Catalyst 14.3 Beta Linux Driver Fixes OpenGL Performance Issues

[cutterjohn]

you apparently lack attention span as I ALSO MENTIONED THAT I HAVE F'ING BUILT two NEW PURELY AMD(/ATI_ systems AND that the drivers are STILL STEAMING PILES v. nvidia's, but you know, hay, just saying... of course you MAY ENJOY video tearing and other assorted crapouts that are EITHER driver failures or hw design bugs, while I, however MUCH PREFER the nvidia drivers that limit tearing SIGNIFICANTLY in comparison in bog standard install states, and apparently workaround (WELL! FFS!) any design bugs in their GPUs(unlike ATI(/AMD hell they can't even design a decent CPU core any longer for christ's sake!)).

Really the only thing that AMD/ATI whatevar you want to call that squished together mess of utter incompetence wants to call itself is that in their favor that they don't gimp opencl perf on their consumer cards, and well that's about all the good that I can say, so I'm FINISHED! FINIT! (Yes I really don't give a rat's --- IF there are purely open dfrivers or not, as even now years later the best that can be said about ATI's is that they exist PERIOD!)

well edit's missing, but I WILL add that video tearing is not nearly as awful as it USED to be, but still the overall quality is TRULY half ---ed at BEST, especialy given the power requirements and heat generation! Christ that CANNOT possibly keep up this "lowend" crap for long and expect to actually survive...

BTW: the 9590 has 2133 mem and the kaveri 2400

[vein]

well edit's missing, but I WILL add that video tearing is not nearly as awful as it USED to be, but still the overall quality is TRULY half ---ed at BEST, especialy given the power requirements and heat generation! Christ that CANNOT possibly keep up this "lowend" crap for long and expect to actually survive...

BTW: the 9590 has 2133 mem and the kaveri 2400

If you can't see that, are you blind or you never use windows. Enjoy slow performance. Enjoy amd.

A word to you both... don't buy AMD cards if you hate them so much...or use them with windows...I dont care. But please do not bitch about it in every forum thread about AMD.
Because appearantly AMD cards and processors work for a lot of us and we are VERY happy with them (at least I am. ON LINUX!). Why it works better for us? I don't know...I really don't...maybe we are lucky... or maybe we just know what we do....who knows...

The point is that my experience with nvidia cards are not that good, but i do not go into threads with nvidia and bitch about it. I switched to AMD cards for a long time ago and i found them working better for me.

[pandev92]

A word to you both... don't buy AMD cards if you hate them so much...or use them with windows...I dont care. But please do not bitch about it in every forum thread about AMD.
Because appearantly AMD cards and processors work for a lot of us and we are VERY happy with them (at least I am. ON LINUX!). Why it works better for us? I don't know...I really don't...maybe we are lucky... or maybe we just know what we do....who knows...

The point is that my experience with nvidia cards are not that good, but i do not go into threads with nvidia and bitch about it. I switched to AMD cards for a long time ago and i found them working better for me.

you are totally a troll, , what you receive from amd, for trolling the people about the fantastic performance of their cards on linux?

[mmstick]

I can't believe that there are still people who insist on using Catalyst. Did you guys not get the memo that the open source drivers are superior?

[pandev92]

I can't believe that there are still people who insist on using Catalyst. Did you guys not get the memo that the open source drivers are superior?

The only problem that I have with opensource drivers is that dota 2 have a texture issues, and after 7/8 hourse of use, the system run very laggish.

[mibo]

I can't believe that there are still people who insist on using Catalyst. Did you guys not get the memo that the open source drivers are superior?

I follow the nice progress of the open drivers here on Phoronix. But, why should I face the trouble of running bleeding edge kernel and mesa stuff on my machine? Additionally, I would loose the OpenCL acceleration of darktable.

I'm quite happy with the Catalyst drivers. But, I also wonder what plans AMD has for the future. To me it looks like the open drivers could be a replacement for the Catalyst in some months when OpenCL would be possible and the major Linux distros ship with the newest kernel and mesa packages...

[chithanh]

I can't believe that there are still people who insist on using Catalyst. Did you guys not get the memo that the open source drivers are superior?

You need to use Catalyst if you want OpenGL 4.x support, and OpenCL support is progressing but not quite there yet. Also, DisplayPort MST (for 4K/60Hz monitors among other things) doesn't work yet with any of the open source drivers. According to the Wiki, DP Audio support is missing as well.

[Guest]

I can't believe that there are still people who insist on using Catalyst. Did you guys not get the memo that the open source drivers are superior?

Color banding and lower performance are not "superior", last I checked anyway ... and I've experienced both on a desktop with a 7850 and a laptop with 7660G + 7670M (about a few weeks ago, but judging by a bug report, the former doesn't seem fixed yet; performance wasn't "drastically" different, but fglrx still had higher overall framerates).

On the note of color banding, I even noticed a tiny bit on a desktop with a Radeon HD 2400 Pro (on a Xubuntu 14.04 daily + 3.14 daily kernel)... Haven't tried fglrx (on Linux) on that computer, but Catalyst on Windows had no such banding.

[Tom B]

To say that the open source drivers are "superior" is pure wishful thinking. In some aspects they work better but for gaming where GPU performance is the best metric for measuring superiority the FOSS driver is in no way "superior" to catalyst. In most cases it's significantly inferior.

[mmstick]

Color banding and lower performance are not "superior", last I checked anyway ... and I've experienced both on a desktop with a 7850 and a laptop with 7660G + 7670M (about a few weeks ago, but judging by a bug report, the former doesn't seem fixed yet; performance wasn't "drastically" different, but fglrx still had higher overall framerates).

On the note of color banding, I even noticed a tiny bit on a desktop with a Radeon HD 2400 Pro (on a Xubuntu 14.04 daily + 3.14 daily kernel)... Haven't tried fglrx (on Linux) on that computer, but Catalyst on Windows had no such banding.

There is absolutely no banding on any of my systems running the open source drivers: 6850, 4870, 7950, Richland APU, 4200M, and a mobile Kabini APU. I find it silly that you are still using such an old graphics card like a HD 2400 Pro when you could easily just buy a more modern budget graphics card for $30 and reduce energy consumption while also gaining modern graphics card features.

To say that the open source drivers are "superior" is pure wishful thinking. In some aspects they work better but for gaming where GPU performance is the best metric for measuring superiority the FOSS driver is in no way "superior" to catalyst. In most cases it's significantly inferior.

And by what measure is it significantly inferior? I guess you haven't been following the open source benchmarks provided on this website which place it within 80% of the performance of Catalyst drivers at their *best* while providing significantly lower frame-time latency. Catalyst has always sucked at playing games, and I still find Source games unplayable with it, while 2D-based games are extremely sluggish. The open source drivers, on the other hand, can actually play all the games that Catalyst is too laggy to respond to.

I follow the nice progress of the open drivers here on Phoronix. But, why should I face the trouble of running bleeding edge kernel and mesa stuff on my machine? Additionally, I would loose the OpenCL acceleration of darktable.

I'm quite happy with the Catalyst drivers. But, I also wonder what plans AMD has for the future. To me it looks like the open drivers could be a replacement for the Catalyst in some months when OpenCL would be possible and the major Linux distros ship with the newest kernel and mesa packages...

The last time I checked, kernel 3.13 and mesa 10.1 are stable... furthermore, it's not like using bleeding edge kernels and mesa drivers is a hassle. In Ubuntu, it's just a PPA away to get bleeding edge mesa updates daily. As for the kernel, I just use a script that automatically upgrades when a new kernel releases.

The only problem that I have with opensource drivers is that dota 2 have a texture issues, and after 7/8 hourse of use, the system run very laggish.

It's caused by Steam -- restarting Steam solves the lag.

You need to use Catalyst if you want OpenGL 4.x support, and OpenCL support is progressing but not quite there yet. Also, DisplayPort MST (for 4K/60Hz monitors among other things) doesn't work yet with any of the open source drivers. According to the Wiki, DP Audio support is missing as well.

Neither OpenGL 4.x or OpenCL are a requirement, nor do they have much use in Linux yet. If you really needed OpenGL 4.x then you wouldn't be using Catalyst but an NVIDIA GPU which has full OpenGL 4.4 support and drivers that can actually use those specifications without all the glitches and lag of Catalyst.