Out of the ashes of my controversial thoughts on AMD in the post highlighting their new mini gaming box comes an editorial about AMD's graphics drivers.
I am no stranger to calling AMD out on bad drivers, I am not saying they are bad right now as I haven't personally used them for around a year now, but in the past they have been bad.
With AMD shaking up the industry with their Mantle API it does beg the question, where will AMD go with their drivers on Linux?
We have Mantle which they haven't even confirmed if they will support it on Linux yet. Mantle is the API that's supposed to give performance gains over traditional graphics drivers. Now that's a great idea in theory, but it has already been shot down somewhat by the fact that AMD themselves along with Intel and Nvidia all said you can unlock many multiples of performance gains like that with OpenGL.
We then have Catalyst their closed-source graphics drivers that probably have some sort of middle-ware stopping them from open-sourcing it. I doubt that is the only reason they probably have certain techniques they wouldn't want Nvidia seeing which is just business.
Then we come to their open-source drivers which according to reports from nearly everyone who has stated they have used them that they have improved dramatically. I've seen benchmarks over time from Phoronix which backs this this up too, sadly I can't link any as trying to find an AMD benchmark of old vs new drivers wasn't easy.
Will AMD drop their Catalyst drivers for general desktop Linux in favour of their open-source drivers on Linux and keep Catalyst for things like professional work stations?
It sure would make a lot of people happy, there are masses of upsides to having fully FOSS (Free and open-source software) graphics drivers like not having to install anything yourself, it just comes with the system and works right away. This mostly already happens though, all we need is better day 1 support of newer graphics cards in the open-source drivers which brings me to my next point.
What would be great to see is some sort of driver updater for open-source drivers like Intel have, that would be great for AMD open-source users. Especially if you use a distribution on a 6-month or longer release cycle, if you picked yourself up a shiny new AMD card that wasn't currently supported, but gained support in a release a month before you don't want to wait another couple months for the new distro, having that software to just update the open-source drivers without fiddling around manually with repositories or PPA's and the like would be fantastic.
I have to hand it to AMD (and Intel) for providing good open-source support, Nvidia is lacking heavily in that category.
So, what do you the readers think AMD will do in future? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I am no stranger to calling AMD out on bad drivers, I am not saying they are bad right now as I haven't personally used them for around a year now, but in the past they have been bad.
With AMD shaking up the industry with their Mantle API it does beg the question, where will AMD go with their drivers on Linux?
We have Mantle which they haven't even confirmed if they will support it on Linux yet. Mantle is the API that's supposed to give performance gains over traditional graphics drivers. Now that's a great idea in theory, but it has already been shot down somewhat by the fact that AMD themselves along with Intel and Nvidia all said you can unlock many multiples of performance gains like that with OpenGL.
We then have Catalyst their closed-source graphics drivers that probably have some sort of middle-ware stopping them from open-sourcing it. I doubt that is the only reason they probably have certain techniques they wouldn't want Nvidia seeing which is just business.
Then we come to their open-source drivers which according to reports from nearly everyone who has stated they have used them that they have improved dramatically. I've seen benchmarks over time from Phoronix which backs this this up too, sadly I can't link any as trying to find an AMD benchmark of old vs new drivers wasn't easy.
Will AMD drop their Catalyst drivers for general desktop Linux in favour of their open-source drivers on Linux and keep Catalyst for things like professional work stations?
It sure would make a lot of people happy, there are masses of upsides to having fully FOSS (Free and open-source software) graphics drivers like not having to install anything yourself, it just comes with the system and works right away. This mostly already happens though, all we need is better day 1 support of newer graphics cards in the open-source drivers which brings me to my next point.
What would be great to see is some sort of driver updater for open-source drivers like Intel have, that would be great for AMD open-source users. Especially if you use a distribution on a 6-month or longer release cycle, if you picked yourself up a shiny new AMD card that wasn't currently supported, but gained support in a release a month before you don't want to wait another couple months for the new distro, having that software to just update the open-source drivers without fiddling around manually with repositories or PPA's and the like would be fantastic.
I have to hand it to AMD (and Intel) for providing good open-source support, Nvidia is lacking heavily in that category.
So, what do you the readers think AMD will do in future? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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the open source drivers are really on par with the closed source ones so i say stay with the open source drivers,the only drawback is no open gl 4.0 support it only goes up to 3.0 for me even though the closed drivers go up to 4.3 but i seem to have issues on and off with screen flicker im not sure if thats my card or if its there drivers...it just started doing that,i even tested on windows 7 and it still does it so either its them or its my card ready to bite the dirt..i have a 5770
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Read this article http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_catalyst_kernel&num=1
Basically there are no current plans to port Mantle to Linux. AMD is tossing around the idea of refactoring their Catalyst driver to hook into the FOSS driver. They would continue to enhance the FOSS driver but then allow all the extra stuff when you install their driver. It will allow them to get KMS support with the Catalyst driver so things like Wayland work.
If their plan works it would be a big boon to open source and Catalyst.
I will continue to buy AMD even if their drivers aren't the best because no matter what, when my hardware gets old I have the FOSS driver to fall back to. I don't have to worry about trying to figure out which driver to use or anything like Nvidia does with legacy drivers.
Basically there are no current plans to port Mantle to Linux. AMD is tossing around the idea of refactoring their Catalyst driver to hook into the FOSS driver. They would continue to enhance the FOSS driver but then allow all the extra stuff when you install their driver. It will allow them to get KMS support with the Catalyst driver so things like Wayland work.
If their plan works it would be a big boon to open source and Catalyst.
I will continue to buy AMD even if their drivers aren't the best because no matter what, when my hardware gets old I have the FOSS driver to fall back to. I don't have to worry about trying to figure out which driver to use or anything like Nvidia does with legacy drivers.
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I don't see a real future for AMD at all anymore. Their cpu's well under perform while generating alot more heat and use more power. Their GPU drivers suck in Linux compared to Nvidia. And even on windows you have more issues. Currently your better off just buying the best Intel cpu and Nvidia gpu you can with the budget you have for your build.
Unless they pull something out of their butts, the fx-8350 cpu I recently/regrettably bought for my missus will be the last sale from me. I should of just got her an i3 or low i5 for same price. It would perform better for gaming and wouldn't become a room heater while sounding like a it's about to take off into the sky. I had to buy an aftermarket cooler for it and disable core boosting to shut it up, or my partner wanted me to rip it out and put her old parts back in lol.
P.S I used to be a lover of AMD's cpu's. Never liked ATI cards though, due to same issues they still suffer from with AMD.
Unless they pull something out of their butts, the fx-8350 cpu I recently/regrettably bought for my missus will be the last sale from me. I should of just got her an i3 or low i5 for same price. It would perform better for gaming and wouldn't become a room heater while sounding like a it's about to take off into the sky. I had to buy an aftermarket cooler for it and disable core boosting to shut it up, or my partner wanted me to rip it out and put her old parts back in lol.
P.S I used to be a lover of AMD's cpu's. Never liked ATI cards though, due to same issues they still suffer from with AMD.
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The issue that AMD still face is lack of day 1 support for new hardware in the open driver as mentioned by Liam. Intel gets around this by throwing lots of devs at it and getting the code into the Linux Kernel and Mesa months ahead of the launch of new hardware. AMD needs to do exactly what Intel is doing.
Speaking from experience, the RadeonSI driver is now good enough on Ubuntu 14.04 to play many games out of the box (tested: Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead 2 & Oil Rush with GL3.2 override) but the development code is in better shape with performance improvements, OpenGL 3.3 support and lots of bug fixes. AMD should just dump Catalyst and switch all focus on to the open driver. My guess is that many (most??) AMD Linux users don't really care about Catalyst and use the open drivers already. Having 2 drivers is just wasting already stretched resources.
Speaking from experience, the RadeonSI driver is now good enough on Ubuntu 14.04 to play many games out of the box (tested: Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead 2 & Oil Rush with GL3.2 override) but the development code is in better shape with performance improvements, OpenGL 3.3 support and lots of bug fixes. AMD should just dump Catalyst and switch all focus on to the open driver. My guess is that many (most??) AMD Linux users don't really care about Catalyst and use the open drivers already. Having 2 drivers is just wasting already stretched resources.
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@Skully Yes Intel has great chips, but that wasn't always the case. If AMD didn't come in and kick their but in the P4 era they would have never innovated to where they are now. You also have do your research and buy what feel is best for you. Don't just buy based on price. AMD is still working to become profitable and the PC market doesn't help that. Intel has the money and power to buy their way into computers. They can pay companies money to use their chips so their user base goes up. It's all politics.
I'm not entirely sure what kind of games people are playing lately that you need an i7 extreme to get good game play. I'm still using my Phenom II x4 low powered CPU from 5 years ago. Out performs the i5 I have in my laptop that's only a couple years old.
As far as the FX line goes, they haven't put a lot of love in that because they are focused on the APU line. HSA is where they want to be and I believe that is the right direction. Leveraging the GPU for more stuff will make their chips outperform Intel. It's just going to require time for wide spread support.
Once AMD can star to generate a consistent profit they can work to hire on more people to improve their drivers and product line. You want them to get better, then you have to support them.
I'm not entirely sure what kind of games people are playing lately that you need an i7 extreme to get good game play. I'm still using my Phenom II x4 low powered CPU from 5 years ago. Out performs the i5 I have in my laptop that's only a couple years old.
As far as the FX line goes, they haven't put a lot of love in that because they are focused on the APU line. HSA is where they want to be and I believe that is the right direction. Leveraging the GPU for more stuff will make their chips outperform Intel. It's just going to require time for wide spread support.
Once AMD can star to generate a consistent profit they can work to hire on more people to improve their drivers and product line. You want them to get better, then you have to support them.
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Lordpkappa Apr 30, 2014
The question it's not if it's bettere proprietary or free drivers, the question is what kind of drivers offer me the best experince and performance?
I think that also for AMD the fglrx are the best for gaming, but at the moment are far away from Nvidia performance and stability, switching to free model need to open-sourcing it to gain enought performance and to support in time all the new hw, i don't think will happen soon.
I think that also for AMD the fglrx are the best for gaming, but at the moment are far away from Nvidia performance and stability, switching to free model need to open-sourcing it to gain enought performance and to support in time all the new hw, i don't think will happen soon.
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@Skully Yes Intel has great chips, but that wasn't always the case. If AMD didn't come in and kick their but in the P4 era they would have never innovated to where they are now. You also have do your research and buy what feel is best for you. Don't just buy based on price. AMD is still working to become profitable and the PC market doesn't help that. Intel has the money and power to buy their way into computers. They can pay companies money to use their chips so their user base goes up. It's all politics.
I'm not entirely sure what kind of games people are playing lately that you need an i7 extreme to get good game play. I'm still using my Phenom II x4 low powered CPU from 5 years ago. Out performs the i5 I have in my laptop that's only a couple years old.
As far as the FX line goes, they haven't put a lot of love in that because they are focused on the APU line. HSA is where they want to be and I believe that is the right direction. Leveraging the GPU for more stuff will make their chips outperform Intel. It's just going to require time for wide spread support.
Once AMD can star to generate a consistent profit they can work to hire on more people to improve their drivers and product line. You want them to get better, then you have to support them.
I agree it wasn't always the case, hence why I said I was once an AMD cpu user.
I also agree that intel wouldn't have worked so hard to get ahead if AMD hadn't been so good.
I do wonder what they did with all that money they must of made, cause as you say now intel have the money to pour into getting better and better. AMD could of done the same when they were king.
I also agree that your Phenom IIx4 is a great chip, it was after that they went crap. I would swap the fx-8350 for your chip in a heart beat. My mate still has his Phenom II x4 black edition and it's great. You definatly don't need an i7 like mine for gaming, but I do alot of other stuff like game development and video editing ect.
While I would like them to get better, and I have supported them in the past. I will not support them now by buying their inferior products. They can just get some more investors or something instead.
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I do wonder what they did with all that money they must of made, cause as you say now intel have the money to pour into getting better and better. AMD could of done the same when they were king.
AMD was never king financially. Intel could always eat them for breakfast in terms of the size of their bank account.
Still, I am one of those people still using a Phenom II X4 for gaming, and I only upgraded to that relatively recently. In the future I will probably go with one of the new AM1 Athlon or Semprons they are putting out now.
I should of just got her an i3 or low i5 for same price. It would perform better for gaming and wouldn't become a room heater while sounding like a it's about to take off into the sky. I had to buy an aftermarket cooler for it and disable core boosting to shut it up, or my partner wanted me to rip it out and put her old parts back in lol.
I legitimately do not have much experience with newer Intel parts, but the main reason I use AMD CPUs now is because of terrible thermal performance that Intel had back in the day.
Not that this ever was meant to be a CPU discussion, but anyway...
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I don't see a real future for AMD at all anymore. Their cpu's well under perform while generating alot more heat and use more power. Their GPU drivers suck in Linux compared to Nvidia. And even on windows you have more issues. Currently your better off just buying the best Intel cpu and Nvidia gpu you can with the budget you have for your build.
Unless they pull something out of their butts, the fx-8350 cpu I recently/regrettably bought for my missus will be the last sale from me. I should of just got her an i3 or low i5 for same price. It would perform better for gaming and wouldn't become a room heater while sounding like a it's about to take off into the sky. I had to buy an aftermarket cooler for it and disable core boosting to shut it up, or my partner wanted me to rip it out and put her old parts back in lol.
P.S I used to be a lover of AMD's cpu's. Never liked ATI cards though, due to same issues they still suffer from with AMD.
i seriously disagree from the CPU part. Fx-83xx series are still super good when it comes to performance/price ratio. Linux is pretty nicely multithreaded in general so more cores beats i3/i5 every time.. special when you compile or multitask a lot.. single core perf is dissapointing indeed.. and power consumption is more like FUD for desktop usage.. idle is about 15-20W more than intel ones and under load its just 30-50W more than intels, without overclocking.. that would make about 10-15€ bigger electricity bill per year when you run your cpu at load 8 hours a day...
AMD FX series are all unlocked CPUs, easy to OC and get even more performance out of them.. ofc power usage goes up as well but who the F cares if you have enough good cooling system.
i dont see them failing at all.. i'd take FX8320 every time over i5 4550 or 4650 and its cheaper than those.
future however doesnt indeed look good if they dont plan to refresh their FX series.. APU series are pretty weak in terms of CPU power... and GPU drivers are poor as well.
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i seriously disagree from the CPU part. Fx-83xx series are still super good when it comes to performance/price ratio. Linux is pretty nicely multithreaded in general so more cores beats i3/i5 every time.. special when you compile or multitask a lot.. single core perf is dissapointing indeed.. and power consumption is more like FUD for desktop usage.. idle is about 15-20W more than intel ones and under load its just 30-50W more than intels, without overclocking.. that would make about 10-15€ bigger electricity bill per year when you run your cpu at load 8 hours a day...
AMD FX series are all unlocked CPUs, easy to OC and get even more performance out of them.. ofc power usage goes up as well but who the F cares if you have enough good cooling system.
i dont see them failing at all.. i'd take FX8320 every time over i5 4550 or 4650 and its cheaper than those.
future however doesnt indeed look good if they dont plan to refresh their FX series.. APU series are pretty weak in terms of CPU power... and GPU drivers are poor as well.
Yes Linux is multithread and more cores win, but that doesn't apply to games yet. Most games are still using 1, sometimes 2 and rarely 4. So most games run *** due to poor single core performance and they also stink at floating point calculations due to having a shared fpu unit in each module.
Then take into account that the fx-8350 runs at 3.9ghz and boosts to 4.1, while the i7 is 3.6 with boost to 3.9. An I5 would be everybit as good for gaming as my i7 due to games using 4 or less cores.
eg. Serious sam 3 on Linux. In the performance options cpu performance, my fx8350 has to be set to lowest or framerate drops below 60 alot. My i7 can have it on ultra. same distro, same gpu
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future however doesnt indeed look good if they dont plan to refresh their FX series..I agree with this. I have been watching them, and there hasn't been any news of something new from them. I'm worried.
Graphics wise, the 14.4 Catalyst drivers in Ubuntu 14.04 with my HD5750 have been good. This isn't at 1080p though (running at 1600x900). The nightmare that was AMD Catalyst 2012 seems to be no more, but that's only with my limited runtime so far (barely a week). FPS still dips like nuts in L4D2, but can reach above 100fps as well. The open source drivers work with Unity games now, but I haven't actually tested them for FPS performance.
It would seem AMD are improving, but at a snails pace. I am eager to see the open source drivers flourish, as it would mean just plug and play. That would be the best case scenario. The Open Source drivers seem to lack any form of UI now though, so there's no centralised way for me to check temps/driver version/card number/GPU performance settings and so on so forth like you could with Catalyst or Nvidia's GUI program.
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Just to drop another comment in here: don't forget about RAM affecting game performance. Slow RAM + fast CPU can be much worse than fast RAM + slow CPU, regardless of core count. It counts doubly with integrated graphics.
I am guessing this was in reply to me with the serious sam 3 example?
fx-8350 has ddr3 1800
i7 has ddr3 1600
but you are right ram does affect game performance. This just makes the fx-8350 look even worse lol
I feel pretty buthurt over having purchased that chip. I watch my partner playing the same games as me with often lower settings and or not as smooth :( at least I made it quiet now for her. They should supply a much bigger fan an heatsink like intel does, so the fan doesn't have to spin at the speed of light when it's under load.
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Right now I'm quite content with my Phenom II X4 - Radeon HD6670 - fglrx combination.
Until mid-2013 however, it sucked to own an AMD system. Every fglrx update would make me break out in sweat in anticipation of a borked system. That's not the case anymore.
Yes, I wouldn't complain about speedier development also, but that's about it.
On the pro side is what kept me an AMD customer since a long time: They hit the sweet spot considering bang-for-buck and power consumption.
A lot of AMD products beat competitors that cost double the price.
Energy ? My above mentioned configuration (with the HD6670 being passively cooled): 75 W idle, <130 W on load. And it's by no means a weak system.
As said, not for performance enthusiasts, surely. But me, trying to build the most efficient system I can, I do hope that AMDs Open-Source efforts gain more traction and will sort out some of the remaining weaknesses.
God forbid a PC hardware monopoly. The gone by Microsoft era would look harmless and innovative in comparison.
Until mid-2013 however, it sucked to own an AMD system. Every fglrx update would make me break out in sweat in anticipation of a borked system. That's not the case anymore.
Yes, I wouldn't complain about speedier development also, but that's about it.
On the pro side is what kept me an AMD customer since a long time: They hit the sweet spot considering bang-for-buck and power consumption.
A lot of AMD products beat competitors that cost double the price.
Energy ? My above mentioned configuration (with the HD6670 being passively cooled): 75 W idle, <130 W on load. And it's by no means a weak system.
As said, not for performance enthusiasts, surely. But me, trying to build the most efficient system I can, I do hope that AMDs Open-Source efforts gain more traction and will sort out some of the remaining weaknesses.
God forbid a PC hardware monopoly. The gone by Microsoft era would look harmless and innovative in comparison.
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So, what do you the readers think AMD will do in future?Limited to the FOSS/proprietary drivers matter the answer is: the usual? AMD invested a lot in FOSS drivers so they won't abandon it but they still need a few years to reach at least OpenGL/OpenCL parity with Catalyst, so for a few years probably nothing will change, except maybe trying to reduce duplicate work from driver teams as they revealed at GDC2014 but that's just an internal detail that won't affect the final user significantly.
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I don't see a real future for AMD at all anymore. Their cpu's well under perform while generating alot more heat and use more power. Their GPU drivers suck in Linux compared to Nvidia. And even on windows you have more issues. Currently your better off just buying the best Intel cpu and Nvidia gpu you can with the budget you have for your build.\\
Unless they pull something out of their butts, the fx-8350 cpu I recently/regrettably bought for my missus will be the last sale from me. I should of just got her an i3 or low i5 for same price. It would perform better for gaming and wouldn't become a room heater while sounding like a it's about to take off into the sky. I had to buy an aftermarket cooler for it and disable core boosting to shut it up, or my partner wanted me to rip it out and put her old parts back in lol.
P.S I used to be a lover of AMD's cpu's. Never liked ATI cards though, due to same issues they still suffer from with AMD.
I have that CPU and it rocks, of course I compile my own software for up to 70% gains, hell I encode at close to 300 fps on this monster. use arch (ABS) or gentoo and this set this beast free. As for their cards, I have had many and haven't been let down since I stopped using Windows since the opensause support handles older cards and catalyst for the newones... I also own an intel i3 with built in video and my llano destroys it for gaming. that's a full gen after i3 mind you. oh but what lies we tell ourselves huh?
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Anyway, my post was because generally if you're trimming down the cost, a cheaper CPU for better RAM is normally worth it for games, regardless which company (cheaper AMD vs costly AMD, cheaper Intel vs costly Intel, or a mix thereof).
Do you have anything to back this up? I have seen quite a few benchmarks of games with different kinds of ram and for afaik it makes no difference unless you have an igp. Linustechtips did some testing a few weeks ago, his results were that there is no difference between 1333mhz and 2100mhz in terms of gaming performance.
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The Open Source drivers seem to lack any form of UI now though, so there's no centralised way for me to check temps/driver version/card number/GPU performance settings and so on so forth like you could with Catalyst or Nvidia's GUI program.
You might be interested in this:
https://github.com/marazmista/radeon-profile
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LOL Intel CPU + nVidia GPU is for serious gamers. End of.
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Yes Linux is multithread and more cores win, but that doesn't apply to games yet. Most games are still using 1, sometimes 2 and rarely 4. So most games run *** due to poor single core performance and they also stink at floating point calculations due to having a shared fpu unit in each module.
Then take into account that the fx-8350 runs at 3.9ghz and boosts to 4.1, while the i7 is 3.6 with boost to 3.9. An I5 would be everybit as good for gaming as my i7 due to games using 4 or less cores.
eg. Serious sam 3 on Linux. In the performance options cpu performance, my fx8350 has to be set to lowest or framerate drops below 60 alot. My i7 can have it on ultra. same distro, same gpu
i dunno what you talking about really... check those videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8Sekdb-IE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIVGwj1_Qno
FPS difference in games is minimal.. and when it comes to running other things at the same time when gaming then AMD pulls ahead quite a lot compared to same priced CPUs from intel
also i dunno what issues you had then... i have SS3 on ultra and my 8320 at 4.2ghz with no such drops..
probably you had ondemand governor when those issues happened.. this is known to suck under linux with amd cpus.
edit: also theres __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 to make some singlethreaded games at least run rendering on second thread.. which boosts performance quite a bit on AMD CPUs that suck on single core stuff.. And when you play windows games in wine theres CSMT patchset that does that.. + luckly many games starting to use more than 2 cores lately.. spcialy thanks to new console generation that has the same AMD CPUs... like it or not but many games come from consoles to PC...
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The Open Source drivers seem to lack any form of UI now though, so there's no centralised way for me to check temps/driver version/card number/GPU performance settings and so on so forth like you could with Catalyst or Nvidia's GUI program.You might be interested in this:
https://github.com/marazmista/radeon-profile
Wow, that is pretty cool! Thanks Hamish :)
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