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AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Catching Up To and Beating Windows
An anonymous reader writes: Along with the open-source AMD Linux driver having a great 2014, the AMD Catalyst proprietary driver for Linux has also improved a lot. Beyond the open-source Radeon Gallium3D driver closing in on Catalyst, the latest Phoronix end-of-year tests show the AMD Catalyst Linux driver is beating Catalyst on Windows for some OpenGL benchmarks. The proprietary driver tests were done with the new Catalyst "OMEGA" driver. Is AMD beginning to lead real Linux driver innovations or is OpenGL on Windows just struggling?
... So with OSS drivers this will almost certainly be my next graphics card / chipset.
Who does all this hard work? Didn't AMD just fire a bunch of Linux developers?
Either way, at this point both the FGLRX and RADEON driver seem to be almost as good choice as Intel HD Graphics for Linux use. Good job.
AMD's Linux drivers are catching up to, and beating, the Windows drivers? That shouldn't be hard, given that the Windows drivers are a steaming load of fetid moose crap. The drivers are the reason I switched back to Nvidia. Their Linux drivers may be proprietary and a little fidgity, and the FOSS Linux drivers may be worse than junk, but at least I don't have to nuke a whole system install just to upgrade Catalyst, and once they're installed the friggin' work!
Rawr
The OpenGL stuff is nice for gamers, but what about for the HTPC? How well do the drivers do on video playback acceleration? Can they do MPEG-2 and H264 in HD resolutions with minimal CPU?
I don't suppose they can play a 1080i video and get the fields consistently correct for letting the TV handle the deinterlacing (or keep it interlaced if the TV is an old tube HDTV)?
NVIDIA GTX550Ti and lovin' it....
would make a game or two to go with all this POWWA!
Zing!
Just curious, if it took this long to get to this point, and if they've been firing Linux developers.
Linux is still actively developed unlike a 57
You must not keep up with these things. Here is a list of steam games that run in Linux. Some of which are incredibly popular games. http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux
Valve does. Hell, they've created their own Debian spin-off, SteamOS to try and woo developers away from Windows. And so far, I'd say they're doing a decent job as the number of games available on Linux has jumped since the announcement (let alone since the beta). Well reviewed titles like "Battleblock Theater," "XCOM: Enemy Unknown," "Super Meat Boy," "Borderlands 2," and "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel" are all available on Linux through Steam.
Rawr
I am very glad that AMD is improving the performance of their driver on Linux but I wish they would focus more on adding features that have been present on Windows for years. For instance, support for hybrid AMD/Intel graphics really sucks on linux laptops. You have to manually select the graphics card you want to use and restart your computer each time you want to switch between desktop use and gaming. On windows you can select which card to use for each application. Overheating and battery usage is also worse on linux than on windows. Finally, I wish suspend/wake would work as flawlessly on linux with the fglrx driver as it does on windows.
Not just the new ones - even some of the older games are being ported to linux now, though probably only en route to the promised Steambox.
I just finished Postal 2 on linux. Aside from steam achievements not being done yet, it worked flawlessly at max-everything. There is something satisfying in playing a character who responds to everyday irritations with outrageously over-the-top violence.
This description could have been phrased much more coherently. Quick info: Open source Linux driver still much slower than proprietary. Closed source Linux driver "catching up" to Windows driver. Basically, we're still the same time-frame away from gaming/graphical work disappearing from the checklist of functional applications on Linux.
That's why I mentioned "Borderlands 2," which was retroactively ported. Gearbox is a hell of a developer, though, continuing to provide support to their games (and ports) long after they've disappeared from shelves, so I wouldn't expect this to be the norm for your AAA titles like "Call of Duty."
I see no indications of that. The filter in Steam reads "Linux+SteamOS" implying that the two aren't to be split. And after all, it's just Debian. No reason to think these games wouldn't operate under any other Debianesque system, as they currently do.
Rawr
What games on Windows even use OpenGL?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
All that was shown here is that AMD's *OpenGL* drivers on Linux aren't too far off from AMD's *OpenGL* performance on Windows.
Considering that AMD's OpenGL Implementation on Windows is kind of a joke compared to D3D, and considering that AMD is now even dumping D3D in favor of its proprietary* Mantle platform, this article basically proved that AMD's Windows OpenGL support is also lacking badly.
* Before anyone says Mantle is "open": AMD's executives promised an SDK published by the end of 2014... didn't happen. AMD has made zero efforts to make Mantle work on any OS other than Windows... hell, while DX11 ain't an open standard at least I can go online and get docs on how to write a program using DX11 and make it work on Windows... you can't even do that with Mantle!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I've got both Windows and Linux boxes in my house. Basically my windows boxes are for gaming because... well... Linux sucks for Gaming.
But recently my 7yr old got his first computer so I gave him Kbuntu. Wow... I was really suprised how well it's performing game wise. Thanks to Valve there's a huge number of games available on Linux. New games are almost guaranteed to be OS agnostic. And the games that aren't... Wine has made amazing progress at emulation. With a relatively small amount of effort you can get most things, even browser games, running on Linux at basically the same quality it runs under windows.
A good example: The sequel to Ultima Online (currently in Alpha): https://www.shroudoftheavatar....
Is Windows/Linux/Mac compatible.
I'm really glad they're making strides on the performance of their Linux driver, but I really wish they'd focus on making it easier to install. On Fedora the Radeon driver is darn near impossible (without some serious binary hacking) to get the thing installed. They "officially support" CentOS 7, but not Fedora? Is it really that hard to support a modern kernel and modern version of X?
I usually end up just running the open source driver because the Radeon driver is so complicated to get working on a modern Linux system.
See subject: Get this going & get more games? You *might* get your mythical "Year of Linux on the desktop" - & I am *NOT* saying that in a bad way: I'd actually LIKE to see it!
Why? Competition = GOOD! Keeps MS on its toes...
APK
P.S.=> This *may* actually "shock" some of you, but I actually like & use Linux (or have for LONG stretches, just to "see how the other 1/2 lives") - it's pretty good, but what's holding it down/back? Games & mainstream usage by "ordinary end users", mostly, imo @ least!
That, & "FUD" + lies being spread around that turn up b.s. like "Windows != Secure, Linux = Secure" of which ANDROID shows that's b.s., once Linux wasn't hiding behind lack of widespread end-user use to the extent of Windows (94++% of desktops + servers worldwide combined iirc, currently or near to it)
&
Also "many eyes on the code" which has proven to be PURE B.S. vs Heartbleed, Shellshock, Poodle (bugs around for years) since MOST users of Linux DO NOT HELP L.T. & CREW coding for it, since they don't KNOW how to code!
Worse is the lies (or rather, "misinformed statements") - they will SHOOT YOU DOWN, everytime, & once you've lost someone's trust via the "false advertising" I note above? You've lost your good image/reputation - which is tough to get folks' faith back from...apk
Something like a third of the 800 games on my Steam account "just work" on Linux.
It is, indeed, fabulous. There's honestly no excuse any more. If your game isn't Linux-compatible and Mac-compatible as well, it's just sheer laziness or being cheap.
I hate reinstalling the AMD drivers for every kernel update in Ubuntu. I have to boot into root shell, run the amd-driver...run --buildpkg Ubuntu/trusty then dpkg -i --force-all the fglrx*.deb files and finally run aticonfig --initial to get a working GUI desktop
WINE is NOT emulation. The name was not chosen just because it is a clever reverse acronym. Emulation implies that there is translation going on at the binary instruction level. An emulator system like MESS takes binary executables from a completely different system, such as an old 8 bit Z80 or 6502 based home computer, and interprets them one instruction at a time by translating on the fly into native instructions and hardware calls.
WINE does none of that. With WINE the windows executable runs directly without any interpretation and translation, like any other binary executable does in Linux. Wine merely provides an environment of libraries and hooks and helper programs to the .exe file to handle all the numerous windows specific function calls. Merely is not really accurate i suppose, since wine re implements a large part of the windows os to do its job. But is DOES NOT EMULATE. You could not make an ARM build of WINE and use it to run a typical .exe, since it is x86 binary and the system would be ARM and WINE executes the .exe natively.
As such, WINE is more accurately described as a windows compatible operating system environment, more like DR DOS as an MS DOS Alternative rather than MESS emulating an old Spectrum.
How this pertains to AMDs drivers i am not certain. WINE i think would have nothing to do with the windows drivers...am i correct in assuming wine provides equivalents to GDI and directx and other graphics library calls to make an .exe run and those WINE libraries use linux drivers to interact with hardware? I've not tried to install windows drivers of any kind into WINE, just used it to run a few windows apps on occasion. If i need to do anything involving significant windows work i use KVM or virtualbox (all my computers run a Linux os, usually Debian, and my need for windows is small enough that i only need windows occasionally, but since it is to support industrial automation Using software that won't work using WINE and should be used under quarantine, virtualisation works very well)
So whether you use wine or not, good linux support is probably important in a video driver. I am not a big gamer so i don't bother with catalyst, but the open amd driver is very reliable for me, plays video very well and for what 3d I have done it has been alright, as good as or better than intel anyways.
That is why i selected amd for my current machine...i avoid the closed drivers and when i looked at the open driver situation nvidia was quite a bit behind intel and amd for reliability and performance and vendor support. Perhaps if i was looking for peak 3d performance i would have picked differently, but closed drivers have ALWAYS caused me more trouble than open, on any OS platform, and i go with reliability over performance when i can.
Gone are the days of instable, crashing Windows. Linux was a great idea for an alternative desktop for its stability, but nowadays there's really no issue with keeping a Windows system stable and running without any issue. Games run exceptionally well, and all the supporting software to go along with it (ie, TwitchTV streaming tools, chat, music, etc) are generally Windows only. Can you get things that run on Linux as well? Sure... but you're basically running Linux because you want to advocate for that as a platform; not because Windows is worse.
The only folks who seem to really be advocating for Linux are Valve; and they have a vested business interest in doing so since Microsoft has a competing "Store" to their own, that ultimately could even provide some gaming software among other things. With the tie-ins to Xbox Live with upcoming Windows 10 and shared achievements, etc, this is even a bigger threat. So there's easy understanding why THEY are doing it. But everybody else? I honestly don't know.
I am perfectly content with a Windows box for gaming and *nix for some dev/database/virtualization work. These are tools. I fail to see why people keep trying to put a square peg into a round hole and shoehorn Linux into things that it doesn't perform best at.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
My experience is that games for Linux run surprisingly well, but the Linux desktop has become complete garbage.
" I fail to see why people keep trying to put a square peg into a round hole and shoehorn Linux into things that it doesn't perform best at."
The same reason many people shoehorn Windows in to things it doesn't perform best at.
"Sure... but you're basically running Linux because you want to advocate for that as a platform; not because Windows is worse."
Actually it is because Windows is worse. I've been using open source OSes exclusively for decades and only deal with Windows boxes for family and when picking up new machines(new to me anyway) and trying to do anything but the most trivial things in Windows(outside it's intended narrow application and UI range) is just annoying bordering on nightmarish compared to my *nix boxes. I admit Windows does some neat UI and OS tricks to make it easy and get things done efficiently sometimes but once you leave that narrow band of usage and understanding it can be hell to get anything done.
They already did 15 years ago. I put my money where my mouth is - I use Linux not just for the Freedom, but for a stable OS, and yes, I'll cheerfully pay retail for software. In fact, I just unearthed my copies when I cleaned my garage yesterday. All Linux branded versions of Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, UT GOTY Edition, UT2004, Soldier of Fortune, MechWarrior II, Descent 3d, and quite a few others from Loki Games. I even found my unopened l33t tin editon of Q3 for Linux.
Of course, now my son wants to set it all up and play them.... :)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
More Phoronix spam.
If you bench one of the few games that do both DX and GL on Windows (like Earth 2150 or something) you find that the program will run at equal speeds on nVidia drivers. nVidia has declared both DX and GL to be native APIs and they both have first flight support. Then you try it on AMD an you find GL running slower. This is never mind feature issues, crashing or anything else.
AMD just doesn't do well for OpenGL. I dunno why they haven't fixed it, but it is a real issue. Most gamers don't care since not a lot of games use OpenGL on Windows, but it is a real issue. Of course for an OS that uses OpenGL as its only 3D API, it'll be a big issue.
If it is actually "close to the core" like AMD claims, then it is something that'll only work on their GCN hardware, and when they change that, it'll stop working. Realistically they are probably lying and it is just another API, particularly since game performance has been very mixed, being only slightly faster at best and slower occasionally.
The driver still has major issues with xserver 1.16 (Debian Jessie) so no.
I have been trying to get the Catalyst driver to work quite a few times over the years, and I have yet to succeed getting it work completely and stably. If this situation has improved (dramatically) I'll be tempted to have another go. If not, I'll stay with Nvidia.
My experience is that games for Linux run surprisingly well, but the Linux desktop has become complete garbage.
Not much has changed in fifteen years.
I admit that I don't play many games, the only one I play at the moment is Left4Dead2 (though previous measurements when playing Counterstrike where similar).
All my testing show, in a highly scientific study of 2 computers, that playing Left4Dead2 in Linux (Fedora 20 and 21) uses less processor power, and less ram than playing in Windows 7(which both computers came with).
I don't have a program that tracks GPU usage, but tracking the temperature of the GPU's shows that they run cooler in Linux.
So using the same resolution, detail level, etc., I get a better frame-rate in Linux, and lower chance of network lag.
Over all power usage, tracked from the power-supplies, show that both of computer systems use less power in Linux, for the same over-all result, the frame-rate is marginally better in Linux.
All computers/OS's combinations have as few other programs running as possible, so firewalls, antivirus, and stuff are also disabled.
All computers/OS's combinations run with updates on, and the latest drivers drivers(official AMD Catalyst driver in Linux), etc.).
But as this is a tiny, unscientific study as always... YMMV.
I run Linux Mint 17.1 and tried using the AMD driver for my AMD Radeon 7570. It caused a huge memory leak. I am again using the X.org drivers. They don't perform as well for 3D but it's all that's available to me. I am bummed out, too. The AMD drivers looked promising and I was getting much improved frame rates in Nexuiz. Like, from 20FPS to 65FPS kind of improvement. I really wish that memory leak would get fixed.
This is the year?
1. this is phoronix!
2. opengl 4+ support is horrible
3. 2d is almost too slow for simplest desktop operations.
4. opencl support is horrible
5. many dev/design tools require cuda
6. only works on ubutnu. still creates so many bugs that logs are almost unreadable
It's obvious that this would happen. On the same hardware, GNU/Linux is inherently more efficient than Windows. Linux takes a mild performance penalty because it's designed to be rock-solid, stable, and secure, to protect the user, and his/her data.
Windows, by contrast, is built from the ground-up to be UNsecure, to compromise the user and his/her data to force those who make the tragic error of using Misrosoft products to use only 'legitimate' copies, else face the nightmare of malware that comes from using a pirated copy which cannot be registered to receive the never-ending stream of patches that plug security flaws so rampant in the OS, and probably introduce more, so they make sure to have something new and fun to patch later; also it comes in handy for forcing users to "upgrade" to a more recent version of Windows, and also facilitates the extortion of even more money from people who have already paid for their OS, and shouldn't have to keep paying over and over again for the same thing.
The Windows performance penalty is much steeper, since the entire OS is encrypted, not to protect YOU, but to protect their pwecious bottom-line from the possibility that you might figure out how to reverse engineer their flaming pile of garbage software, remove all the flaws, and have an actual, usable OS, which otherwise you can't get from Misrosoft corp.
Proof, you ask? Easy. Consider what would happen if Misrosoft released a decent, usable, and reasonably secure OS. They nearly did it with XP, and again with 7 and they were both successes, and unmitigated disasters in that many people did, (and some still do,) treat XP the way gun-nuts treat their weapons. They say, "you can have my Windows XP, when you pry it from my cold, crashed HDD!" Many resisted (and still resist) being forced to 8.x, because they've already paid, and feel they shouldn't have to pay AGAIN. Many people have paid repeatedly for the same thing, and are getting REALLY tired of it.
Imagine how much better it will perform if they gave all the time and attention to the OSS drivers the proprietary ones.
How has linux "become garbage" on the desktop?
Are you referring to Ubuntu's default window manager? Or is there something that switching to better window managers doesn't fix?
(I have my list of pet hates of things which are worse nowm but I'm curious about yours)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Small graphical glitches everywhere, crashes, buttons not working at all, unimplemented features, slow performance. Laptop brightness adjustment goes in multiple steps in Mint and Ubuntu.
Not just the new ones - even some of the older games are being ported to linux now, though probably only en route to the promised Steambox.
Totally wrong. The Steambox is nothing more or less than a PC. If the games come to the Steambox, then they're coming to Linux et al as well.
I just finished Postal 2 on linux. Aside from steam achievements not being done yet, it worked flawlessly at max-everything.
The engine they're using for that game has run on Linux for a long, long time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
On b.s. I've seen spouted here (& elsewhere yes, but mostly here on /.) online: That's all... deceitful b.s.!
APK
P.S.=> Were I Linus Torvalds, I'd be *VERY* pissed @ those here doing it - why? You're putting UNBELIEVABLE pressure on his team & him for 1 thing, making them have to live up to unrealistic expectations, that have come undone due to bugs & vulnerabilities that HAVE finally shown themselves in Linux, some unpatched for years (which is FINE as long as they fix them) while Linux "enjoyed" security by obscurity (which didn't make it as appealing of a target to hacker/cracker types)!
Thus - but making an OS sound "invulnerable"'s a BAD MOVE... the crap spewed here makes THEM look BAD is why! Man, heck: I doubt HP-UX ("verified design" status) even is "invulnerable", for Pete's sake! apk
Having multiple options is good. For years, nVidia has lead the way on the Unix/Linux platform with its graphics driver support (despite it being proprietary software). The Nouveau project has supplied the free and open alternative to the proprietary driver. It is good to know there is some momentum for the ATI line, time will tell how close it can get or if it can exist at the same level as nVidia. Personally, due to the excellent support, I only buy nVidia graphics hardware so they have gained my business by providing a good Linux driver. I've been a happy customer for years. If ATI can get to that level I would consider looking at their products as well.