8350, so...)) + R9-280X(wasn't wasting cash on poorly supported ATI(/AMD) crap again)...

... and to make matters worse I decided that I MIGHT like to play around with hsa some day and so picked up an A10-7850k + well either an R7-260X or R7-250(yeah, yeah, another "pure" build which I'll probably regret), but this one is waiting in the wings as I need to transplant the fx-9590 into another more CLC friendly case as my current setup is purely jury rigged...

a plus so far, looks like ATI(/AMD) figured out HOW to UNLOAD the old driver then LOAD the new AND RESTORE the display rather than leaving us with a black screen and guessing... downside they STILL want to reboot which doesn't happen w/nVidia(3930k + 780 TI/4770k + 670/Sager 7330(765m)/Sager 8250-S(780m) and MANY prior combos back to the early 00s)...

OK, since I've expanded this, either my 280x is bum or the drivers still ain't so hot even under windows(SURPRISE! }) I catch display corruption from time-to-time out of the corner of my eye and general weirdness(typically slowdown in GUI responsiveness under win 8.1 pro x64)...

so hopefully the ups are more than the down, but the cpu cores still suck large h---y d----y b---z, bulldozer is just a trainwreck, and is just never going to work well...

[jakubo]

Any update so far? does it work on open drivers now?
HSA has been released now, hasnt it?
I wonder if a custom built kernel on a Kaveri can exceed windows speedwise. I mean windows can hardly make a kernel for every CPU out there. On linux you can, there ought to be potential, shouldnt it?