AMD Radeon: Windows Catalyst vs. Linux Gallium3D vs. Linux Catalyst

[AJSB]

....and oops again...I shouldn't be writting this stuff when i'm still sleepy

The stock fan measures are irrelevant...

Total height to use for case choice is 49.4mm with 50x50x10 3rd party fan like i said in 2 posts ago and that's what matters

[pandev92]

firefox and chrome hardware aceleration is totally broken for me, using catalyst 14.3

[_SXX_]

firefox and chrome hardware aceleration is totally broken for me, using catalyst 14.3

Happy you. For me Google Chrome cause X Server crash if I run it without "--disable-gpu".
Running it on Kubuntu 13.04 with 3.11 kerkel and vanila packages.

[tomtomme]

It is indeed good news...i made more tests later after previous post with ETQW and performance is even BETTER than with XP...i could achieve same frame rate with *higher* video settings



HOWEVER, there is also BAD news....

But these bad news are NOT related with CATALYST, no matter people like to blame AMD for it...the bad news is L4D2 (and not only)....it doesn't have graphical glitches that i noticed but stutters all over the place.
(YMMV, in special because you will have a more powerful dGPU than my iGPU)

People blame AMD for poor Linux games performance but the truth is that my tests proove than , even with a demanding game like ETQW (might not be the "latest and greatest" but IS demanding) , *IF* game is really a native port, the performance with AMD Catalyst is great...

The thing is...these Valve games (i didn't tested only L4D2 but others like TF2,etc.) use a translation layer from D3D to OGL and i believe that is NOT simply bad luck that games with that layer stutter with Catalyst and that all TRULLY native OGL games that i tested (tested also others), DON'T...not only i didn't see any stutter but what i saw was great performance and quality (after disable CATALYST A.I. that seems FUBAR ).

What we really need with AMD HW and CATALYST is *PURE* OGL games and not "frankensteined" solutions.

So , you better check if the games you want to play in Linux with AMD i/dGPUs are truly native or not if you want to be sure you will get a good experience.

I also wonder if the announced support for Linux in UE4 and CE will use truly native OGL calls or if the engines will "pull a Valve"...

still catalyst sucks in this part compared with the radeonSI OSS driver which shows NO stuttering with valve games for me.

[curaga]

Total height to use for case choice is 49.4mm with 50x50x10 3rd party fan like i said in 2 posts ago and that's what matters

If you truly obsess over case thickness, you'd be building your own case that acted as the heatsink out of some metal, or even thermal-conductive plastic.

[nonkreon]

openbenchmarking.org result file?

Is it only me who cannot find the openbenchmarking.org result page of this benchmark?

[GreatEmerald]

Is it only me who cannot find the openbenchmarking.org result page of this benchmark?

Nope, I had problems with it as well. I did get to the page by doing some URL trickery, though.

[Nognir]

still catalyst sucks in this part compared with the radeonSI OSS driver which shows NO stuttering with valve games for me.

If it's Source engine games (I'd like to know about HL2/L4D2/TF2) is the performance of a R9 270 on RadeonSI OSS drivers sufficent at 1920x1080? The experience of OSS drivers on 4500 Mobility was far less problematic (albeit warmer before DPM updates - forgot which kernel enabled that), only TF2 was inferior compared to Catalyst legacy. Futurewise, I lay my hopes on OSS Crossfire

[mmstick]

Yeah but don't forget that IMHO, games like L4D2 that use a translation layer will continue to stutter...but if it's pure OGL , you have good chances

I intend to test SLACKWARE + Catalyst + ET:QW, W:ET,etc. to see what happens compared with XUBUNTU.

Not exactly. They don't use a translation layer during run-time. They have their own software that converts D3D instructions into OpenGL instructions at compile-time. In other words, this is pure OpenGL. The problem lies with drivers having inadequate support for modern OpenGL instructions. Note how the open source drivers play those Source games like L4D2 and TF2 a lot better than Catalyst does -- they have better OpenGL 3.x support. Valve games aren't the only ones that perform horribly with Catalyst. All games that use a more extensive array of OpenGL instructions, like Serious Sam 3 and Wargame: European Escalation perform horribly with Catalyst.

Also, compositing only damages framerates when not running a game in fullscreen.

[haplo602]

I have 64 bit OpenSuSE, and no such troubles...

BUT

You need force_s3tc_enable=true or something like that.

thanks for the hint, I'll try that. However I fear that the 32bit emul-linux gentoo vesion of mesa is compiled with bindist flag, so libtxc_dxtn support is not enabled.