Clock-For-Clock, Nouveau Can Compete With NVIDIA's Driver

[Rigaldo]

Radeon runs at max clocks by default.

Still, it would be nice to see such a test. With all r600g bells and whistles turned on for a change.

Oh, do you mean clocking down both Radeon driver and Catalyst to see how they compare then? Hmm ..
Hope I understood correctly this time.

[pingufunkybeat]

I don't think it has anything to do with clocks in the case of radeon .. But indeed, clocking down Catalyst would give radeon more beneficial results. But irrelevant.
I had normal clock speeds last time I used radeon.

Radeon runs at max clocks by default.

Still, it would be nice to see such a test. With all r600g bells and whistles turned on for a change.

[Rigaldo]

The problem with Mesa drivers becomes much more obvious at high frames per second, because small inefficiencies in the driver are very large compared to the time spend by the GPU.

So it's pretty obvious that this will not scale. Mesa (Gallium) is efficient enough that it doesn't make a big difference at 10-20 fps, but when you render 300fps, it becomes very noticeable.

Is it possible to downclock Catalyst in a similar fashion and compare against that? The radeon tests are usually done the other way -- the open source is slowed down, and Catalyst run at full speed

I don't think it has anything to do with clocks in the case of radeon .. But indeed, clocking down Catalyst would give radeon more beneficial results. But irrelevant.
I had normal clock speeds last time I used radeon.

[pingufunkybeat]

That's just excellent!

It means NVIDIA's GPUs are very well made so that you don't need to send them some special commands to get good performance from them.

This does sound like clueless blabbering, but there is some truth to that. Nvidia's older designs did put lot of stuff into hardware, which had to be handled by the driver on AMD cards.

The latest AMD generation (GCN) changed that, IIRC, so it's expected that the drivers will come closer to matching the maximum performance there.

[pingufunkybeat]

The problem with Mesa drivers becomes much more obvious at high frames per second, because small inefficiencies in the driver are very large compared to the time spend by the GPU.

So it's pretty obvious that this will not scale. Mesa (Gallium) is efficient enough that it doesn't make a big difference at 10-20 fps, but when you render 300fps, it becomes very noticeable.

Is it possible to downclock Catalyst in a similar fashion and compare against that? The radeon tests are usually done the other way -- the open source is slowed down, and Catalyst run at full speed

[birdie]

Many games still don't work with nouvoue.
Corrupted, flicking textures, wrong colors, etc.

Writing GPU drivers is considered the most difficult and troublesome job in programming - it took NVIDIA years to polish their drivers and they have full specs for their hardware.

nouveau developers are basically banging against the wall trying to create a good open source alternative to proprietary drivers.

[birdie]

That's just excellent!

It means NVIDIA's GPUs are very well made so that you don't need to send them some special commands to get good performance from them.

[uid313]

Many games still don't work with nouvoue.
Corrupted, flicking textures, wrong colors, etc.

[mybug]

So... what does this tell us about the open radeon driver?

Statement
I don't own a NVIDIA card, but this is great news .

Question
I guess the dynamic clocking will be handled in the kernel for both Nouveau and Radeon, right?
... and when can dynamic clocking be expected for Nouveau and Radeon?

Statement
Currently I set power profiles manually via. a service script and desktop shortcuts, hope that changes soon .

10 char limit

[bug77]

So... what does this tell us about the open radeon driver?