AMDGPU-PRO 17.30 vs. Linux 4.13 + Mesa Git RadeonSI Benchmarks

[eydee]

amdgpu pro does not have a good openGL implementation. For gaming AMD devs for years have been focusing on the free openGL implementation in Mesa.

amdgpu pro does have a pretty good Vulkan driver implementation though.

That would explain some differences, but we can see some extreme cases here. More than 200% performance difference is not normal. Both should be at least close to GPU hardware limits.

[R41N3R]

The improvements of the Linux graphic stack are impressive, a big thank you to AMD and all other contributor's! To own a Polaris was a great experience so far :-)

[humbug]

The improvements of the Linux graphic stack are impressive, a big thank you to AMD and all other contributor's! To own a Polaris was a great experience so far :-)

When I got my hawai R9 290 years ago basically nothing worked out of the box.
It would stay in a low power state and I had to install the proprietary driver for any 3d work, which had laggy 2d performance.

It's like a night and day difference now. Everything basically just works and is fast now out of the box, any modern distro I install...

The only issues I have now is lack of Vulkan and that sometimes I get no display to my AOC monitor. And both those are fixed in my GPU by the move to amdgpu DRM driver, so once they flip the switch I have basically experienced a complete revolution in GPU experience with AMD on Linux in 3 years... without ever changing hardware LOL.

[OneBitUser]

Pretty sure the GTX 1080 is the mining favorite atm because it has low TDP and high mining performance, pretty sure it beats the Vega cards pretty easily in that department for cost/energy/hashing math. The RX480/580 would probably be better if their prices didn't explode to 1080 levels.

The other thing about the AMD RX Vega release is its a forced bundle system, meaning you get bundled to buy ryzen and freesync which is going to REALLY suck for people like me who already have those things........... A big FU from AMD to pre-existing customers.....

As a new Ryzen 5 owner I agree with you.
I would gladly buy an AMD card on the level of the GTX 1070, but I would not pay the extra for a bundle that I no longer need.
It would have been nice if AMD offered a small rebate or at least an order system that would only allow Ryzen owners to get RX Vega.

I had to buy an EVGA GTX 970 because there were no other options available: it still hurts, but there were simply no AMD cards available. I waited for a month for my RX 4xx-orders to yield any result, to no avail. I ended up paying literally half the price of an RX 580 for this card (or the price of an RX 560, if you like).
I would gladly get rid of this 970 to get my hands on a reasonably priced RX Vega or an RX 580 8GB. Sadly, that does not seem possible.

[duby229]

As a new Ryzen 5 owner I agree with you.
I would gladly buy an AMD card on the level of the GTX 1070, but I would not pay the extra for a bundle that I no longer need.
It would have been nice if AMD offered a small rebate or at least an order system that would only allow Ryzen owners to get RX Vega.

I had to buy an EVGA GTX 970 because there were no other options available: it still hurts, but there were simply no AMD cards available. I waited for a month for my RX 4xx-orders to yield any result, to no avail. I ended up paying literally half the price of an RX 580 for this card (or the price of an RX 560, if you like).
I would gladly get rid of this 970 to get my hands on a reasonably priced RX Vega or an RX 580 8GB. Sadly, that does not seem possible.

Limited availability this extreme sucks hard for sure, but on the up side AMD is making money and it seems more and more likely they are going to keep releasing competitive products in future generations. A few years back I was seriously worried aboutr AMD kicking the bucket, but that seems distant now. So I guess it is bad news, but not bad news.

[OneBitUser]

Limited availability this extreme sucks hard for sure, but on the up side AMD is making money and it seems more and more likely they are going to keep releasing competitive products in future generations. A few years back I was seriously worried aboutr AMD kicking the bucket, but that seems distant now. So I guess it is bad news, but not bad news.

Unfortunately neither AMD, nor AIB partners are making more money on 200$/€ MSRP cards just because retailers sell them for 400-500€ or more.
And that is my other big gripe with the situation: I will not support retailers who happily throw costumers under the bus just to make some easy profits.

And based on past experiences, here in my homeland (Hungary) the prices will not go back to normal, ever. When HDD prices skyrocketed after some floods in Asia, Hungarian retailers kept the prices up for years, even though the affected industry got back on its feet in a year or so.
The same has happened with RAM and SSD prices, and prices in Hungary are sure to stay on their current for years longer than the global market would necessitate.
So me buying an RX Radeon in the near future appear to be pretty slim, but I'm happy for AMD too, and I hope they will continue to be successful.

[kamild1996]

I've tried testing CS:GO myself on a very similar configuration (kernel 4.13-rc3, latest Mesa from Padoka's PPA, KDE Plasma, RX 480) but all I'm getting is a black screen. Michael, if you don't mind asking, have you had such a problem when testing?

[blackshard]

the open-source drivers are the most strict drivers who always follow the openGL spec without any cheat or hack to reduce quality over FPS ...
so in fact openGL-compatibility-profiles are the only feature the workstation people need to drop the closed source driver

About the strictness of the driver, I would like a quote or a test against a reference renderer to accept such statement.

Anyway, hacking the driver for workstation workloads doesn't mean at all that your driver is going faster (did I ever say that?). Commercial and closed source drivers always behave differently if your card is for gaming or for working, just because the workload is different.
OpenGL has an internal state and it is quite a complex beast, and you can note that especially when the application uses threads and interacts with it in a non-linear way.