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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?
Its not only about open source, its also about choice and not being rail roaded into walled gardens like a few os's today
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
Ad hominem attacks will get you nowhere. But then again I guess that's why you're an AC.
That article is from 2008 (seven years isn't exactly "nearly" a decade in my book) and reflects an issue specifically involving causes of crashes for Windows Vista about a year after the OS came out. And you'll notice that while Nvidia is the largest single contributor to that pie, less than 30% of crashes were their fault. And, actually, if you read the original article from which Engadget derived their story this is a study from specifically around the launch of Windows Vista, not its entire lifecycle. And the data is very vague, as they say in the article, "in theory, NVIDIA's proportion of total driver crashes could be inflated by a relatively small handful of systems with severe driver issues." So this statistic is actually pretty useless without additional data.
That also doesn't indicate anything having to do with non-system-crash related issues, such as non-fatal crashes or poor system performance. It's also reasonable to assume that Nvidia has since fixed that issue with Windows Vista, as I don't remember there being any kinds of crashing plagues involving Nvidia hardware in Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or even 10 Technical Preview.
From when, and in what categories? I'm not denying that AMD makes a good graphics card and they have delivered, and do deliver the most bang for your buck at certain price points, but your claim is flimsy at best since Tom's updates these almost quarterly, as GPU manufacturers release new hardware throughout the year, and across several performance/price points. So naturally when AMD releases a new GPU they're likely to take the top spot in the high performance category, just as it's likely that when Nvidia releases a new GPU they might take the top spot.
Rawr
It's implied with the name "Catalyst." The FOSS drivers have never been referred to as "Catalyst" except in momentary errors.
Rawr
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.