AMD Reportedly Planning Big Driver Update For November

[Awesomeness]

It doesn't matter if valve decides or not, no manufacturer would put an amd gpu in there are the performance would be terrible and it would be buggy. If AMD's linux drivers were good then i'm sure some steam boxes would have AMD gpus, possibly even amd APU's.

Did you read the article? It is about overhauled drivers, not the current Catalyst crap.

[Awesomeness]

Does Valve decide about third-party Steam Machine's hardware?

The launch partners and Machines were picked by Valve. See http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/oem

[mao_dze_dun]

But you can edit Catalyst profiles on Linux too and i think Overdrive is there. Although both are not on click

There was actually even a GUI for that that allowed max clock settings and fan profiles - both very useful. problem is I never got the damn thing to actually work. But thank you for the video, none-the-less. Maybe I'll waste a Sunday afternoon fiddling with that )).

[dungeon]

Well A) that's way beyond my tech capabilities and B) it's not just making it work, but also being effective, i.e. have a profile. In Windows you can force CF on games that don't support it but it usually end up with worse performance than using single GPU. Also there is a painful need of Overdrive implementation or even better - somebody make MSI port Afterburner for Linux. There is a lot of additional tweaking to CF/SLI configurations. I had to do a slight downclock to keep things in the safe temp area and avoid thermal throttling. Sadly in Linux I cannot do that. I know it is a niche thing, but on the other hand - it is a basic Windows option I sorely miss whenever I boot Linux.

But you can edit Catalyst profiles on Linux too and i think Overdrive is there. Although both are not on click

[Awesomeness]

None of the Steam machines have AMD graphics. There's one with Intel Iris Pro and the rest all Nvidia. AMD didn't give Valve any choice in the matter sadly, despite a few years notice...

The final list of launch Steam Machines has only been finalized not so long ago. A big driver overhaul takes time. Obviously the plans were set in motion before the list was finalized.
Several AMD-powered Steam devices have already been announced, among them a handheld.

[mao_dze_dun]

I remember Arch users claiming CF setups to work and brake from time to time. IIRC it was often broken on releases with initial fresh xserver support. My last update on CF case is old, but because xserver 1.7 support still smells like initial - ie. there are problems with switching to TTY - I believe downgrading xserver is a good start.

Well A) that's way beyond my tech capabilities and B) it's not just making it work, but also being effective, i.e. have a profile. In Windows you can force CF on games that don't support it but it usually end up with worse performance than using single GPU. Also there is a painful need of Overdrive implementation or even better - somebody make MSI port Afterburner for Linux. There is a lot of additional tweaking to CF/SLI configurations. I had to do a slight downclock to keep things in the safe temp area and avoid thermal throttling. Sadly in Linux I cannot do that. I know it is a niche thing, but on the other hand - it is a basic Windows option I sorely miss whenever I boot Linux.

[Vi0L0]

I don't care about the terminology - I just want my second 290x to be more than an air heater whenever I boot Linux )).

I remember Arch users claiming CF setups to work and brake from time to time. IIRC it was often broken on releases with initial fresh xserver support. My last update on CF case is old, but because xserver 1.7 support still smells like initial - ie. there are problems with switching to TTY - I believe downgrading xserver is a good start.

[dungeon]

I don't care about the terminology - I just want my second 290x to be more than an air heater whenever I boot Linux )).

Well then i dunno what the question is? as i think Crossfire should already work with Catalyst on Linux.

I dont have CF setup, but info i have that should work with Catalyst, but not with opensource drivers

Dunno how to setup that really, but this video and comments down there said even quad setups work, etc..

[mao_dze_dun]

You should ask about EMA, CF and SLI are obsolete

DX12 benchmark shows AMD and Nvidia cards performing in harmony

I don't care about the terminology - I just want my second 290x to be more than an air heater whenever I boot Linux )).

[dungeon]

Yesterday I tested the Steam 2D game "Dust: An elysian tale" under Xubuntu 15.10.
Open source from oibaf ppa: Perfectly smooth. Perfect experience.
Catalyst 15.9: Dramatic decrease of FPS. Playable but distracting.

Does Catalyst actually work in Ubuntu 15.10 yet? Fixed packages seems currently in proposed repo.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...r/+bug/1493888

Just guessing that you run llvmpipe (that is slow of course) instead of Catalyst

But yeah DustAET is not demanding game, i guess should run even on 5 year old iGPUs with any driver.