Days Away From Branching, How Mesa 17.2 RadeonSI Performance Compares To Mesa 17.1

[M@GOid]

I believe 17.2 is the most important release of Mesa for AMD GPUs. Not because it achieved OpenGL parity with the proprietary drivers (that happened earlier), but because it was such a huge step forward in performance, in all games, that now you can not only ditch the blobs, but it actuality can go head on with the notorious Nvidia proprietary driver.

Cudos to all the people involved, developers, bug reporters, even Intel people that helped implement OpenGL features in mesa. Cudos to you all.

[M@GOid]

They can't do anything about the heat, that's just the nature of the product. I'm guessing you are using the reference cooler? My 290 rarely exceeds 70C, which is low for an air-cooled ~275W GPU. Your temps are likely related to the crashing. As a tip - many AMD GPUs supply more voltage than they really need. You could try editing the GPU BIOS and lower the voltage by 0.05v, maybe even 0.1v, which will substantially help your temps.

The 290 is roughly on-par with the 480, better in some ways, worse in others. Your GPU must be seriously throttling its performance if yours is half as fast as a 480.

EDIT:
Also, your PSU could be the problem. Usually a high-wattage card + insufficient power = instability. Keep in mind PSU wattage isn't divided evenly. For example, I have tested my 290 on a 500W unit on an under-volted Athlon II. Using a watt meter, the PC immediately powered off once the GPU pushed the wattage to roughly 300W. Despite being a safe distance away from the 500W rating, the PSU failed.

At the time, my combo was a FX-8350 (125w TPD) and a Sapphire Toxic R9 290 (3 coolers). My Corsair 550w PSU couldn't power it, so I bought a EVGA 750w PSU, and the thing worked fine until the 290 started displaying graphics artifacts. I tested it in 3 different combinations of mobos and PSUs on friends PCs, so I had to let it go.

[duby229]

They can't do anything about the heat, that's just the nature of the product. I'm guessing you are using the reference cooler? My 290 rarely exceeds 70C, which is low for an air-cooled ~275W GPU. Your temps are likely related to the crashing. As a tip - many AMD GPUs supply more voltage than they really need. You could try editing the GPU BIOS and lower the voltage by 0.05v, maybe even 0.1v, which will substantially help your temps.

The 290 is roughly on-par with the 480, better in some ways, worse in others. Your GPU must be seriously throttling its performance if yours is half as fast as a 480.

EDIT:
Also, your PSU could be the problem. Usually a high-wattage card + insufficient power = instability. Keep in mind PSU wattage isn't divided evenly. For example, I have tested my 290 on a 500W unit on an under-volted Athlon II. Using a watt meter, the PC immediately powered off once the GPU pushed the wattage to roughly 300W. Despite being a safe distance away from the 500W rating, the PSU failed.

I know people like dual rail power supplies, but that reason right there is exactly why I recommend to people single rail power supplies.

[R41N3R]

Wow, Mesa 17.2 will be very exciting for AMD graphic cards!

[schmidtbag]

Now if the RadeonSI developers could manage the R9_290 not to get too hot and crash we have a winner.

My 480 now flies, I have 100fps+ on some games (paired with a Ryzen 1800x)

They can't do anything about the heat, that's just the nature of the product. I'm guessing you are using the reference cooler? My 290 rarely exceeds 70C, which is low for an air-cooled ~275W GPU. Your temps are likely related to the crashing. As a tip - many AMD GPUs supply more voltage than they really need. You could try editing the GPU BIOS and lower the voltage by 0.05v, maybe even 0.1v, which will substantially help your temps.

The 290 is roughly on-par with the 480, better in some ways, worse in others. Your GPU must be seriously throttling its performance if yours is half as fast as a 480.

EDIT:
Also, your PSU could be the problem. Usually a high-wattage card + insufficient power = instability. Keep in mind PSU wattage isn't divided evenly. For example, I have tested my 290 on a 500W unit on an under-volted Athlon II. Using a watt meter, the PC immediately powered off once the GPU pushed the wattage to roughly 300W. Despite being a safe distance away from the 500W rating, the PSU failed.

[JPFSanders]

Wow, now suddenly even my old R9_290 is practical for games 50fps+ in things like "Dying Light", 60fps+ In "Borderlands the presequel"

Now if the RadeonSI developers could manage the R9_290 not to get too hot and crash we have a winner.

My 480 now flies, I have 100fps+ on some games (paired with a Ryzen 1800x)

Simply amazing, kudos to the Mesa developers.

[Jahimself]

Wow. If every 17.x version update gets 5 to 20% perf improve. In 10 years this driver will make our computers fly to the moon

[Michael]

Relly nice boots in most games. It would've been nice to see also a comparison with Nvidia.

That will come as Mesa 17.2 is closer... Obviously not practical benchmarking NVIDIA each time I run a Mesa comparison.

[valici]

Relly nice boots in most games. It would've been nice to see also a comparison with Nvidia.

[schmidtbag]

Very exciting numbers overall. These differences will really help close the performance gap, both between Nvidia and AMD's Windows drivers. Imagine how much faster progress would be if those pesky DC/DAL patches weren't in the way.

is it really a regression, or is 320 fps for Mad Max unrealistically high..?!

I agree, even the regressed frame rates are still pretty good. Both GPUs performed roughly the same in Mesa 17.1, which could've been a CPU bottleneck, but could also be an issue with the drivers. Not all regressions are necessarily bad if it means things are rendering properly (but I'm not sure if there were issues before).