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Is it just me or have the open source graphics drivers improved by miles. A couple of games running through Wine are getting similar frame rates with Gallium3D

Is it just me or have the open source graphics drivers improved by miles. A couple of games running through Wine are getting similar frame rates with Gallium3D and Catalyst.

noir_lord 12y ago
Not just you, every new release has been a major improvement over previous ones for me running a 7750 at work and 6950 at home. I suspect the steambox been debian based has helped drive this :).
Spittie 12y ago
It isn't you. The AMD opensource team has been doing a terrific work lately, especially considering the small size (IIRC 4 people). DPM is the big thing, as it means that the gpu can raise the clock under load as it does on Windows, but they've done lots of work everywhere else as well. Say thanks to Intel as well for driving the work on Mesa (It's thanks to Intel that Mesa got OpenGL 3.3 compatibility so fast). Also Wine got some speedups as well (and an huge one should be coming soon with the stream patches). Overall, I'd say that the Linux graphic stack has never been in a better state. We got official opensource drivers for Intel, official opensource drivers from AMD that are 50-80% as good as the closed one depending on your card, and unofficial opensource drivers for Nvidia that are usually good enough for non-gaming.
- 1_player 12y ago
  For some older Radeon cards (such as my 6630HD Mobile) I would recommend the open-source driver instead of Catalyst, as the performance is noticeably greater.
rpedela 12y ago
Yeah it has. Over the last few years, the OSS radeon driver has significantly improved. Most of the feature matrix [1] is now green. Whenever Hyper-Z is finished and enabled by default, it should lead to another major performance improvement for geometry-heavy applications. Mesa and the Intel drivers have improved significantly too. As far as I am aware, Nvidia drivers are still closed-source. 1. http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/ http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/
vanderZwan 12y ago
I commented a few weeks ago I got a huge boost in performance in regular desktop use with a laptop running an Intel HD4000.

Is it just me or have the open source graphics drivers improved by miles. A couple of games running through Wine are getting similar frame rates with Gallium3D and Catalyst.

noir_lord 12y ago

Not just you, every new release has been a major improvement over previous ones for me running a 7750 at work and 6950 at home. I suspect the steambox been debian based has helped drive this :).

Spittie 12y ago

It isn't you. The AMD opensource team has been doing a terrific work lately, especially considering the small size (IIRC 4 people). DPM is the big thing, as it means that the gpu can raise the clock under load as it does on Windows, but they've done lots of work everywhere else as well. Say thanks to Intel as well for driving the work on Mesa (It's thanks to Intel that Mesa got OpenGL 3.3 compatibility so fast). Also Wine got some speedups as well (and an huge one should be coming soon with the stream patches). Overall, I'd say that the Linux graphic stack has never been in a better state. We got official opensource drivers for Intel, official opensource drivers from AMD that are 50-80% as good as the closed one depending on your card, and unofficial opensource drivers for Nvidia that are usually good enough for non-gaming.

1_player 12y ago
For some older Radeon cards (such as my 6630HD Mobile) I would recommend the open-source driver instead of Catalyst, as the performance is noticeably greater.

rpedela 12y ago

Yeah it has. Over the last few years, the OSS radeon driver has significantly improved. Most of the feature matrix [1] is now green. Whenever Hyper-Z is finished and enabled by default, it should lead to another major performance improvement for geometry-heavy applications. Mesa and the Intel drivers have improved significantly too. As far as I am aware, Nvidia drivers are still closed-source. 1. http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/ http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

vanderZwan 12y ago

I commented a few weeks ago I got a huge boost in performance in regular desktop use with a laptop running an Intel HD4000.