Nouveau Linux 4.8 + Mesa 12.1-dev vs. NVIDIA OpenGL Performance

[karolherbst]

What I don't understand is how this reclocking factors into all this. If I understand correctly, then the "0F" setting means forcing the highest clock. In theory this means that it should have the highest performance. Yet, if this is the case, then there is still a massive gap to the proprietary driver that has nothing to do with reclocking.

Is there a proper explanation for that?

basically without my patches reclocking is broken, it just works on some cards by pure luck. It isn't broken in a sense that it would crash the card (it might though), but the entire GPU Boost thing wasn't implemented and there is a lot of things to be aware of. Even with the landed patches there is still a long way:

* adjusting clocks on temperature changes
* power capping

the former is pretty much done and currently in review, but the latter will still take some time.

[karolherbst]

well, with "* adjusting clocks on temperature changes" I more mean like changing the max clock. Basically with GPU Boost you have a voltage formula attached to each clock state (there are up to 60 of those) and depending on the temperature the resulting voltage differs, same goes for the maximum voltage.

Usually the max voltage entry are defined in a way, that the voltage drops the higher the temperature, which means some cstates might become unavailable out of the sudden and we have to dynamically adjust to this.

[karolherbst]

Shorter explination might be... that something is bound you know and that need to be optimized

wrong though. In this case those GPUs aren't fully reclocked. The GTX 680 is fine though.

[dungeon]

wrong though. In this case those GPUs aren't fully reclocked. The GTX 680 is fine though.

Ah OK, i tought Ehvis asked for remaining gap even on that GTX 680 regardless it is reclocked.

[AdamOne]

cant believe it.

not that running AMD gpus on linux is without hassle but Nvidias perspective on OS is straight heinous

[dungeon]

Like for example in Dota 2 case, even if GTX 680 is in best shape and considered fine... that still has half perf in comparison to propertiary driver.

That is how i understood that question

[Ehvis]

Ah OK, i tought Ehvis asked for remaining gap even on that GTX 680 regardless it is reclocked.

A bit of both. The 680 is much better, but in some tests it still drops quite a lot. I suppose there's still a lot of optimisation to do.

cant believe it.

not that running AMD gpus on linux is without hassle but Nvidias perspective on OS is straight heinous

I've been running Linux exclusively for almost 15 years. And for all that time NVidia has provided fast and working drivers. I have a hard time calling that "heinous".

[dungeon]

A bit of both. The 680 is much better, but in some tests it still drops quite a lot. I suppose there's still a lot of optimisation to do.

OK, so i get question right then - optimizations yes of course as always

Opensource drivers were always different, you don't get exactly what you get with proprietary drivers... that is also the case on AMD hardware, but there diff in some cases is much less visible nowdays. Like for example here where Dota 2 is optimized fine, we can't say the same for Talos

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radv-hits-mesa&num=3

And if you change hardware and use APUs for example then story can be entirely different further - there mesa probably does not beat nothing

[dungeon]

Basically opensource drivers are not copy/paste clones from proprietary - there would be always some gap here and there

[andre30correia]

for desktop if people wants to use opensource driver amd is the only alternative for gaming, no point in spending so much money and use opensource nvidia driver, the lack of dynamic clock is big problem for performance and lifetime of a card who always use the maximum freqs. For AMD is about time to give up from non free driver and put all resources in opensource driver like intel (one driver), when they reach the parity of features, opengl 4.5 vulkan vdpau/vaapi and enduro