Where The Open-Source AMD Driver Is At For Modern GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Where The Open-Source AMD Driver Is At For Modern GPUs

Earlier this week Sapphire launched the Radeon HD 5830 Extreme using the well-supported "Cypress LE" graphics processor at a very competitive price relative to the NVIDIA competition and the Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards from other AMD partners. With it being part of the HD 5000 series and not one of the newer HD 6000 series graphics processors, the Linux support is already spot-on for both the official Catalyst Linux driver and within the open-source stack. In this article are the open-source Gallium3D benchmarks for the Radeon HD 5830 along with other recent ATI/AMD GPUs to show where the latest Mesa/Gallium3D code is at today.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15904

[birdie]

While the open-source ATI/AMD Linux driver stack is beginning to catch up with the proprietary Catalyst driver on older generations of Radeon hardware as earlier tests have shown, for modern GPUs it will still be a while before anything close to parity is hit.

The problem is that it will be like that forever. AMD/NVIDIA deploy over five hundred programmers to create fast/optimized/bug free drivers for their GPUs, while at most there is just a handful of programmers (I'd say 10 tops) working on open source drivers.

[bug77]

The problem is that it will be like that forever. AMD/NVIDIA deploy over five hundred programmers to create fast/optimized/bug free drivers for their GPUs, while at most there is just a handful of programmers (I'd say 10 tops) working on open source drivers.

Not to mention the five hundred can write the driver the way they see fit, while the rest have to chase moving targets (KMS, DRI, etc).

[Jimbo]

R300g and intel (sandy bridge) has more or less succeeded in making an optimized driver, without hundred of developers.

In my opinion there is something weird with r600g, something at mesa or gallium that is really hurting r600-r700-r800 GPUs performance, something that developers don't find. Implementing new features like hiperz, opengl 3-4 will not solve this problem, it seems some type of "architectural" problem.

[Qaridarium]

The problem is that it will be like that forever. AMD/NVIDIA deploy over five hundred programmers to create fast/optimized/bug free drivers for their GPUs, while at most there is just a handful of programmers (I'd say 10 tops) working on open source drivers.

300 Spartans can hurt 800 000 very much... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

why should the 130 radeon devs lose? Linus Torvalds Starts the Kernel alone.

[monraaf]

Ouch!

too bad Catalyst fails horribly in other departments, e.g., it cannot even run gnome-shell without corruption.

[blackshard]

Not to mention the five hundred can write the driver the way they see fit, while the rest have to chase moving targets (KMS, DRI, etc).

That's one point. Underlying specifications constantly change, lot's of efforts become useless.

[Kano]

Three things:

a) my fglrx script can run 11-3 with .39 git kernel

no differnet kernel needed to install.

b) no libtxc_dxtn lib was installed

i am not fully sure how much speed that gives, but at least it does not hurt

c) swapbufferswait was not disabled

this gives the biggest boost in benchmarks. The refreshrate for 1280x1024 was most likely 85 hz while benchmarking as warsow is usually a fast game and 80 is just below 85. my guess is you will easyly hit >100 fps when you disable it. when you would add openarena as benchmark you will see the impact of swapbufferswait even much more extreme.

please take a look at my scripts in

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/oss-test/

and check the readme, basically the scripts are only tested with debian (squeeze), but should work with sid too - i dont think you care about the libgl switching capability of ubuntu lucid+ when you compile mesa, or do you? mesa script with any option: gallium mode, otherwise normal. intel script with any option: no vsync/swapbufferswait, ati script with any option: no swapbufferswait by default. Please retest with at least swapbuffers wait disabled.

[deanjo]

300 Spartans can hurt 800 000 very much... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

And in the end they lost and were wiped out (even with the help of 5000-7000 supporting forces).

[Kano]

For some use cases it seem that oss drivers are not that bad. When you only play browser games up to quake live you can be happy already - depends a bit on the card however. When you own an older ati card or intel you don't have got a big choice, there you have to use it. I would like to see a real fast r500 card in the benchmark with optimized settings. Maybe even using RADEON_HYPERZ=1 override for pts.