OpenSUSE Ends Support For Binary AMD Graphics Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenSUSE Ends Support For Binary AMD Graphics Driver

Bruno Friedmann has announced the end to AMD proprietary driver fglrx support in openSUSE while also announcing theu don't plan to support the hybrid proprietary AMDGPU-PRO stack either...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenSUSE-Ends-Binary-AMD

[ElectricPrism]

My understanding is that AMDGPU-PRO use-case is generally only beneficial in the commercial sector.

I use AMDGPU and with MESA-Git and Gallium Nine it's pretty rock solid. Only thing I'm waiting on is DAL/DC Kernel support for AMD RX 480.

[Amarildo]

Yeap there’s a closed driver, called amd-gpu-pro, available, for newer cards. But there’s two things that bring me out of the game, first I don’t have those newer gpu

Bullshit. You don't need a newer GPU to pack a driver. Any mediocre packager can pack whatever he/she wants without having the hardware to use the built packages.

The second and certainly the most important, those drivers are only available for Ubuntu or at least in .deb format

It doesn't matter the format: .zip, .tar.gz, .deb, whatever. If you can extract them, you can re-package them.

Just a bunch of excuses.

Those who want the AMDGPU-PRO driver on non-Debian distros can go to Arch.

[clintar]

Bullshit. You don't need a newer GPU to pack a driver. Any mediocre packager can pack whatever he/she wants without having the hardware to use the built packages.

But doesn't the amd-gpu-pro only support the newer cards? there's no support for my 280x machines. they just dropped it. sure there's some kind of experimental thing if you compile your own kernel or something, but I've never tried that, and it's not supported.

[Amarildo]

But doesn't the amd-gpu-pro only support the newer cards? there's no support for my 280x machines. they just dropped it. sure there's some kind of experimental thing if you compile your own kernel or something, but I've never tried that, and it's not supported.

It doesn't matter. I can build AMDGPU-PRO here on Arch with a GCN 1.0 card which is not supported at all. Using it could be a problem, building it should not. Like I said, you don't need support to build packages because re-builind packages is like taking a hotdog out of it's current container and putting it in another container. The hotdog stays the same (in this case, the driver pre-built files), only the container changes. You don't need to eat this hotdog to change it's container.

And in the case of actually compiling packages from source, it's the same deal, only this time it's like taking each ingredient, reading the instructions, baking the bread, etc. Yet again you don't need to eat this hotdog.

I can compile Xorg 1.17 without using it.
I can compile a different Linux Kernel without using it.
I can build FGLRX without using it.
I can build AMDGPU-PRO without using it.

If using the package was a requirement for building it, most distros wouldn't have tens of thousands of packages.

[Amarildo]

My understanding is that AMDGPU-PRO use-case is generally only beneficial in the commercial sector.

Both stacks, AMDGPU-PRO and Catalyst, have a few advantages over the free drivers, one of them being a working OpenCL. And in both stacks, quite a few games still run better than RadeonSI. For example, CSS runs at 250-300 FPS on AMDGPU+mesa-git+llvm-svn. On Catalyst, a driver that is a year old, it runs at 500 FPS (the same performance as on Windows). CSGO with mesa-git runs at 70 FPS on the most detailed map (Nuke, all on Very High, AA8x, lots of BOTS), but with Catalyst it jumps to 100.

There are tons of newer titles that still run like crap on Mesa, but that is only a matter of time until they optimize their OGL. However, AMDGPU-PRO got there way faster, so to me it's the best stack for newer cards and newer games.

I use AMDGPU and with MESA-Git and Gallium Nine it's pretty rock solid

Me too But it's not as rock-solid as stable mesa or the proprietary drivers/stacks. Just a few days ago I was hit with a huge performance regression on X-Plane.

[dungeon]

I don't beat innocent horses will retire fglrx once my distro stop being supported, somewhere around 2020.

And waiting for today's amdgpu-pro too of course

Otherwise on opensource side i visit bugzilla often... here shaders openly failing, but works fine on blobs

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99019

[smitty3268]

And in both stacks, quite a few games still run better than RadeonSI. For example, CSS runs at 250-300 FPS on AMDGPU+mesa-git+llvm-svn. On Catalyst, a driver that is a year old, it runs at 500 FPS (the same performance as on Windows).

I just want to point out that running at 250 fps is not any worse than 500 fps. Yes, there's a number that ends up being lower, but it's not any worse at all in any way.

CSGO with mesa-git runs at 70 FPS on the most detailed map (Nuke, all on Very High, AA8x, lots of BOTS), but with Catalyst it jumps to 100.

On the other hand, going from 70 fps to 100 fps is a worthwhile difference that can be important.

[leigh123linux]

Bullshit. You don't need a newer GPU to pack a driver. Any mediocre packager can pack whatever he/she wants without having the hardware to use the built packages.


It doesn't matter the format: .zip, .tar.gz, .deb, whatever. If you can extract them, you can re-package them.

Just a bunch of excuses.

Those who want the AMDGPU-PRO driver on non-Debian distros can go to Arch.

You obviously have never packaged before, I've actually tried to package fglrx driver without hardware to test.
The results weren't good and didn't function .
I guess that doesn't matter with Arch which seems to be broken most of the time

[jaxxed]

It doesn't matter. I can compile AMDGPU-PRO here on Arch with a GCN 1.0 card which is not supported at all.

I'm pretty sure that you aren't actually compiling the PRO package, as it isn't distributed in source (I thought.) Do you mean the aur support which extracts the binary from the debian package(s)?