AMDVLK vs. RADV vs. AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 Vulkan Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDVLK vs. RADV vs. AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 Vulkan Performance

With AMD's release on Friday of the long-awaited open-source "AMDVLK" Radeon Vulkan driver here are our initial benchmarks of this official Radeon open-source Vulkan driver compared to the unofficial RADV Mesa-based Vulkan driver and the similar AMDGPU-PRO 17.50 closed-source Vulkan driver.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25725

[VikingGe]

So, what we have now is a mess of three different drivers, of which
- two can't run Wolfenstein properly
- two have issues with Vega
- one is slow on Vega
- not a single one is actually competitive to Nvidia.

Not that I'm complaining about amdvlk finally being available, but I'll just stick to RADV and hope that amdvlk can be used at least as a source of information to improve it.

[schmidtbag]

Is it just my crappy memory or is amdvlk's performance worse than what came from the non-open amdgpu-pro?

[Guy1524]

It seems pretty clear that RADV is more efficient on the CPU side, while AMDVLK and 17.50 are more efficient on the GPU side

[ramrod]

Not that I'm complaining about amdvlk finally being available, but I'll just stick to RADV and hope that amdvlk can be used at least as a source of information to improve it.

There's no reason to stick with just one. They can both be installed at the same time, and it's easy to switch from one to the other per application. Just use which ever one works the best for the specific scenario. There is also the possibility of the AMDVLK picking up improvements from the RADV driver as well, so I would'nt expect the benefits to only go in RADV's direction.

What I would like to see, and I'm not sure if it can be done already is a method to set one as the default. Does anyone know of a way to do that?

[mphuZ]

Is it just my crappy memory or is amdvlk's performance worse than what came from the non-open amdgpu-pro?

Yes. Probably, there is regression..

And I would like more tests of "non-Feral" ports, which are developed only for RADV...

[mphuZ]

Just use which ever one works the best for the specific scenario.

Yes, Yes, Yes.
RADV for one, AMDVLK to the other, and a AMDGPU-PRO for the third. Linux style!

[wizard69]

It will be interesting to see if the open source world gets behind AMDVLK in a way that really leads to enhanced perfotmance.

Hopefully we will also see performance numbers shortly from an AMD Ryzen mobile system. I was actually looking at a Ryzen mobile based laptop yesterday in a store. The unit was rather snappy considering it was running off spinning rust storage. Snappy by the way running Windows, no actual benchmarks.

The only reason i resisted buying was due to indications online that you really need a bleeding edge distro just to get base functionality. However if i can hold out (needa new laptop) i really dont see any reason to avoid AMD mobile. Ryzen mobile looks like a big win for AMD i just hope Linux support firms up quick. Of course id love to see the GPU side of things tested.

[zoomblab]

I wonder what magic is inside the Nvidia drivers so that they are *always* faster. Several years have pased since AMD open sourced their drivers and neither the close or the open can match the nvidia performance.

[ramrod]

Yes, Yes, Yes.
RADV for one, AMDVLK to the other, and a AMDGPU-PRO for the third. Linux style!

I don't know about PRO. My point about AMDVLK, and RADV is that both can be installed with practically zero impact, and it is easy to swich per application. Unless something has changed with PRO it still requires a reboot to switch.