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AMD's R9 Fury On Open-Source: Prepare for Disappointment, For Now
An anonymous reader writes: With Linux 4.3 AMD is adding the initial open-source driver for the R9 Fury graphics cards. Unfortunate for Linux gamers, the R9 Fury isn't yet in good shape on the open-source driver and it's not good with the Catalyst Linux driver either as previously discussed. With the initial code going into Linux 4.3, the $550 R9 Fury runs slower than graphics cards like the lower-cost and older R7 370 and HD 7950 GPUs, since AMD's open-source developers haven't yet found the time to implement power management / re-clocking support. The R9 Fury also only advertises OpenGL 3.0 support while the hardware is GL4.5-capable and the other open-source AMD GCN driver ships OpenGL 4.1. It doesn't look like AMD has any near-term R9 Fury Linux fix for either driver, but at least their older hardware is performing well with the open-source code.
The whole posting is disengenuous.
"the R9 Fury isn't yet in good shape on the open-source driver"
The card won't be changing to fix this; the driver will have to change to accommodate the card; therefore it is more correct to say "The Open Source driver is not yet in good shape on the R9 Fury". In other words, it's not the hardware's fault that the driver doesn't support it yet.
"AMD's open-source developers haven't yet found the time to implement power management / re-clocking support"
The power management model in Linux is Linux's responsibility, not AMD's. The authors of the Open Source driver are accountable *only* for writing callbacks for the device power management component, and populating the structure. It's my understanding that Linux lacks a uniform model for use by all graphics drivers, in this regard. his is a Linux issue, not an AMD issue.
Also:
In general, in a hardware world, you either NDA people, or the Open Source is going to lag the closed source, period. This is because openly manipulating code related to an unreleased hardware product in a publicly accessible source repository, instead of a privately held repository, is tantamount to preannouncing your hardware to competitors. You might as well have the CEO call a press conference, and then shoot themselves in the head in public.
Open Source projects have a secondary problem in that, even if the driver source was developed entirely by engineers within AMD, and released the same day as the hardware was made available, the Open Source projects aren't going to be happy just integrating the code as is. They will insist on peeing on it to make it smell like themselves, just as cats do with new furniture, and this will take time. You can either have closed source, or you can have it integrated later than the release date, but you can not have both.
I hate to break it to you, but most open source drivers are written by corporations.