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AMD Radeon Performance Preview On Linux 3.8

Posted by timothy on from the goodwill-trip-justified dept.

skade88 writes "If you are like me, the proud owner of a Radeon card, and feeling left out of the Linux graphics driver revolution that swept Nvidia cards recently, then stay tuned — there might be hope for us seeing better graphics performance in the Linux 3.8 kernel."

22 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. If you don't yet have one ... by dbscoach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... never buy tech on a promise.

    1. Re:If you don't yet have one ... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I counter.

      I love my ATI and it works with Linux fine (ati 5750), yet it is not perfect. Never buy tech on a promise? I have been burned by Nvidia for years though they have supposedly excellent Linux support. They die, blackscreen, overheat. Maybe it is the PNY brand? Who knows.

      ATI has the best hardware. Nvidia has the best software. Your choice will depend on which you value most? ATI is not perfect as I had some bizaare driver bugs in Windows. I am running a beta driver now because of the erratic frame rate story posted on slashdot. So far so good in that release. I have not experienced a single BSOD, but just stuff like overscan on HDMI not working with some driver versions and youtube videos not scaling up when you click on the button.

      I prefer supperior hardware as I can always revert if I have a crappy driver but do not have the cash to buy another nvidia card when it fails for some reason. I could have just had bad luck with mine and found a rare gem with my asus ati 5750 that came with my system.

      Also I do not game under Linux or run 3d modelling so I do not stress it with my ATI. Just run compiz and videos. I do gaming occasionally on Windows though so I guess if you run Blender on Linux perhaps an NVidia might be worth alook?

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    2. Re:If you don't yet have one ... by somersault · · Score: 2

      If you suspect it's the PNY brand, you maybe should have tried another? I've had something like 8 nVidia cards of various brands in personal machines, and supported countless more at work, and they've never had any of the problems you mention.

      If the problems are related to Linux drivers, that's a software issue rather than hardware. Any card is going to die if you run at the wrong clock speeds and/or don't control the fans adequately.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    3. Re:If you don't yet have one ... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      It may be the well known industrial failure on geforce 8/9, sometimes referred as "bumpgate". Somewhat related to switching to lead-free soldering I believe. It's terrible but there haven't been something like that since.

    4. Re:If you don't yet have one ... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      Runs Wow and SWTOR perfectly fine. Wow can run at 30 fps almost full screen on max settings. True under medium high is more like its settings but it is fine. I bought it on sale for cheap 2 years ago and is perfectly fine. No I would not want to run the latest crysis on it but for Adobe dreamweaver, photoshop, h.264 movies, and a few games it rocks!

      I do plan to upgrade it this spring if finances are in my favor to a 7770 or a 7850. My only issues are I do HDMI only and occasionally some of the drivers assume I have a TV with the annoying black edge underscan. Sometimes the fps drop too in the later driver releases too but it works fine compared to my nvidia cards.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  2. Re:Loser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or one of those losers that only uses intel, or android, or iOS....when can this crap stop?

    A good geek/hacker uses the best tool for the job, or at least the tool they have :)

    The hacker defines the tool, the tool does not define the hacker.

  3. nice improvements. by Truekaiser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like how things are shaping up, without the lockups of course.
    But it still stands that if you want the most out of the card, the official drivers are still the only way to go.

  4. Re:Loser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    unless the hacker is a tool

  5. Proud "Owners", heh, sure. by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you are like me, the proud owner of a Radeon card...

    I have several GPUs that I test with. I've never been more proud than when I've fixed my own code to work around a tricky bug in the proprietary Radeon driver, so that some folks with that card could still use my software. That's because I'm proud of myself for my dedication to end users, not because of some name brand on a piece of abandoned hardware... So, no, I'm not like you; Unless you're just proud in general, not in relation to the GPU you own.

    Don't get me wrong, I've had to work around many other GPU vendor driver bugs over the years, from Voodoo to GeForce. My point is this: Who gives a damn if you own a piece of hardware, but don't have access to the full software stack required to operate and maintain it. I swear we were all much better off with software rasterizers. At least then the devs could Actually FIX BUGS, rather than tell users to upgrade a driver or that they're just SoL. Thus, as for being proud of the GPU vendors Intel is the only brand on my list that's (moderately) relevant today.

    1. Re:Proud "Owners", heh, sure. by Gaygirlie · · Score: 2

      OP here. Yeah, I'm gay and proud, so I proudly own a radeon, proudly use linux, and -- most importantly -- proudly suck dick. Last night, I sucked almost 10 dicks and you better believe I was proud of the work I did.

      I know you're just trying to troll, but you're doing pretty bad job at that. I mean, this imaginary person you're pretending to be gets laid TEN TIMES during a single night. Most guys would actually be proud of that. Now you, on the other hand, have most likely come close to another person's genitals only once in your life........and that was during your birth.

    2. Re:Proud "Owners", heh, sure. by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you talk about ATI and say "until they open-source their drivers", I must assume you're talking about ATI's closed source Catalyst driver?

      Have you tried the open source Radeon driver (preferably an up-to-date version) with your card? That driver has made great strides in the last few years, currently supports a long list of cards (likely including a 2 year old card), and is under active development. "nothing has ever changed" does not apply to that driver IMHO.

      Beside that, there may be user-configurable options @ play. For example: I recently had an old Radeon AGP card where the difference between "locks up a few seconds after starting 3D game" and "runs totally stable" was made by forcing the card into AGP 4x mode. Took some time to figure out that was the problem, but once known, it's easy to make that setting in your Linux distro of choice.

    3. Re:Proud "Owners", heh, sure. by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Who gives a damn if you own a piece of hardware, but don't have access to the full software stack required to operate and maintain it. (...) Thus, as for being proud of the GPU vendors Intel is the only brand on my list that's (moderately) relevant today.

      You are aware that this article is about the radeon open source driver improvements, not the proprietary driver right? You have access to the full stack. Of course you could wish that AMD would get fully behind an open source stack, but they're one step down from Intel and a hundred steps over nVidia in open source support. I hope there's more than one company that'll have an interest in a high performance open source graphics stack on Linux. because the reasons you're in a community is mostly sharing of the work.

      Of course I won't forget the people who work on these projects but affiliated with other companies or individual volunteers either, but my ideal end state would be one where Intel, AMD and nVidia all work on that stack to sell their hardware. Much like the Linux kernel isn't dominated by one single company, there's many who each contribute 15% or less. Of course much of this is driver code for their own hardware, but they all contribute to make the common parts stronger. Same with graphics cards, sure there's plenty card specific work but there's also plenty work to do on the common stack.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    4. Re:Proud "Owners", heh, sure. by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      For those that aren't aware there is a REASON why AMD can't get "fully behind the Open Source Drivers" and that is because there is a section of each chip they can't legally allow access to, the HDMI HDCP decoders. Since they have integrated that into the GPU there is simply no way for them to open that up, the code isn't theirs to give. Intel has their HDMI HDCP more separate than AMD does because their chips are all about the CPU and the GPU is simply supposed to be "good enough" for basic video watching and the like. Since AMD has been more about the GPU everything is tightly coupled around that GPU so they just can't give you 100% access, not without ending up blacklisted and unable to play any content that uses HDCP.

      But this should be a perfect test of the FOSS community, to see if they are worth supporting or not. AMD has done EXACTLY what you asked, and opened every bit of code that was theirs to give, so if their sales don't go up because the community goes "LOL use Nvidia proprietary drivers" then the hardware manufacturers will see how pointless it is to support FOSS, as AMD will have done all that work and not gotten any more sales as a result. At the end of the day if you don't support the companies that do as you ask then frankly nobody is gonna bother, after all it costs money to have a lawyer sign off on opening tons of code and docs and if they see no ROI for doing so why bother?

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Proud "Owners", heh, sure. by celle · · Score: 2

      "... I was proud of the work I did."

          Forget the work, be proud of how much money you made. You did get paid right?

  6. Re:Loser by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Proud owner"? It's a fucking video card, loser boy.

    This is often said facetiously. He could have felt burned. I assume it's for a $400 Radeon, not a $50 Radeon, since it's hardly worth putting much effort into the latter (just buy an Intel).

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  7. What driver revolution? by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seriously, I don't know. I don't really use desktop linux, I mostly use it for servers and data forensics. Perhaps somebody could fill me in? And everybody else who doesn't know while they're at it.

    --
    Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
    1. Re:What driver revolution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's probably more to do with Valve producing what appears to be a Linux-based console.

    2. Re:What driver revolution? by Stormwatch · · Score: 4, Informative

      A smart developer will not give up on Windows and jump to Linux; a smart developer will make software that can be easily ported to Windows, Linux, Android, OSX, iOS, and whatever else comes around. Tying oneself to proprietary APIs like DirectX, therefore, can be a serious mistake.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
  8. Eh? What change? by rueger · · Score: 3, Informative

    I admit to not really knowing or caring about graphics cards (not a gamer), but skimming through TFA's charts, it looks like almost every test had more or less the same performance out of 3.7 and 3.8.

    Am I missing something?

    --
    Three Squirrels
  9. Re:Loser by jgrahn · · Score: 2

    He could have felt burned. I assume it's for a $400 Radeon, not a $50 Radeon, since it's hardly worth putting much effort into the latter (just buy an Intel).

    Can you buy Intel cards? All the web shops have hundreds of ATI and nVidia-based cards, and nothing else (well, possibly a weird new Matrox thing for $700). Personally I use a Matrox card from back when they were good (G450 or something) but it's an AGP card and I'm screwed if I buy a new motherboard ...

  10. Re:So what to buy now...? by guises · · Score: 2

    I just recently ordered a 650 Ti, because that's the newest thing, but if you're not planning on playing any games then yes - Intel is the way to go for cheapness and reliability and power efficiency.

  11. Re:Loser by smash · · Score: 3, Funny

    Your matrox card will be outperformed by a factor of probably 5-10 by the integrated intel GPU these days.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.