Valve's ACO Helps The Radeon RX 5600 XT Compete With NVIDIA's RTX 2060

[mphuZ]

..but AMD probably does not want to keep supporting their other backend compiler for OpenCL and co.

Where should they go? Let Valve complete this compiler completely, and then AMD will implement it.

[CochainComplex]

I had a RX 560 and 580 that both had an issue trying to handle 4K@60Hz over HDMI on a display I had; would randomly become unstable and either garble or go to black the entire screen at times. OS didn't matter (happened on Windows, macOS, and Linux with the same GPU and display), and it wasn't the cables (tried numerous 4K@60Hz HDR certified cables). Some further searching around shows some threads pointing at it being a hardware-related issue specific to AMD GPUs. I could fix this by creating a custom reduced-blank resolution, but this was messy (not ideal with Wayland, and required a paid program on macOS).

Got a laptop with a GTX 1060, and the display with the same cables works perfectly at 4K@60Hz; no instability at all.

As said by Others - could be wayland.

[CochainComplex]

It does not make sense, ACO was created specifically for AMD cards (ACO => Amd COmpiler).
You want to support a vastly different set of GPUs, you'd most likely be looking at restarting close to from scratch.

I think nVidia uses LLVM but not fully like AMD does, and maybe their backend is fast enough anyway.
It's not because ACO is faster that it proves that using LLVM was wrong, it might simply be a less efficient implementation, etc.

Why should we bother If Nvidia could use this as well? They dont contribute to opensource why should they profit? If they will open source their Driver some skilled devs will automaticaly port such ideas.

[CochainComplex]

How is the current stability for AMD drivers? I'm seeing lots of posts on social media about driver issues and BSODs on windows.

When I have had replaced my 7870 with a 5700 XT on windows I had issues with blackscreens as well. So I did a complete reset of win 10 and everything is stable since.

On Linux side I have no issues at all. It is recommended to use latest stable Kernel 5.4 plus latest Mesa even dev versions (20git) than it is really stable. (5700XT)
I also own an Athlon 200GE APU which is also rock stable with latest 5.4 Kernel under debian stretch with its default mesa ...i cant recall the version 17?

as previously written:

I'm using ACO by default on my gaming rig with the 5700XT:

Tested so far (10h+ at least) SOTR (linux native), AC Syndicate, AC Unity, Watch Dogs 2
pop_os19.10: xanmod 5.4.14 kernel (march=native)+ oibaff mesa 20git
lutris (wine 5.0 +latest dxvk 1.5.2 + fsync always on)

....and It simply works stable despite of its experimental state.

[skeevy420]

These are impressive numbers. Compliments to all the developers.

I understand ACO will next be incorporated into RadeonSI, but doesn't this have wider implications? AMD would want this on Windows, Playstation, and what remains of OpenGL on Mac, at least for gaming? And what do nVidia, Intel, and Apple think about it?

And all beta-testing the Navi achitecture in general for RDNA 2 console hardware. From a certain point of view. At least the desktop segment still matters to them in that scenario, as overachieving rodents if nothing else.

That's a good speculation. Since we know that Sony uses a custom BSD OS and that BSD uses Mesa...there's technically no reason that the PS5 won't be able to support ACO.

Damn, that means my conspiracy theory about beta testing Linux users speculation might not be that far from the truth. We have the features now that they'll have in the next 6 months or so which does makes XT users prime PS5 driver testers...especially since it isn't supported on Linux right now unless you're an actual geek like us and know terms like "agd5f".

[Grinness]

How is the current stability for AMD drivers? I'm seeing lots of posts on social media about driver issues and BSODs on windows.

On my end I have been using rx480 for the last 4 years on ArchLinux with great success
I use the system daily for anything: from web, office, music authoring & mastering, games (Steam and Proton, retrogames,...), coding,....

Stability is currently great, no issues at all. I can move from professional recording to competitive gaming (Project Cars2+G29, Doom2016, The Witcher3, Dark Soils, Pathfinder Kingmaker,...) seamlessly.

In the past had some random freezes (once a month, maybe and never during gaming -- usually firefox) that completely disappeared in the last few months (I keep my system updated daily)

G

[skeevy420]

How is the current stability for AMD drivers? I'm seeing lots of posts on social media about driver issues and BSODs on windows.

If they're for 5500 XTs and other RDNA cards or certain APUs, that's not too surprising. New stuff from AMD always seems to have launch issues.

For anything older, meaning anything between the Radeon VII and Radeon HD 7XXX, most all of those cards will run perfect. Especially the Polaris GPUs, the RX 4XX and RX 5XX GPUs.

The Polaris cards are some of the best GPUs you can get for Linux desktop usage and gaming...it's like AMD designed them just for us.

I had very good results from 2013 to 2018 with my old R7 260x and I'm currently having great results with my RX 580. Jumping between Arch and Manjaro over the past long while, I've never had any long term issue with my GPUs...especially my 580...and every issue I've had that I could 100% blame my GPU on has been fixed (not counting Proton games, of course).

[rvanlaar]

Thank you for everybody that gave their experiences regarding AMD driver stability. It seems that the consensus is that the previous generation is rock solid now.

[moilami]

Stability of Navi on Linux probably has gotten better than on Windows with kernel 5.5. Though that's not a hard thing, unfortunately.
There are other stupid bugs as hardware cursor performance issues or limited power saving with some resolutions, refresh rates or multi monitor setups. AMD's own Vulkan amdvlk driver also is a visual corruption nightmare on Navi with DXVK etc.

Things were looking well with Polaris, but AMD tears it all down with Navi. I've devided that I won't purchase one for myself (nor will I recommend it to others).

I have Red Devil 5700 and I am super happy with it. Performance is great and no issues at all with 5.4 kernel. It just works. I would recommend it to you.

[cute2dgirl]

Playstation

Shaders for console games are compiled off-line, and Sony have their own compiler. It's not comparable to the PC ecosystem.