Radeon RX 550: AMDGPU-PRO vs. DRM-Next + Mesa 17.2-dev

[marek]

This would be great if the open source drivers supported OpenGL 4.5, but since they don't, and the developers have promised they never will, the point is rather moot. If you want to run Steam under Wine or play many games that require it you have to use AMDGPU-PRO. And yes, I've tried the various environment variables that are supposed to "fool" software into believing the open source drivers support OpenGL 4.5 compatibility mode, but they didn't fool anything I've tried. And for those who say the multitudes of software that use compatibility mode are "crap" or "buggy", that's ridiculous. Steam itself uses compatibility mode, and if people want to claim it's buggy or crap, well, I don't believe any amount of reality will change their minds. And for a driver producer to believe that all the games and software in the world that use compatibility mode should be rewritten, instead of them supporting this common feature, well, again, no amount of reality will change their minds.

Well, that is one way to look at the situation, but there is another way too. The fact is, DX10 and DX11 game ports and wine don't need the compatibility profile. There is nothing in DX10 and DX11 that needs it. And DX9 games are OK with GL2 or GL3 Compatibility, which Mesa does support. The only reason the compatibility profile exists above GL 3.0 is workstation applications. If some games choose to use the compatibility profile, they misunderstood the situation and it's even detrimental to them, because the Core profile has everything they need and it's even slightly faster (for Mesa/Gallium). Luckily, the vast majority of native Linux Steam games don't require the compatibility profile, and I'm happy for that.

Last but not least, open source drivers do support OpenGL 4.5 and at least one of them passed the conformance and is now officially an OpenGL 4.5 certified driver according to Khronos Group, the body behind OpenGL. Would you dare to say that Khronos is wrong too? I understand your frustrations from Wine, but sharing them here isn't going to fix Wine and isn't going to make you happier either.

[muncrief]

- In the long term, it is likely for Mesa to support OpenGL compatibility mode. It is likely that it will materialize during a vacuum in Mesa implementation created by having all OpenGL.core_mode & Vulkan & OpenCL features implemented and not having any new GPU releases on the short-term horizon.

- A different solution would be a universal non-Mesa OpenGL wrapper library mapping compatibility mode functions to Mesa OpenGL core profile functions

That would be great, but I've never heard anyone say that before. As I intimated, whenever I mention it anywhere people quite adamantly claim that anything using compatibility mode is buggy or badly written, and that it should be rewritten. Which of course was initially pretty shocking, though now I'm used to it.

In any case, if it ever happens it would greatly increase the usefulness of the open source drivers. In fact personally I wouldn't have to use AMDGPU-PRO anymore, which is an endlessly difficult to hit moving target. And as the benchmarks show, they're slow. I also often have problems with graphical corruption. In fact since 16.40 I can't play No Man's Sky because the graphics are a mishmashed mess.

[Tomin]

I hope that some day AMDGPU-PRO supports libglvnd and I can use both drivers at the same time for different software. I don't know if the latter is even possible though, but even now we can run Vulkan and OpenGL software at the same time, right? Then, by default, I can use open source drivers most of the time, but if I need compatibility context for something, I can run that software using AMDGPU-PRO.

Anyway, I also hope Wine won't need compatibility profile for DX10 and DX11 in near future (well, in a few years maybe, if not any sooner).

[LeJimster]

This would be great if the open source drivers supported OpenGL 4.5, but since they don't, and the developers have promised they never will, the point is rather moot. If you want to run Steam under Wine or play many games that require it you have to use AMDGPU-PRO. And yes, I've tried the various environment variables that are supposed to "fool" software into believing the open source drivers support OpenGL 4.5 compatibility mode...................

First of all mesa fully supports OGL 4.5 and has done for months now. Maybe you were meaning another compat profile? Anyway, from what I've read it's not that they will never implement compatibility profiles like the Pro driver, but that they have so much other stuff to work on first. I know Pierre at Valve has discussed the issue and I believe they are or will look at it if nobody else will.

"Is anyone maintaining a list of Linux games that don't work on radeonsi? GL compatibility context, extensions Mesa won't implement, etc."

[torsionbar28]

Nope.
Only in openGL.
Not in vulkan.
Not in openCL.

AMD GCN users right now are in this very awkward transition phase where we have to pick and choose which userspace and sometimes even which kernel driver to use depending on the application.

All true, however the vast majority of consumer user cases today are OpenGL.

[smitty3268]

That would be great, but I've never heard anyone say that before. As I intimated, whenever I mention it anywhere people quite adamantly claim that anything using compatibility mode is buggy or badly written, and that it should be rewritten. Which of course was initially pretty shocking, though now I'm used to it.

There's zero interest in the mesa community for doing it, or by Intel or AMD. Now maybe a 3rd party community volunteer comes along and does it. Or maybe Valve will take an interest in order to support the handful of games that require it - i'd say more likely they'd just create app profiles to workaround issues in those games, though, rather than committing to fully supporting compat profiles.

[Zucca]

you are right on this point: "Not in openCL." this should be the next big step in conquer and dominate the world by the opensoruce driver.

But OpenCL can be used with open source drivers using Clover (just... don't even try that) or apparently using the OpenCL libraries from the closed source drivers.

I'm going to try that for sure.

[Zucca]

As we open up the remaining closed-source userspace drivers this situation should improve.

And some blame me for being AMD fanboi.

Which I'm not! 1 out of 4 computers has intel here! Or a little less if you include my Raspberry Pi... And 0 out of 4 has nVidia...


Oh... I am a fanboi.

[artivision]

Well, that is one way to look at the situation, but there is another way too. The fact is, DX10 and DX11 game ports and wine don't need the compatibility profile. There is nothing in DX10 and DX11 that needs it. And DX9 games are OK with GL2 or GL3 Compatibility, which Mesa does support. The only reason the compatibility profile exists above GL 3.0 is workstation applications. If some games choose to use the compatibility profile, they misunderstood the situation and it's even detrimental to them, because the Core profile has everything they need and it's even slightly faster (for Mesa/Gallium). Luckily, the vast majority of native Linux Steam games don't require the compatibility profile, and I'm happy for that.

Last but not least, open source drivers do support OpenGL 4.5 and at least one of them passed the conformance and is now officially an OpenGL 4.5 certified driver according to Khronos Group, the body behind OpenGL. Would you dare to say that Khronos is wrong too? I understand your frustrations from Wine, but sharing them here isn't going to fix Wine and isn't going to make you happier either.

My question is (and i believe that i speak with someone intelligent), why don't you offer a Gallium D3D11 state tracker? You know that you will win Linux if you do right? It doesn't have to be officially by you, you can just donate a sum to someone outside AMD and without giving technical assistance. We can also assist with donation or other means if there is a request.

[Hi-Angel]

Cool. Last time when I trying mesa 17.0.4 on my radeon hd5850 it gives me worse performance than old fglrx :/ for e.g in Dota 2. In dota2 on fglrx (catalyst 15.9) I have about 50-60 FPS on almost max settings but on the same gpu with mesa 17.0.4 I have 10-25 FPS and horrible lags... Is any cause of this?

I'm wondering. I've tried fglrx too a few times for it was a thing, on my HD5730, and on the contrary have always witnessed worse performance (not to mention a bunch of glitches). Last time was a few months before fglrx deprecated. However, it's not the first time I see a claim about a better performance with fglrx, so maybe fglrx badly supported just Evergreen.

Anyway, just wanted to say that r600g far not that bad as you can think. Sometimes I'm playing games with Wine+Nine, and the performance is better than I had on Windows7 in ≈2013 (I lost it with HDD). I'm sad to not have benchmark numbers to backup, but I still can somewhat compare. E.g. there's a game Kany&Lynch 2 — a shooter with mediocre gameplay, lame story, no music, but optimized and spectacular (for its time) graphics. On Win7 I couldn't pass the 2-nd mission, where you protecting a car on a bridge. I've tried dozens of times, but the location was just too laggy to aim. Guess what: with Wine+Nine on Mesa-git (the one branched later to 17.0) I didn't have a problem! Granted, it's still lagging, but far not so terribly.

And r600g should be slightly better with today's Mesa-git, because there was some more small optimizations.

Or maybe this is because open source not care too much about r600?

Well, as far as I can see, the last one actively contributed to r600g was Vadim Girlin, the author of r600g/sb compiler. He disappeared around 2014. From that point r600g was just occasionally tweaked by different peoples. AMD are focused on radeonsi.