AMD Unleashes Initial AMDGPU Driver Support For GCN 1.0 / Southern Islands GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Unleashes Experimental AMDGPU Driver Support For GCN 1.0 / Southern Islands GPUs

Tonight AMD will be releasing their (experimental) patches for supporting GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands" graphics processors under their newer AMDGPU kernel DRM driver as an alternative to the mature GCN 1.0 support found within the longstanding Radeon DRM driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-SI-Experimental-Code

[Brophen]

Huzzah! Full support for my desktop is on the way

[artivision]

AMD shows something like 10x speed up at open source development, or that's just my imagination?

[theriddick]

Well so far AMD hasn't really felt any real negatives from open source so I guess their embracing it. NVIDIA is still concerned their secret sauce will get spoiled by it, if AMD actually manage to make performance gains under Linux like NVIDIA have, then NVIDIA might have no choice but to follow suit. We will wait and see however, still not happy with OpenGL performance and AMD hardware... (GCN1.1 and 4k OpenGL performance to be exact!)

[bwyan]

Just wanted to pop in to say that I am one happy GCN 1.0 card owner, who intends to continue buying AMD hardware, so long as they keep up this amazing pace and open source commitment. This is really great. I can't wait for these patches to mature!

[geearf]

Thanks for this AMD!

[xeekei]

Just wanted to pop in to say that I am one happy GCN 1.0 card owner, who intends to continue buying AMD hardware, so long as they keep up this amazing pace and open source commitment. This is really great. I can't wait for these patches to mature!

It'll be interesting to see if AMD will become the graphics vendor of choice for Linux gamers in the future, like Nvidia has traditionally been.

[schmidtbag]

AMD shows something like 10x speed up at open source development, or that's just my imagination?

I'm not sure it's been speeding up that much, it's just that the last several articles related to AMD's open source drivers have almost all been significant milestones. Considering how much they have on their plate, they definitely are accomplishing things at a fast pace, but they seem to be just barely keeping up with newer hardware releases and technologies. I feel like stuff such as the r600 drivers or mesa specs are kinda acting as a distraction for them, but they're still necessary to work on.

[geearf]

I'm not sure it's been speeding up that much, it's just that the last several articles related to AMD's open source drivers have almost all been significant milestones. Considering how much they have on their plate, they definitely are accomplishing things at a fast pace, but they seem to be just barely keeping up with newer hardware releases and technologies. I feel like stuff such as the r600 drivers or mesa specs are kinda acting as a distraction for them, but they're still necessary to work on.

and part of the good stuff lately has also been done by outsiders a well, let's not forget them

[ElectricPrism]

At this rate it wont be long before I eject my GTX 970s from my Linux rigs in favor of some R9 390s.

I'm already looking forward to having a Plymouth boot on my gaming and work rig, and having smooth TTY resolution and switching.

And if Zen processors are equal to Skylake I'll glady throw out my 2 Skylake LGA 1151 builds in favor of AMD Zen CPU, AM4+ Motherboard and a beefy R9 GPU.

But just like I've been saying for the last year, I won't pump that $2,000 into AMD until I feel confident their products are on par with their counterparts. This open source driver is making a huge difference, it's been a pleasure to watch mature over the last year.

And like the other poster said, I gotta have 4k @ 60hz work good on AMD via HDMI 2.0