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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.
It's a new card and open source development takes time. Yet here you are complaining that some people, mostly in their spare time, can't provide a fully featured driver for a new card that is still hard to get a hold of.
*turns on slow clap processor.*
that should be the new corporate slogan...
linux gamers. hahahahaha!
and next year the desktop right?
How dare someone not work 24/7 for free developing support said one of the freetards....
As far as I can understand, AMD has released the specs for the new GPUs, which is what many Linux / Open Source advocates care about, right? Sure they haven't yet added the support for the new cards on their own, but other people could do it if they are in a hurry, right? Then you have Nvidia not releasing any specs for open drivers, but adding support (more quickly perhaps?) on their proprietary binary drivers. This upsets (hopefully a different set of) Linux users. ;)
And in the end, this is just about games (because I never had a problem with the Linux desktop in general, even over multiple displays with mostly AMD cards), right? Well, guess what, Linux is not a good gaming platform. It is great in many things, why should it also be good for games? Why would Nvidia and AMD spend significant resources so that very few people (compared to the total market) can play games in a specific platform that, let's face it, is not gamer-oriented? Well, they don't, so don't complain. Sorry for the rant-ish post, perhaps I would post different 15 years ago when I was still into computer games
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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've been thinking... it kind of sucks to always be the open source guy who has to patiently wait, while watching Windows guys cracking open beers and having fun with the latest games since day one. :)
I just wonder why AMD insists in pushing us into NVidia's arms?
I just use glxgears to benchmark. glxgears is a great benchmark. I recommend glxgears if you want to benchmark your liinicks. thanks.
Re the last paragraph. That is not entirely true, as Intel appear to be able to integrate new chipsets during the time they are released (but only to next tier manufacture) before the public can buy anything using it.
What kind of "peeing on it" has been done to the Intel drivers to get them integrated ?
Exactly the same kind. It's possible to do for anything, it just takes time.
The reason Intel is able to do this ahead of general release, when other vendors aren't, is that it does not lose them a competitive advantage.
First, there is no issue of another manufacturer producing "pin and register compatible devices", and undercutting Intel, because Intel's graphics are integrated into the CPU; you'd have to build an entire Intel compatible CPU as well, and you'd have to do it competitively in terms of price point.
Second, no one really wants to emulate Intel Integrated Graphics in silicon, since there's really no advantage to doing so, since the chips have inferior performance relative to the competition.
So there's really nothing lost by Intel pre-announcing all of the information needed to make a driver, or even publishing source code for the driver, since doing so will sell more Intel chips, not less. For other GPU vendors, this is simply not the case, and there's no economic value in such pre-disclosure.
I actually own an R9 Fury (my Radeon 6870 died about 3 weeks after it was released, and I sort of jumped the gun on my purchase), and it performs just fine for now. I have to use the Catalyst drivers, which still need a bit of work, but the R9 Fury performs at least as well as the card it replaced. I expect that to improve quite a bit with the next couple of Catalyst releases, the first of which should come relatively soon. Despite how people are always whining about how bad the Catalyst drivers are, I've found that while they are initially problematic, each subsequent release results in more stability and better performance. I used the Catalyst drivers for years with my 6870 (since I was using a pre 3.14 kernel, which is where the open source drivers really started working right), and it performed great for nearly every game I played on Linux. The open source drivers were even better.
As for the R9 Fury, it's rather ridiculous how nearly every Linux news post I read about it is negative. (I'm looking at you, Phoronix.) The card just came out 2 months ago, and it will be supported by open source drivers before the end of the year? I had to wait over 2 years for the 6870. I can play games with the Catalyst drivers within the first month of release? It certainly wasn't that quick back in the day. Sure performance could improve, but the key point is that it will.
There's always room for improvement, but it seems to me that AMD has been improving.
ATI/AMD is simply unable to make a good driver. Either for Linux or for Windows. Not buying their half-products since 2005.
Does the new open source driver still turn on underscan by default when connected via HDMI? If so, does the open source driver provide a GUI tool for turning the underscan off?
I stopped using AMD APUs in my Linux systems because of this and have been using Intel instead. Would like to know if it's safe to go back. I don't care about performance differences, I just wish AMD would get their s*** together when it comes to drivers.