AMD Radeon vs. Intel Arc Graphics With Linux 6.2 + Mesa 23.0

[cipper]

We're working on new @amdradeon drivers for 6000 series and prior gen cards. Aiming to release them within the next 2 weeks. Will provide another update if we run into any delays and as we get closer to posting them. Thank you for your patience
— Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) February 3, 2023

[dpanter]

So uh... I just ran the Phoronix Dirt Rally 2.0 benchmark on my 8700k/6900xt rig in 2560x1080/high and averaged 257 fps. Lowest was 198 fps.
Curious how the 6700xt only managed 74 fps in Michaels testing.

Discussion about this:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/8077

[rogerx]

You can enable rebar on almost every MB with uefi. You just need some uefi patching to do.
https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI

Thanks for reminding us! Think I came across this too recently.

However I think I'm well satisfied, with the current blazing fast frame rates or performance this older (GA-Z77X-UP7) motherboard is currently putting out with the Intel Arc card. When 3DMark starts complaining after submitting results as to whether or not your results are true and not fake, for me it's well good enough. I see little difference between a 10 year old nVidia GTX 670 and an Intel Arc A750 within the 2D environment, while the 3D environment has seen an exponential increase, comparative to an nVidia 3060/3070.

I spend more time using business or office applications (eg. vi/vim, bc, ...), while mucking with UEFI might just give more headaches than it's worth. (eg. EFI/UEFI uses fat/dos like filesystem, ...) I also think, not only did UEFI need to be patched, but the BIOS/Firmware/Motherboard needed to be able to support the function at some level as well, however, was not included or not activated within BIOS/Firmware level by the manufacturer for whatever reason. This ten year old motherboard, was manufactured immediately previous to the initial inclusion of resizeable bar. Another item to think about, is the stability of such self DIY modification, as I said, I'm currently pleased with only the Internet browser (eg. Google Chrome) slowing to a crawl again due to exponential increasing usage of scripts over the past decades.

Since this motherboard was very well known during the time as one of the best during ten years ago, likely will just wait for other younger kids to play and post their results. Very likely such motherboards will end-up within younger kids hands too, from the parents. Shrugs...

mmm supported motherboard list, z77, "Games crash with 4GB BAR size, 2GB works fine thought to be driver issue."

As they say, do not want. Just might get more than you bargained for! .... trouble ....

[rogerx]

I've seen a bug report where the Iris OpenGL driver is often much slower than zink when resizeable bar is disabled, so you may wish to give that a try.

With this ten year old motherboard, "resizeable bar" was something integrated into motherboards shortly afterward. However, somebody mentioned resizeable bar can be manually integrated within a subsequent post here. On the flip, the frame rates are so fast and adequate, I wouldn't bother... content with the stability versus wasting time squeezing another few frame rates per second when I do not enjoy wasting time playing games.

[RejectModernity]

Shrugs, without resizeable bar on a ten year old Gigabyte motherboard, I get pretty good decent frame rates. However, it's an older high-end E-ATX nice motherboard with some of the best CPUs during that time period, so the benchmarks are always asking if the results are fake or real. From what I see, Intel did a great job of targeting a video card for business/consumer use, and for games. Rather than targeting a video card for only games, and business/consumer use being secondary.

You can enable rebar on almost every MB with uefi. You just need some uefi patching to do.

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI

[baka0815]

Michael any chance you could deliver a chart showing the geometric mean vs. the power consumption?

That way the RX6600 would look even better compared to the A770 if I read the graphs right.

[ms178]

Thank you, Michael, for the benchmarks. As I saw the A770 for 355 EUR today in Germany, I was tempted to replace my ageing and loud Vega. But looking at the numbers made me re-evaluate that thought again, as I would have gotten even worse performance in some games. No, thanks. I am waiting now for Battlemage or better deals on AMD's offerings.

[archsway]

Shrugs, without resizeable bar on a ten year old Gigabyte motherboard, I get pretty good decent frame rates. However, it's an older high-end E-ATX nice motherboard with some of the best CPUs during that time period, so the benchmarks are always asking if the results are fake or real. From what I see, Intel did a great job of targeting a video card for business/consumer use, and for games. Rather than targeting a video card for only games, and business/consumer use being secondary.

I've seen a bug report where the Iris OpenGL driver is often much slower than zink when resizeable bar is disabled, so you may wish to give that a try.

[Michael]

I wonder if PCI-E Resizeable Bar (AKA AMD SAM) was enabled. The Intel Arc GPU'S are relying very much on this feature as far as i know.

It's always enabled on my systems... And also shown in the system table.

[rogerx]

Shrugs, without resizeable bar on a ten year old Gigabyte motherboard, I get pretty good decent frame rates. However, it's an older high-end E-ATX nice motherboard with some of the best CPUs during that time period, so the benchmarks are always asking if the results are fake or real. From what I see, Intel did a great job of targeting a video card for business/consumer use, and for games. Rather than targeting a video card for only games, and business/consumer use being secondary.

As for me and my Intel A750 purchase, the card has been working nicely since linux-6.1 and mesa-22.2 release/install on Void Linux. I rarely play games, and *was* a devoted nVidia user, however sick of nVidia's proprietary drivers always deprecating fine working hardware, wasting my money. So glad I now have a video card truly being plug-n-play. All open source drivers (albeit with binary firmware) and just works! The video card hardware and drivers will likely last for 15+ years!

Mike did a nice job of finally putting some useful data up, such as the power suckage, I mean electrical usage of these video cards. (Moral of the story, don't waste time playing 3D games?) On the flip, using my computer(s) for business/office use and not for games most of the time, power usage is likely minimal due to not using extensive 3D functions... guessing. In other words, the power suckage problem likely only occurs if kiddie eyeballs are glued to their display, playing games 24x7!

Most within the photography/video arena likely use none of the software provided by the video cards, as the operating software conflicts with a color calibrated display/monitor. All that is truly is needed is good drivers. I've also never played with the video card's 3D settings much, keeping the default settings, and believe the application/game should control those aspects.

Looking over all of those 3D games tested, looks like a couple of them had some really low frame rates with some really high power usage, as if there were CPU/GPU instruction run occurring. Best probably to file a bug report, and overlooking the two clearly buggy 3D games would likely provide a better more realistic mean average rating.