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

[theriddick]

And there is still allot of performance issues in many games with AMD hardware. So AMD will need to start looking into that, just like how NVIDIA will tweak their drivers to help games perform well.

[Nille_kungen]

While everyone here is talking about high-end cards, I am on the other side of the spectrum.

I was recently (over the past few days) looking at *very low end* cards, basically integrated-gpu-like cards for a PC without an integrated gpu. Ideally, something single slot, passively cooled. The only requirement is to run a Wayland-based desktop (with sway tiling window manager, so no fancy effects either), which means good open-source driver support (ie not NVIDIA Maxwell with their firmware blob mess). Also preferably a somewhat-modern architecture, available to buy new (ie GCN-based AMD, rather than the old Terascale parts). I don't really care about performance; I want the cheapest possible thing with good open-source driver support for running a Wayland desktop and the occasional OpenGL tests.

AMD simply have nothing to offer. NVIDIA, on the other hand, have the GeForce GT 710, which is the *IDEAL*, perfect card for my needs. Single-slot, available with passive cooling from most manufacturers, Kepler GPU (good nouveau support), and dirt cheap. The only comparable thing in this range from AMD is the R7 240, which is AMD's lowest-end GCN card, which is a lot more power hungry, not available with passive cooling, and significantly more expensive. The R5 series of cards is Terascale based, and I don't like the r600 driver; I want radeonsi/amdgpu if I'm gonna use AMD.

So yeah, that said, I just ordered an MSI GT 710 a few hours ago. As much as I dislike NVIDIA and don't want to give them any money, they have the perfect product for me, while AMD simply don't have the right hardware to offer. That said, I understand this is a somewhat niche market, considering the rapid rise of integrated GPUs. However, the market is still very much relevant: some people want powerful CPUs for CPU-intensive tasks (Xeons or i7 Extreme series), which do not have integrated GPUs. Some people simply don't like integrated GPUs for other reasons.

That said, I also have an AMD R9 Nano for my other/gaming system, and am very happy with it. But that system runs Windows, so Linux driver is irrelevant.

Let's hope that there will be some cheap passive cooled polaris card.
You're right there's to many passive terascale based cards and not enough gcn in the segment of low end very cheap cards.
This is an market where amd used to be real strong.

[GreatEmerald]

While everyone here is talking about high-end cards, I am on the other side of the spectrum.

I was recently (over the past few days) looking at *very low end* cards, basically integrated-gpu-like cards for a PC without an integrated gpu. Ideally, something single slot, passively cooled. The only requirement is to run a Wayland-based desktop (with sway tiling window manager, so no fancy effects either), which means good open-source driver support (ie not NVIDIA Maxwell with their firmware blob mess). Also preferably a somewhat-modern architecture, available to buy new (ie GCN-based AMD, rather than the old Terascale parts). I don't really care about performance; I want the cheapest possible thing with good open-source driver support for running a Wayland desktop and the occasional OpenGL tests.

AMD simply have nothing to offer. NVIDIA, on the other hand, have the GeForce GT 710, which is the *IDEAL*, perfect card for my needs. Single-slot, available with passive cooling from most manufacturers, Kepler GPU (good nouveau support), and dirt cheap. The only comparable thing in this range from AMD is the R7 240, which is AMD's lowest-end GCN card, which is a lot more power hungry, not available with passive cooling, and significantly more expensive. The R5 series of cards is Terascale based, and I don't like the r600 driver; I want radeonsi/amdgpu if I'm gonna use AMD.

Yea, I was in that position some time ago as well. I got one of the Terascale cards, and for my needs (server) it's perfectly fine.

[kaprikawn]

I've got a couple of old AMD cards at the ultra low end, I can't remember the names, I think the 5850, and then another 6xxx equivalent version, they were really good if you don't intend to game on them. They cost around £30-35 at the time. The reviews I read before I purchased them said they were good, but saw them as niche because they're basically competing against integrated graphics on Intel chips. I got them because my CPUs at the time (Celerons/Pentiums) didn't have integrated graphics.

That's the problem really, not a lot of people need them. So I think AMD gave up producing them around GCN 1.0 time because the previous gen versions didn't shift many units.

[SystemCrasher]

I've got a couple of old AMD cards at the ultra low end, I can't remember the names, I think the 5850, and then another 6xxx equivalent version

HD5850 is hardly being low end. This isn't strongest of 5xxx, but pretty close to high end. Out of all 5000s only 5870 and 59xx are more powerful cards.

[Adarion]

Beautiful work, again. I saw the AMDGPU part for <GCN1.2 in the Kernel some time ago but didn't really bother with it since my Kabini was doing fine with the radeon stack already. But with that driver maturing I feel tempted to give it a try soon.

[eydee]

This is still just a kernel driver, which either comes with radeonsi, which is the same as before, or the closed stack, which is also still the same as before. As long as there is no new opengl stack to preview, there is absolutely nothing to be too happy about, and opengl performance will be the same mess as before. Yes, it's a step in the right direction, but nothing a regular end-user can be excited about.

[Adarion]

> HD 5850

I have a HD 5670 and I think it still is okay. Not super-powerful, but <75W, so powered via PCIe (no extra connectors needed) and it works fairly nice. Only drawback are unoptimized(?) games (got relatively low fps in Shadowrun HongKong even though there should hardly much GPU power be needed) and anything that would require OpenGL >=4 under Linux (with the free stack); e.g. that Metro stuff. Works fine in W32 on the same card. Didn't try fglrx (or whatev. it's called now) for a long time.
I wouldn't label a 5850 "low end" and rather middle ground. Also considering the prices now... though the HD5xxx series can hardly be obtained as novelty.

[zzarko]

When AMD announced AMDGPU for GCN 1.2 and newer cards, and said that Catalyst isn't supported anymore, thus leaving GCN 1.1 and 1.0 cards in limbo, I said that it looked to me as a middle finger to some of their users. I am happy to pull back my words and to say thank you AMD for doing this!

[Berniyh]

When AMD announced AMDGPU for GCN 1.2 and newer cards, and said that Catalyst isn't supported anymore, thus leaving GCN 1.1 and 1.0 cards in limbo, I said that it looked to me as a middle finger to some of their users. I am happy to pull back my words and to say thank you AMD for doing this!

amdgpu support for GCN 1.1 was already there for quite some time.
I've been using that on my Kaveri for almost 4 months now and apart from one issue (a result of backport fixes from 4.6 to 4.4/4.5) it worked flawlessly for me.
Actually it worked even better than radeon (have been switching back a few times for comparison).

Thus, I'll continue on using Kaveri and from my side I don't see a problem lifting that experimental tag. But of course, that's only my experience.