RadeonSI Starts Beating Catalyst In Some Linux Tests

[jasonditz]

Even in 3.13 the RadeonSI driver is pretty solid. Dota 2 is really the last game that I "need" Catalyst to play properly (framerate goes from about 60 to 6 without it), though the Wargames series also seems to have a few visual glitches when running without Catalyst too.

Cata Betas also introduce some bugs elsewhere though, like the March version inexplicably made Skpye unusable, and the April version inexplicably fixed it. I'll be glad when I can safely just stick with the open source driver without having to sacrifice any games.

[opensource]

... In our most recent tests we have found the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver on HD 7000/8000 series GPUs to do well against Catalyst, but generally the Catalyst driver still reigns superior -- especially if considering its OpenGL 4.x support and much better working OpenCL compute support. ...

I'm not a gamer, too bad OpenCL isn't well supported yet.

[Sdar]

I'm not a gamer, too bad OpenCL isn't well supported yet.

Well Opencl isn't well supported on catalyst too, hopefully when Opencl comes to the Foss driver it'll work without inlining everything.

[ricequackers]

Does RadeonSI shut the fan up while at idle now? This is literally the only reason I still use Catalyst on Arch - the computer is whisper-quiet at the desktop, but with the open driver the fan speed is unchanged from its boot speed and the whirring noise drives me crazy when I'm trying to work.

[Sdar]

Does RadeonSI shut the fan up while at idle now? This is literally the only reason I still use Catalyst on Arch - the computer is whisper-quiet at the desktop, but with the open driver the fan speed is unchanged from its boot speed and the whirring noise drives me crazy when I'm trying to work.

I'm pretty sure that they're relying on the Gpu bios fan profile and there's no driver fan control yet, you can modify the gpu bios... is not the best solution but it should work.

[darkbasic]

Does RadeonSI shut the fan up while at idle now?

It always did since 3.11/3.12 (when force enabling dpm). With latest kernels dpm should be enabled by default. If it doesn't work you should file a bug report.

[ricequackers]

It always did since 3.11/3.12 (when force enabling dpm). With latest kernels dpm should be enabled by default. If it doesn't work you should file a bug report.

DPM works perfectly, the GPU stays cool and sits at minimum clocks. It's the fan that doesn't quieten down.

I'm pretty sure that they're relying on the Gpu bios fan profile and there's no driver fan control yet, you can modify the gpu bios... is not the best solution but it should work.

That's probably it then as the fan speed remains at same speed as during POST. I think I'd rather stick with Catalyst than mod the BIOS though!

[Calinou]

only better in old games

Xonotic isn't an ?old game?. Its last stable release was in 2013 and the Git repository is still active (even though the activity is slowing down recently).

[Imroy]

But is RadeonSI supporting all of the features that these benchmarks use on Catalyst? Haven't we seen the situation before where the FOSS driver gets higher performance, but only because it's not doing everything the closed-source vender driver does? Then the feature(s) get implemented and performance drops suddenly, later improving as it gets optimised.

[ua=42]

But is RadeonSI supporting all of the features that these benchmarks use on Catalyst? Haven't we seen the situation before where the FOSS driver gets higher performance, but only because it's not doing everything the closed-source vender driver does? Then the feature(s) get implemented and performance drops suddenly, later improving as it gets optimised.

These games only use the opengl 3 set of instructions (with maby the exception of the ungine benchmarks). OpenGl 3 is completely implemented. So most likely no. The only thing that could cause that is if they testing with one of the unsupported anti-aliasing modes turned on. But that would fall under the category of purposely skewing the results.

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I have to say these performance numbers excite me to see what they will be by the end of the year!