Radeon X.Org Driver Gets Fixed Up To Always Allow Page-Flipping With TearFree

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon X.Org Driver Gets Fixed Up To Always Allow Page-Flipping With TearFree

It's fairly rare these days seeing improvements to the xf86-video-ati DDX: the driver for those running a pre-AMDGPU (GCN 1.2) graphics card with this driver paired with Radeon DRM and not using the generic xf86-video-modesetting driver instead. But if you are using xf86-video-ati and use the "TearFree" feature to try to avoid screen tearing, a number of patches landed today...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ATI-DDX-TearFree-Page-Flip

[Jumbotron]

Thank you Michael Danzer and AMD !! I have two laptops with AMD Puma APUs. This should help. And although this does not affect them I have been seeing great improvement with my Bristol Ridge APU equipped laptop and desktop over the last 6 months as well. Great job AMD and gang !!

[TerraRoot]

I'm just going to have to get an AMD card, any card, maybe two cards, support companys that support FOSS!

[gsedej]

Can someone list which gpus are gcn 1 gcn 1.1 gcn 1.2 gcn 3 gcn 4 gcn 5?

Iirc rx 480 &co are gcn 4, vega is gcn 5. Fury should be 3?

What about others?

[agd5f]

Can someone list which gpus are gcn 1 gcn 1.1 gcn 1.2 gcn 3 gcn 4 gcn 5?

Iirc rx 480 &co are gcn 4, vega is gcn 5. Fury should be 3?

What about others?

There are basically 4 families of GCN graphics cores:
GFX6: tahiti, cape verde, pitcairn, oland, hainan ("SI")
GFX7: bonaire, hawaii, kaveri, kabini, mullins ("CIK")
GFX8: tonga, fiji, iceland, carrizo, stoney, polaris10, polaris11, polaris12 ("VI")
GFX9: vega10, raven

See the the radeon wiki page for more info:

https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

[franglais125]

There are basically 4 families of GCN graphics cores:
GFX6: tahiti, cape verde, pitcairn, oland, hainan ("SI")
GFX7: bonaire, hawaii, kaveri, kabini, mullins ("CIK")
GFX8: tonga, fiji, iceland, carrizo, stoney, polaris10, polaris11, polaris12 ("VI")
GFX9: vega10, raven

See the the radeon wiki page for more info:

https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

I tried to follow this (and read the wiki), but the nomenclature is still not clear to me. Sorry for being dense

GFX9 = GCN 5? Then GFX8 = GCN 4, and so on? OIr it's a bit more involved than that?

I don't own a Radeon, but I should definitely say yet! Hence the interest/curiosity.

[bridgman]

The GCNx nomenclature is something the media made up and we try to align with occasionally. Something like:

GCN1 - GFX6
GCN2 - GFX7
GCN3 - GFX8 except Polaris
GCN4 - GFX8 Polaris (different HW but very few changes to programming model)
GCN5 - GFX9

There are also two different GCNx conventions, where GCN1.1=GCN2 IIRC. It's probably best if you ignore them all.

Note that GFX/GCNx only describes the graphics core versioning - all of the other blocks on the chip evolve as well and have their own versioning.

[franglais125]

The GCNx nomenclature is something the media made up and we try to align with occasionally.

Ah, the media... Yeah, it happens in technology and science as well.

Thanks for the summary! That helps a lot.

[smitty3268]

Ah, the media... Yeah, it happens in technology and science as well.

Thanks for the summary! That helps a lot.

Well, at the time I believe AMD was trying to insist everyone just use the cards marketing names and wouldn't give out the actual internal architecture naming scheme they used, so the media had to come up with something to describe what they were talking about.

[leipero]

I'm using xf86-video-ati, modesetting didn't play well with my GPU (graphic glitches with muffin WM for example), and don't quote me on this, but i think video-ati had better performance than modesettings on (at least) pre GCN card, even tho DRI3 on video-ati gives better performance (FPS in glxgears), I find DRI2 with EXA to be much smoother and better when vblank is disabled. Didn't test it in a while, maybe i should try again.