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AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Performs Wildly Different Based On Program's Name
An anonymous reader writes: In past years the AMD Catalyst Linux driver has yielded better performance if naming the executable "doom3.x86" or "compiz" (among other choices), but these days this application profile concept is made more absurd with more games coming to Linux but AMD not maintaining well their Linux application profile database. The latest example is by getting ~40% better performance by renaming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Linux. If renaming the "csgo_linux" binary to "hl2_linux" for Half-Life 2 within Steam, the frame-rates suddenly increase across the board, this is with the latest Catalyst 15.7 Linux driver while CS:GO has been on Linux for nearly one year. Should driver developers re-evaluate their optimization practices for Linux?
But then wouldn't it be better to let the end user choose whether something is optimized in a certain direction?
IE, if this can be done based on file name and looking up a profile from a list of Knows, would it be possible then to have an environment variable that if not set or set to "none" or whatever no in-driver corner cutting (ie, the game wasn't renamed), or if set to "FPS" do the speed thing at expense of precision, and if set to "photo" or whatever set to precision at cost of speed?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Don't underestimate the power of human laziness.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Speed increases may be sacrificing some reliability or cutting some corners.
Probably mostly corner cutting.
...
Don't need the 16x anisotropic shader if the texture isnt viewed from an extreme angle, or if the texture hasnt much high frequency detail,
Don't need the 16x antialiasing filter on edges of a polygon that connects seamlessly to another polygon, etc...
These two alone could be huge
"His name was James Damore."
Why? We're talking about Linux drivers here. Why not let the open source community write optimization profiles? Yes, you (AMD) have (has) to make some sort of interface and some documentation for it.
But the beauty is, now the community is selecting the best options for applications, doing their own testing which, with my limited knowledge, for AMD seems to be a very time and resource (paid testers) intensive process. Which is why it's lagging behind, for the Linux drivers, in the first place. Of course only software that's used by community members actually wanting to put time in creating these profiles, will eventually have good profiles. Like every other open source project. It will only improve if there are community members willing to put time/effort in it. And maybe, if you open up this process, game developers wanting their games to have a solid performance on AMD cards will write their own profiles.
Today nobody can optimize graphics performance beyond the usual resolution/AA/shader toggles on a per-application basis, except for a hand full of inside developers. And we know of some 'AAA' games coded so badly they are virtually unplayable without serious driver 'tweeks'. Why not give the open source community the possibility to optimize the games they think are worth it?
As with all open source software, it only gets better. Unless no-one cares. But then... who cares?