Radeon Linux Gaming Performance: Ubuntu 17.04 vs. Ubuntu 17.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon Linux Gaming Performance: Ubuntu 17.04 vs. Ubuntu 17.10

With Ubuntu 17.10 set to ship tomorrow that features just not an upgraded Linux kernel and Mesa 3D stack but also transitions from Unity 7 + X.Org to GNOME Shell + Wayland, here are some comparison gaming benchmarks on a few different AMD Radeon graphics cards.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25363

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Who cares about vanilla performance of 17.04 for any card when the mesa stacks aren't the same? If I'm using an RX 580 on 17.04 I'm definitely making sure it's got the latest Mesa stack and more.

[Michael]

Who cares about vanilla performance of 17.04 for any card when the mesa stacks aren't the same? If I'm using an RX 580 on 17.04 I'm definitely making sure it's got the latest Mesa stack and more.

Because most Ubuntu users probably aren't enabling PPAs or the like for getting newer Mesa releases?

[Xaero_Vincent]

It should be pretty interesting to see how Nvidia drivers + Ubuntu 17.10 fares.

With GNOME Wayland basically broken with Nvidia drivers?

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53284

And no accelerated Xwayland support?

Nvidia: "We currently have no plans to support Xwayland"

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comme...ns_to_support/

Will people switch to the the nouveau driver?

[GreatEmerald]

Nice how in many cases the Xorg performance is lower than that of (X)Wayland, I didn't expect that.

[jojo7887]

Very interesting benchmarks, I have an old system which will be wearing an AMD gpu this weekend to replace a failing one, looks like the latest Ubuntu will be the cherry on the cake.

Really looking forward to those Intel benchmarks, I have 2 low spec laptops which despite the specs are not too shabby for gaming. Really curious if they can go any further :-)

[Masush5]

It should be pretty interesting to see how Nvidia drivers + Ubuntu 17.10 fares.

With GNOME Wayland basically broken with Nvidia drivers?

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53284

And no accelerated Xwayland support?

Nvidia: "We currently have no plans to support Xwayland"

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comme...ns_to_support/

Will people switch to the the nouveau driver?

They'll just switch to gnome on X (like I'd also do on intel and amd). No big deal.

[humbug]

We are in the 2nd half of 2017 and major distributions are still shipping without Vulkan, doesn't seem right.

Good article. Is there any indication of when games will start targeting wayland as well as X?

Apart from that while the Linux kernel 4.15 is very exciting for us AMD users; I hope that AMD doesn't neglect to (finally) make the new amdgpu DRM driver the default for CI (gcn 1.1). Apart from the new features and importance of getting everyone onto the same driver it also just works better based on my experience with my r9 290. On the radeon driver I have occasional issues like no display or not waking up from sleep states.

[Niarbeht]

Nice how in many cases the Xorg performance is lower than that of (X)Wayland, I didn't expect that.

Michael makes sure to mention where there's a bug with CS:GO/Gnome where there's basically a popup from Gnome asking if the application is frozen when CS:GO launches. When a normal user is playing, they'll just click the "Wait" button in the dialog, and then everything will be fine. Unfortunately, I suspect that the automated benchmark isn't very good at this :P

As such, the CS:GO benchmarks should be ignored for their X results as they aren't indicative of actual gameplay. Which is kinda the point of benchmarks. To, y'know, tell you how the game is gonna perform when you play it.

[R41N3R]

Did any game run natively on Wayland or was it all XWayland?