AMD Radeon Gallium3D Catches Up To Catalyst For Some Linux Games

[bridgman]

Remember back in the day when Q used to flame you about buying the wrong kind of modem, or something?

Yep. He didn't like my dial-up modem, or my AMD CPU + NVidia IGP Windows system (I couldn't find an AMD+AMD at the time). Still using the same Windows system for admin stuff, along with a Trinity system running Fedora 20 and a pile of boxes on the dining room table which will hopefully become a Kaveri system over the weekend.

[Sonadow]

As far as I'm aware, MS didn't release it and in fact was trying to find out who did. I'm pretty sure you can't legally download the source code to XP today, but I'd legitimately like to be proven wrong.

https://www.facultyresourcecenter.com/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID=7366&c1=en-us&c2=0

The code that was illegally leaked out was that of WIndows 98.

[bridgman]

As far as I'm aware, MS didn't release it and in fact was trying to find out who did. I'm pretty sure you can't legally download the source code to XP today, but I'd legitimately like to be proven wrong.

If you're a sufficiently big Windows customer (eg a big corporate IT department) you can license Windows source code. I imagine the DRM bits are omitted but not sure about that.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/enterprise-source-licensing-program.aspx

There are a few other similar "Shared Source" programs :

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/default.aspx

[Hamish Wilson]

Though you'd know that if you bothered to take your head out of Larabel's lower intestine.

I hardly think I can be described as being part of some Larabel fan club. Phoronix does indeed have more than its fair share of faults. That being said, I am perfectly willing to take Larabel at his word regarding this, at the very least. You on the other hand is a different matter.

Yep, games I got maybe a week or 2 out of before I got so bored with them I never played them again. And I'm talking got them within the month that they where released.

Well then, that is just simply too bad for you. Plenty of others will differ.

[Kivada]

You are trying WAY too hard to complain. Seriously, it's really beginning to be pathetic. You continuously ignore the reasons why your precious tests aren't done and then you taint these forums with a bad anti-community vibe. You seem completely incapable of understanding the purpose behind the tests (and the reasons why others aren't done) no matter how many times its explained to you. Linux doesn't get the same treatment as Windows, especially in the graphics department, and as such it cannot be tested the same way.

Michael's reviews aren't bad. Every once in a while they're clearly rushed, but he gets across the point that matters most - on your typical setup, how much have the drivers progressed and how much more needs to be done. I really don't see how you haven't figured that out yet.


Also on a side note, you clearly don't know much about economics if you suggest Michael run 3rd party benchmarks. As far as I'm concerned, his main product is PTS, so him running tests outside of PTS is like telling Google employees to search on Yahoo. I'm not sure how much money he makes from PTS, if he makes any at all, but the principal is he's not helping himself by using tests outside of his own personal suite.

If anyone is anti community here it's you apologists that chased away many former readers of the site. I again offer you the brand check challenge of asking about Phoronix on any other site out there.

His reviews are terrible, the only relevant test he's even running is Unigine. Everything else is as crap as a site that runs just crap synthetic benchmarks. It's as stupid as running every test on default settings then wondering where all of those performance enhancements he's reported on for the last few months have gone when he does a review.

Games with a built in benchmark aren't randomized, FRAPS is used for end users to grab video while they are gaming and see what their current framerate as they are playing. It is not used for benchmarking. Due to the overhead of FRAPS it isn't even useful for settings tweaking.

Perspective buyers don't care about how a half assed modified decades old game that nobody plays does. They want to know what the software they are actually going to run does. We've al seen Larabel's office setup, would it really kill him to hit start once every 5 mins grab the other mouse and click "Start" on the HL2:LC torture test then take a screenshot of the framerate that it spits out at the end, rinse and repeat a few times and plug the numbers into PTS's spreadsheet so it can make him a graph?

We're Linux users and hardware geeks, most of us that are interested in building our own systems don't give 2 shits about the default settings as we know how to change them to get what we want out of our setups, this is the mindset of the vast majority of people that read hardware review sites. If we where going for the default we'd have bought a fucking Dell.

You're an idiot if you don't think that Google devs don't check their results against the competition for every single product that they make. If they worked in a complete vacuum they'd have failed as badly as "beer" like Miller, Coors and Bud.

And yes, the mythical paid PTS users. IIRC what little of those there is are renting time on the server farm, since they can get PTS for free.

[Kivada]

Again, there's no equation that says "better reviews" ends up equaling more money... If you take a look at H Online and other examples where they focused on quality over quantity and now they all went bust.

Heck, the top advertisers on Phoronix come down to Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and other companies advertising their server/enterprise wares, so if anything should really focus less on gaming and more on server/workstations...

Wrong, if your site sucks it drives people away. The other sites failed as most Linux users didn't even know who they where and most of the time they where buried in the results of the various search engines.

Look at it this way, your current site has more in common with the tablois/gossip mag US Weekly then it does with Scientific American, let alone SIAM Journal on Computing that you and your drones act like you are.

With your current style of review you'd be completely ignored on the server front.

[Kivada]

As far as I'm aware, MS didn't release it and in fact was trying to find out who did. I'm pretty sure you can't legally download the source code to XP today, but I'd legitimately like to be proven wrong.

I think he means any company with the megabucks and the NSA have all Microsoft source code on request and NDA sinage.

https://www.facultyresourcecenter.co...&c1=en-us&c2=0

The code that was illegally leaked out was that of WIndows 98.

IIRC it was a partial dump of Win2K and there wasn't enough there to build it.

[Kivada]

I hardly think I can be described as being part of some Larabel fan club. Phoronix does indeed have more than its fair share of faults. That being said, I am perfectly willing to take Larabel at his word regarding this, at the very least. You on the other hand is a different matter.

You don't have to take my word for it, you can compare Larabel's testing methodology to that of the Windows sites for yourself to see that my points are valid.

But as I'm sure, reading a Windows or Mac review site is an anti-Linux heresy for you guys.

[Vulkan]

I've been thinking about trying Linux on my older PC, which has a HD 4870. Is it worth sticking to an older distribution just so I can use the catalyst driver?
One game I'd like to test and compare to Windows' performance is Metro Last Light

[schmidtbag]

If anyone is anti community here it's you apologists that chased away many former readers of the site. I again offer you the brand check challenge of asking about Phoronix on any other site out there.

To my knowledge, many of the former readers likely were visitors of phoronix when it was basically just a blog about Michael's linux experiences. The website has obviously changed a lot since, so those former readers you speak of have either got what they wanted, or, they have the same false expectations like you. I've only been to this site since I think 2009, but as far as I'm aware, the premise never changed. Michael may have put a little more time and effort into articles a few years ago, but as far as I'm aware, the content and purpose of the articles was never any different than it is today.

His reviews are terrible, the only relevant test he's even running is Unigine. Everything else is as crap as a site that runs just crap synthetic benchmarks. It's as stupid as running every test on default settings then wondering where all of those performance enhancements he's reported on for the last few months have gone when he does a review.

And yet again, you have managed to repeat yourself and ignore the reason behind these tests. Until you wake up and realize why the chosen tests are done and why Michael doesn't choose what you desire, you're never going to stop complaining, so you might as well save yourself the effort and stop making your requests. They're not going to happen no matter how much you personally think they should.

Games with a built in benchmark aren't randomized, FRAPS is used for end users to grab video while they are gaming and see what their current framerate as they are playing. It is not used for benchmarking. Due to the overhead of FRAPS it isn't even useful for settings tweaking.

....what? Plenty of games with built-in benchmarks are randomized..... I'm sure if you took any of the PTS game tests and did a time-based performance graph, you'd get something pretty bumpy (as long as the test isn't CPU limited). While I personally think FRAPS makes a decent (but not great) performance monitor when you aren't recording, YOU are the one going into irrelevancy here since to my knowledge, something like that doesn't exist for linux. I'd like to be proven wrong. But even if it did exist, it'd still be utterly useless in most games. The average game doesn't have an easily repeatable automated scene that uses in-game graphics. Some games could take as much as 10 minutes just for 1 test.

I would really like to see you spend the time to write ONE article involving all the tests you want to see on phoronix. Prove that you can accurately benchmark everything that you request within a timely manner, with a useful conclusion, and I think you'll have every right to bash the GPU articles on this website. Until you realize the time and effort it takes, you REALLY need to stop whining.

Perspective buyers don't care about how a half assed modified decades old game that nobody plays does. They want to know what the software they are actually going to run does. We've al seen Larabel's office setup, would it really kill him to hit start once every 5 mins grab the other mouse and click "Start" on the HL2:LC torture test then take a screenshot of the framerate that it spits out at the end, rinse and repeat a few times and plug the numbers into PTS's spreadsheet so it can make him a graph?

AGAIN, you don't understand the point of the tests. They're not about "perspective buyers" - how have you not understood that yet? How the hell is an article like the one we're posting on supposed to appeal to perspective buyers when it's not even about an individual product? The article is about a milestone in the progression of gallium for AMD GPUs - it has NOTHING to do with buying a new GPU, recommending a GPU, telling users how to tweak their system, and so on. If it was about those things then I would wholeheartedly agree that the article would be a piece of irrelevant crap, plus some additional things that it would need that you didn't mention.

On a side note, unless it's an average, taking a screenshot of the framerate at the end is a painfully inaccurate and nonrepresentational "benchmark". That's like eating a pie and judging how it tastes based on the edge crust.

We're Linux users and hardware geeks, most of us that are interested in building our own systems don't give 2 shits about the default settings as we know how to change them to get what we want out of our setups, this is the mindset of the vast majority of people that read hardware review sites. If we where going for the default we'd have bought a fucking Dell.

Yes, we are linux users and hardware geeks. But I would summarize this particular article as a driver review. Linux graphics are not up to par and never have been. Even Nvidia has it's issues. Benchmarking something for the purpose of letting linux users know what to buy is a stupid campaign for obvious reasons. On the other hand, if that was what the articles were about, Michael would probably get a LOT more free hardware. Anyway, Michael has to use default setups because if he uses something too obscure, he has to cover everything that is obscure (which he doesn't have the time for), so, using a more generic setup is easier for people to compare to.

You're an idiot if you don't think that Google devs don't check their results against the competition for every single product that they make. If they worked in a complete vacuum they'd have failed as badly as "beer" like Miller, Coors and Bud.

I figured you were going to mention that - of course Google has to test their competitors, but that wasn't my point. I worked for IBM I've seen Dell, HP, and Sun servers in a room dedicated to IBM. You're a little too arrogant for me to get into detail. As for the "beers", I'm not denying those brands are complete crap, but they're still very successful, so I wouldn't say they failed.