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Linux 3.12 Brings Big AMD Radeon Improvements

80 points by Tsiolkovsky 13y ago

phaemon 13y ago
Oddly enough, I was just reading a similar article from last year about Linux 3.5 bringing massive improvements to Radeon. It would be interesting to see something older like 3.2 compared to 3.12.
- blinkingled 13y ago
  Dynamic Power Management (3.11) and ASPM (3.10) support itself should make a huge difference for power consumption. Add in the various performance improvements in both the kernel driver and Mesa user land the FPS should be up quite a bit. (The Phoronix benchmarks say as much as 40% improvement.)
  - XorNot 13y ago
    The Radeon driver is still, despite it's faults, a way smoother experience then the fglrx driver - notably so if you want to use a compositing window manager (support still missing from AMDs proprietary end).
    - blinkingled 13y ago
      Yep, never ever used fglrx after radeon got usable. Allows me to upgrade kernels whenever I want and now a days it runs cool, has UVD supported and 3D/2D performance is quite decent for desktop use.
Sanddancer 13y ago
Out of curiosity, what are the comparisons to the closed-source driver under Kernel 3.12? The scant bits of info I can find -- a comparison to the windows catalyst driver -- seem to suggest that the open source driver is still a good deal slower ( http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1307253-SO-LEGACYAMD15#system_table http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1307253-SO-LEGACYAMD15#sy... ). Additionally, Steam's been available for Linux for years now, what's the framerate like on games that aren't Quake 3 derivatives?
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  Steam on Linux is 8 months old.
- slacka 13y ago
  I have a AMD 5970. Default gallium3D are 40-80% of the catalyst drivers in the testing I've done, similar to the numbers phoronix gets.[1] If you're willing to put up with some glitches, you can enable the SB backend and bring it to 80-95%, especially at higher resolutions. I have a steam account and several Humble Bundles. From my experience, the catalyst drivers always perform better and have fewer glitches. Many indie titles are unplayable with gallium drivers. From openbenchmarking, Unigine won't even run under the gallium drivers.[2] What I'd really love to see is AMD commit to merging their Catalyst and gallium drivers/teams. Sure the current 1 or 2 AMD open source guys can get good results running Quake 3 derivatives. But without a full team backing them up, I don't see how they can test hundreds of games for glitches and performance regressions. [1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_hd5000_dpm93&num=5 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_hd500... [2] http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1109040-LI-AMDRADEON19 http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1109040-LI-AMDRADEON19
  - Spittie 13y ago
    On your second link, that's a quite old (almost two years, if I'm not wrong) benchmark. Unigine is now supposed to run on the free drivers, see http://www.gearsongallium.com/?p=752 http://www.gearsongallium.com/?p=752
  - saurabh 13y ago
    Mesa 9.3 will enable the Shader Backend by default
- asdfs 13y ago
  The end of the article states that he plans on doing a Catalyst vs. Mesa comparison this weekend. Hopefully with a larger selection of cards as well.
- dman 13y ago
Nux 13y ago
I've got a RadeonHD 3200, currently with 3.11 it overheats and shuts down automatically. AMD decided not to support this GPU with newer Xorg. Curious if 3.12 will make a big difference. I don't need performance, I just need the damn thing not to melt down and shut down.
- ensmotko 13y ago
  Have you tried enabling DPM [1]? This feature was added in 3.11, but it's not enabled by default. You need to set a kernel parameter to make it work (radeon.dpm=1 in your grub config). [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Dynamic_power_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Dynamic_power_manag...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- notok22 13y ago
  If you try what ensmotko says, can you give an update? I'm in the same situation.
  - ensmotko 13y ago
    I have an older 3xxx card as well and enabling DPM noticeably reduced work temperatures. I'd say the temperature levels with DPM enabled are similar to using fglrx propriety drivers.
  - simcop2387 13y ago
    On my old laptop, an HP G61 something, I had a Mobility 4200. I hadn't been able to test it with the released 3.11 (replaced it before it was out), but I did always add the patches from the drm-next branch that was developing all of this. It did make a decent change in the temperature of the whole laptop. From being about 60C down to about 40C if I remember right. At least when I wasn't trying to run minecraft.
  - Nux 13y ago
    Hi, I have tried and it helped a bit in that the fan doesn't seem like it will take off, but temperature wise not that much of a difference. At least it's not shutting down, it's staying at around 66 degrees when idle. My setup is also slightly more complicated because this laptop has hybrid graphics (basically 2 radeon cards), in this case turning off switcheroo helped a bit as well. The lessons this laptop taught me: - don't buy ATI/AMD - don't buy hybrid/dual graphics I'm very pleased with my other laptop with a Sandy Bridge CPU and integrated Intel grahics HD3000.
vanderZwan 13y ago
For those who like me had trouble finding the actual benchmark results mentioned in the article: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1310099-SO-RADEONRV716 http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1310099-SO-RADEONRV716

80 points by Tsiolkovsky 13y ago

Oddly enough, I was just reading a similar article from last year about Linux 3.5 bringing massive improvements to Radeon. It would be interesting to see something older like 3.2 compared to 3.12.

blinkingled 13y ago
Dynamic Power Management (3.11) and ASPM (3.10) support itself should make a huge difference for power consumption. Add in the various performance improvements in both the kernel driver and Mesa user land the FPS should be up quite a bit. (The Phoronix benchmarks say as much as 40% improvement.)
- XorNot 13y ago
  The Radeon driver is still, despite it's faults, a way smoother experience then the fglrx driver - notably so if you want to use a compositing window manager (support still missing from AMDs proprietary end).
  - blinkingled 13y ago
    Yep, never ever used fglrx after radeon got usable. Allows me to upgrade kernels whenever I want and now a days it runs cool, has UVD supported and 3D/2D performance is quite decent for desktop use.

Sanddancer 13y ago

Out of curiosity, what are the comparisons to the closed-source driver under Kernel 3.12? The scant bits of info I can find -- a comparison to the windows catalyst driver -- seem to suggest that the open source driver is still a good deal slower ( http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1307253-SO-LEGACYAMD15#system_table http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1307253-SO-LEGACYAMD15#sy... ). Additionally, Steam's been available for Linux for years now, what's the framerate like on games that aren't Quake 3 derivatives?

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Steam on Linux is 8 months old.
slacka 13y ago
I have a AMD 5970. Default gallium3D are 40-80% of the catalyst drivers in the testing I've done, similar to the numbers phoronix gets.[1] If you're willing to put up with some glitches, you can enable the SB backend and bring it to 80-95%, especially at higher resolutions. I have a steam account and several Humble Bundles. From my experience, the catalyst drivers always perform better and have fewer glitches. Many indie titles are unplayable with gallium drivers. From openbenchmarking, Unigine won't even run under the gallium drivers.[2] What I'd really love to see is AMD commit to merging their Catalyst and gallium drivers/teams. Sure the current 1 or 2 AMD open source guys can get good results running Quake 3 derivatives. But without a full team backing them up, I don't see how they can test hundreds of games for glitches and performance regressions. [1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_hd5000_dpm93&num=5 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_hd500... [2] http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1109040-LI-AMDRADEON19 http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1109040-LI-AMDRADEON19
- Spittie 13y ago
  On your second link, that's a quite old (almost two years, if I'm not wrong) benchmark. Unigine is now supposed to run on the free drivers, see http://www.gearsongallium.com/?p=752 http://www.gearsongallium.com/?p=752
- saurabh 13y ago
  Mesa 9.3 will enable the Shader Backend by default
asdfs 13y ago
The end of the article states that he plans on doing a Catalyst vs. Mesa comparison this weekend. Hopefully with a larger selection of cards as well.
dman 13y ago

Nux 13y ago

I've got a RadeonHD 3200, currently with 3.11 it overheats and shuts down automatically. AMD decided not to support this GPU with newer Xorg. Curious if 3.12 will make a big difference. I don't need performance, I just need the damn thing not to melt down and shut down.

ensmotko 13y ago
Have you tried enabling DPM [1]? This feature was added in 3.11, but it's not enabled by default. You need to set a kernel parameter to make it work (radeon.dpm=1 in your grub config). [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Dynamic_power_management https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Dynamic_power_manag...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
notok22 13y ago
If you try what ensmotko says, can you give an update? I'm in the same situation.
- ensmotko 13y ago
  I have an older 3xxx card as well and enabling DPM noticeably reduced work temperatures. I'd say the temperature levels with DPM enabled are similar to using fglrx propriety drivers.
- simcop2387 13y ago
  On my old laptop, an HP G61 something, I had a Mobility 4200. I hadn't been able to test it with the released 3.11 (replaced it before it was out), but I did always add the patches from the drm-next branch that was developing all of this. It did make a decent change in the temperature of the whole laptop. From being about 60C down to about 40C if I remember right. At least when I wasn't trying to run minecraft.
- Nux 13y ago
  Hi, I have tried and it helped a bit in that the fan doesn't seem like it will take off, but temperature wise not that much of a difference. At least it's not shutting down, it's staying at around 66 degrees when idle. My setup is also slightly more complicated because this laptop has hybrid graphics (basically 2 radeon cards), in this case turning off switcheroo helped a bit as well. The lessons this laptop taught me: - don't buy ATI/AMD - don't buy hybrid/dual graphics I'm very pleased with my other laptop with a Sandy Bridge CPU and integrated Intel grahics HD3000.

vanderZwan 13y ago

For those who like me had trouble finding the actual benchmark results mentioned in the article: http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1310099-SO-RADEONRV716 http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1310099-SO-RADEONRV716