The Linux 3.13 Kernel Is A Must-Have For AMD RadeonSI Users

[zanny]

- regardless of graphics driver, on GNU/Linux it's much slower than on Windows. The Free (radeon) driver is a wreck on the R9 290(X) right now.

What architectural changes in Hawaii make radeonSI suck?

Though in general I wouldn't recommend looking at any AMD gpus right now, anyway - they are still all heavily above MSRP from the after effects of litecoin miners. They lose the price / performance context with every nvidia part even without considering how Linux drivers are worse for their stuff.

And I wouldn't expect retailers to drop prices until the demand goes away, and apparently it hasn't. I'd wait for Maxwell to force a price cut out of AMD before buying anything.

[Herem]

I wouldn't expect retailers to drop prices until the demand goes away, and apparently it hasn't. I'd wait for Maxwell to force a price cut out of AMD before buying anything.

As you mentioned it isn't AMD ramping up the prices but the retailers; an AMD price cut will just mean the cards stay at exactly the same price and the retailers will make an even bigger profits at AMD's expense.

[bridgman]

What architectural changes in Hawaii make radeonSI suck?

The main thing AFAICS is that DPM is not enabled by default in 3.13 for Hawaii and other CI parts (including Kaveri), while it is for older GCN parts. The patches to complete CI DPM and enable it by default are queued up for 3.14, so I expect there should be a good jump in performance there.

[curaga]

Though in general I wouldn't recommend looking at any AMD gpus right now, anyway - they are still all heavily above MSRP from the after effects of litecoin miners.

Tell me about it, even the used cards are being torn from the sellers' hands. I wanted to pick up a 5870 the other day for r600g benchmarking, but it got sold for 100e, and another for 110e.
At least my two Richland boxes are in the mail, so APUs will have to do until some new discretes show up.

Why yes, the 5870 would have been for mining in the non-benchmarking hours, why do you ask?

[FutureSuture]

The main thing AFAICS is that DPM is not enabled by default in 3.13 for Hawaii and other CI parts (including Kaveri), while it is for older GCN parts. The patches to complete CI DPM and enable it by default are queued up for 3.14, so I expect there should be a good jump in performance there.

3.13 just came out, though, meaning that 3.14 is 2 to 3 months away. Am I wrong?

[bridgman]

3.13 just came out, though, meaning that 3.14 is 2 to 3 months away. Am I wrong?

Depends which 3.14 milestone you look at.

3.14 release is 2-3 months away, but 3.14 rc1 is 1-2 weeks away and the patches (based on 3.13 WIP IIRC) have been in Alex's public next-3.14 branch for ~4 weeks already.