Considering a new GPU soon. How's the 7700 series on Linux?

[PsynoKhi0]

I can not think about one good reason why somebody should buy AMD cards for Linux usage

- Ethics
- Proper investment in FOSS drivers with both documentation AND developers
- Improvements on the proprietary ones for home desktop usage on the top of the FOSS effort
- FGLRX is far better than the usual suspects here make it out to be

If AMD went belly up tomorrow I wouldn't shed any tears. ATI sucked too.

Yeah, wouldn't it be just great to have to shell out twice as much for half as good hardware, competition is such an overrated concept for us consumers.

Anyway...
HD7770 owner here, Gigabyte's model.
Fairly silent once the fan control kicks in, shorter than reference cards, performs great for the price.
Can't comment on XvBA since I stick to SMplayer with GL output.
ALSA is having problem with the HDMI output at the moment, if that's important to you.

By the way Newfie, what does the rest of your rig look like?

[Newfie]

As kano mentioned before, the video card you chose to begin with is not meant for games. That card was best suited for basic Desktop usage without games. Even phoronix's own reviews show that the Radeon HD6550D[2] performs on average two times faster than the Radeon HD6450 [1].


[1] Radeon HD6450 review
[2] AMD A8-3870K - Radeon HD 6550D Graphics ( Best comparision for integrated graphics )

Yep, I'm quite aware of what it's intended for. My issues with this card aren't with the performance, but rather with the Fglrx issues that I can't seem to escape from. The open source driver works relatively better (GNOME Shell is slow-ish, but other desktops are just fine), but obviously 3d is out of the question for a low-end card like this.

The gaming I do isn't high-end modern gaming like Battlefield 3. Whenever I do any gaming I usually lower the graphics settings anyway (less distractions). The 6450 just barely passes the mark for what I want to do; something like the 7750 I mentioned would very probably end up being overkill in itself. I didn't buy a 6450 expecting a 6850

To turn back to one of the older posts about my comparison to Windows 7: I'm not a Windows user, but I needed Windows 7 over the last few months for work-related things. Windows' graphics are silky smooth, stable, don't tear, and generally performed faster than Linux with Fglrx. Obviously, I didn't want to stick with Windows for the sake of a more stable desktop. This is why I'll be grabbing some NVIDIA card. Granted, Fglrx has improved a lot for me over the last 6 months, but not really worth messing with any more.

Edit for more stuff:

- Ethics
- Proper investment in FOSS drivers with both documentation AND developers
- Improvements on the proprietary ones for home desktop usage on the top of the FOSS effort
- FGLRX is far better than the usual suspects here make it out to be

By the way Newfie, what does the rest of your rig look like?

Ethics is fine, but Nouveau still exists with the NVIDIA driver. Sadly not receiving any official support, but it's arguably just as ethical as AMD. And, like I said in this post, Fglrx is just tiresome at this point. It's definitely improving, and it's much better than what people here tend to say, but it's still suboptimal compared to the competition. I'm not giving up on AMD; I'm just not going to be bothering with it on my main setup (I use some ancient card with the OSS drivers on another PC; works amazingly well for what it does).

My setup is new-ish, and not *that* great. Good enough aside from the 6450, though:

Phenom II x6 @ 2.9 ghz
8 GB DDR3 memory
Crappy generic 250w PSU (replacing that)
AMD 785G chipset

[Kano]

@PsynoKhi0

I usually only use FOSS drivers for intel onboard. I have got snb + ivb to test. And with fglrx i test

a) kernel support (currently 3.4-3.5 is missing)
b) xserver support (1.12 on debian wheezy 64 bit is broken)
c) xvba via xbmc fernet menta (h264 l5.1 is missing)

a while ago i tried playing rage with wine, that worked with my old nv 8800 gts 512 but i had very bad artefacts with my amd hd 5670. cf was not really useable as well...

I do not care about "ethics", btw. there exist nouveau as well. If you would test the same things that i do i would like to know what are your results...

[Enverex]

Ethics is fine, but Nouveau still exists with the NVIDIA driver. Sadly not receiving any official support, but it's arguably just as ethical as AMD.

That makes no sense at all.

Nouveau is completely unofficial and is in no-way related to nVidia as a company.

AMD are actively trying to help progress the open-source Radeon driver with development documentation and other aids such as actively hiring staff to actually work on the open-source driver (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=OTQzNQ).

[AlbertP]

If you want to play games and don't care about open-source, just use an NVIDIA card. It's frequently said that their proprietary driver is better than AMD's - though this does not mean that Catalyst is bad. Don't know however which nvidia card compares well to a 7700.

[pixo]

I see you have Phenom.
If you had Sandy Bridge I would advise you to buy AMD because you could do the same as me:
one X running KDE for gaming and standard PC stuff running on AMD
second X running XBMC on Intel HD for watching films and music
Both have their own inputs and soundcards.

I could not do this with NVIDIA because the moment Intel driver was loaded the NVIDIA blob did not work, blank screen.
This was a year before so I don`t know if its work now.

And if you want to try if something is running on HD 7750 I can test it for you.

[Enverex]

Don't know however which nvidia card compares well to a 7700.

Unfortunately nothing. Both the 7750 and 7770 cost roughly the same as the 640, but beat it out by a mile. nVidia has no new mid-range cards available at the moment, the next card up is the 670 which is considerably more expensive.

I see you have Phenom.
If you had Sandy Bridge I would advise you to buy AMD because you could do the same as me:
one X running KDE for gaming and standard PC stuff running on AMD
second X running XBMC on Intel HD for watching films and music
Both have their own inputs and soundcards.

I could not do this with NVIDIA because the moment Intel driver was loaded the NVIDIA blob did not work, blank screen.
This was a year before so I don`t know if its work now.

And if you want to try if something is running on HD 7750 I can test it for you.

Can you try a random assortment of Games inside Wine? (ones that are known to work on nVidia hardware, no point trying games that don't work at all anyway).

[Paul Frederick]

I noticed that everyone keeps suggesting fixes, and completely forgets to ask some about the basic computer specifications.

• Which distribution are you using?
• How much memory is installed?
• did you Build the Computer Yourself, or do a full system upgrade? ( Yes or No)
  If the answer is yes, answer the Following:
  
  • What is the Processor?
  • What is the Motherboard?
  • What type of Memory is in the pc? (DDR3, DDR2, ETC )
  
  If the answer is No, answer the Following:
  
  • What is the Vendor? ( Toshiba, Dell, HP, ETC )
  • What is the Model?
  • What is the Model Number?

All of these questions will provide a much better overall suggestion than a blind suggestion.

Anyways, I am certain that most of the performance problems is the graphics card, and an easy solution is to try the Radeon HD6670. I know of several gamers who have had excellent experiences on this card where they can play almost all games at maximum settings. I normally suggest video cards that are full size pci cards, however, I do know that there is some low profile cards available, and either of the following cards should handle the job well:

Sapphire Radeon HD6670 (Low Profile)
HIS Radeon HD6670 (Low Profile Ready)

That Radeon HD6670 is too rich for my blood. Why it cost more than my last 2 PCs put together all by itself. Plus AMD sucks. Go Nvidia!

This PC:
HP a6712f, dual monitors: Dell SE19WFPv, acer AL1916 Dell MMS5650 5.1 surround with Audio Source front speakers, Antec Basiq PSU, Zotac GT520 gfx card, Dell mouse and keyboard - Not too shabby for $82 total

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3xi9lCmj-0

[Veto]

Fglrx is just tiresome at this point. It's definitely improving, and it's much better than what people here tend to say, but it's still suboptimal compared to the competition.

What is it exactly about this driver, that is tiresome?? Does it work or not? It seems people have some old experiences and says its bad all the time. Let us get the facts instead of all that hand waving!

Personally I currently own a 8600 GT and the Nvidia driver (295.40) in Ubuntu 12.04 has some troubles with making X.org consume 100% CPU and freezing when playing Minecraft. It doesn't play nice with RandR (multimonitor setup). Some tweaks need to be made to xorg.conf to make the Limbo game work in a dual monitor setup. Otherwise it works OK for me. There you have it - that was not so hard...

[Paul Frederick]

Googling it gives a bajillion wallpapers so it's apparently common, but I agree that it seems like a really weird resolution.

It may seem weird but in use it works well. I use the wide screen to watch video, and the 4x3 for regular computer apps. When I play Quake my crosshair isn't between the screens either.