Linux 3.5 Can Massively Boost AMD Radeon Graphics

[Pontostroy]

Kernel 3.5 is really fast, i got ~170fps in lightsmark2008(1920x1080 ), 3.4 shows only 130fps, fps in openarena are doubled.
Nice work.

[AnonymousCoward]

It's too bad Debian sid doesn't like to stray from the 3.2 kernel, I guess I won't be experiencing this for a while.

Just use the kernel from experimental, that has 3.4.1 currently.

[gururise]

Not really if you read the article, or patches.

The fix is only for certain GPUs which were misconfigured previously, rv740 is the only r600/r700 card, and then a bunch of evergreen/ni cards, but only in the higher end GPUs.

Its not meant to speed up all cards, its more that these cards were broken before now.

Dave.

Great work guys! But a bit of a let-down for those of us still on r600. I suppose my ATI 4670 card, which recently lost catalyst support would not see a speedup.

[juxtatux]

From what little I've read I just see the finality to the current (older) ATI architecture. I watched the ATI commits to the kernel ,what..two years ago not too too long after acquisition. Those 00FF HEX kernel commits that supplied a closed source "docking collar" that made everyone happy but GNU, lol. I think that with all the eXPeriance AMD got from the APU we will finally see what AMD will produce for (superior?) graphics with the newer video and APU chips. And just like 3DFX to Nvidia ATI is offically dead and burried with the latest month worth of silicon gossip. Good or Bad...the APU platform puts nvidia against the wall...intel is already there, if only in the background.

~Jux

[Wyatt]

Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up, though I really wish this was something that was addressed in the article in the first place.

[crazycheese]

All the bad news about AMD Radeons, and now comes the strawberries and cream.

I've always purchased Radeons, but I sometimes play Everquest and the graphics messes up with this line of gfx cards. I was thinking of going Nvidia for a season. What will sway me is the price of the GFX660 and AMD's public relations and driver quality. I will be upgrading when GFX660 comes out and it will vs the HD7870 or possibly the HD7950 if the prices have shifted. Looking to spend about $280-350AUD.

I think the best way you can spend them opensource-wise, is to ask for some feature and pay somebody who directly works on radeon.
Opposite, if you want to spend money on ego purchases, buy nvidia with proprietary crap. Even if these 10% gains are highly welcomed, they are minority. Unless you want to cry and wine holding your newly purchased amd card over slow and incomplete driver, do not spend money on amd yet.

Michael, it would be quite quite GOOD if you added catalyst reference for at least one of the cards. Just to compare "theoretically possible" with "practically achievable".

[crazycheese]

The issue that was fixed only affected cards with >2 render backends (rv740, cypress, juniper, barts). Other chips were not affected. Parts like 5450 and 6540 are generally memory bandwidth limited as they have fewer memory channels and often only have ddr memory rather than gddr memory.

Thats a circle, because if the driver is bad, no one will purchase gddr stacked card. Something should come first, I presume from development side.

[crazycheese]

With all the talk about Diablo3, I pulled out my NWN1 CDs and installed it as wine version because I couldn't get the Linux installer to work (uses OpenGL 1.2 ). Works fine on my NI radeon.

Now I am addicted again and in love with Aribeth de Tylmarande...

Using catalyst, I presume?

[Michael]

Michael, it would be quite quite GOOD if you added catalyst reference for at least one of the cards. Just to compare "theoretically possible" with "practically achievable".

That's saved for another article in a week or two... https://twitter.com/michaellarabel/s...47850743754753

Catalyst, more cards, more driver configurations, more page views...

[crazycheese]

That's saved for another article in a week or two... https://twitter.com/michaellarabel/s...47850743754753

Catalyst, more cards, more driver configurations, more page views...

More awesomeness, thank you!