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Marek sent in a patch for RadeonSI that will look to increase performance of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [Steam, Feral Store] by around 70%.

That's incredible, seriously, that's an insanely large improvement for such a heavy game to get. Perhaps once this lands in a stable Mesa version, if it's good enough Feral might be able to officially support the game on AMD.

Marek said:
MarekHi,

These patches optimize our SDMA usage and implement buffer clearing.
They also turn SDMA IBs into de-facto preambles of GFX IB, because any
clear that is also the first buffer use is pushed

It improves DeusEx:MD performance by 70% and the slow ClearBuffer
implementation was the main problem. Using SDMA instead of slow CP DMA
restored performance, though we might also consider using a compute
shader instead of SDMA, because the compute shader can always be
asynchronous to graphics in this case (SDMA isn't asynchronous due
to the IB dependency).

Marek

Source

Sounds like he knows a better way to do it too, so it could improve further in future using a compute shader.

Marek is the same developer who has done multiple other performance improvements in the past, so it's pleasing to see they are still at it.

A pretty nice way to start 2017! I'm excited to think how far Mesa will go this year.

I imagine 2017 will be full of patches like this as Mesa is likely full of performance issues that can be fixed up. The Mesa developers pushed through towards OpenGL 4.5 quite quickly, so there's probably a lot of room for improvement. Having heavy games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on Linux provides good performance test cases. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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buenaventura Jan 3, 2017
I am so happy that I can play games with an open source driver!
ant8 Jan 3, 2017
Quoting: Joeyboots80I only use AMD hardware and open source drivers. This is great news for me! I am definitely going to buy this game now. Thanks for the heads up Liam! :)

+1 I also use AMD hardware (RX 470) and open source drivers so this is excellent news. I guess the fix was going to happen sooner rather than later because performance of the game under Mesa was so bad!
throgh Jan 3, 2017
Yet this is only possible with non-free firmware, so in fact the Mesa-drivers are cool but not complete open. :(
Especially newer cards have those problems, when installing the libre kernel!
Colombo Jan 3, 2017
I would be exited if I could start the game in the first place.
Avehicle7887 Jan 4, 2017
This is great news for AMD users, I'll be ready to see how it performs when compared to Nvidia then. Regardless of the outcome, this brings me one step closer to a full AMD build this year.

I think 2017 will be a very good year for Linux, there's a lot of room for improvement.
Joeyboots80 Jan 4, 2017
Quoting: Avehicle7887This is great news for AMD users, I'll be ready to see how it performs when compared to Nvidia then. Regardless of the outcome, this brings me one step closer to a full AMD build this year.

I think 2017 will be a very good year for Linux, there's a lot of room for improvement.
Come on over to the AMD pool friend! The water is nice!
boltronics Jan 4, 2017
Quoting: throghYet this is only possible with non-free firmware, so in fact the Mesa-drivers are cool but not complete open. :(
Especially newer cards have those problems, when installing the libre kernel!
No, Mesa is completely open. It's the AMDGPU kernel module that requires the non-free microcode.

Speaking of which, it looks like there might be some hope for a free software microcode implementation soon as well.
http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PS4-Linux-Radeon-Driver-Mods


Last edited by boltronics on 4 January 2017 at 2:51 am UTC
Jahimself Jan 4, 2017
That Marek dude is impressive.
throgh Jan 4, 2017
Quoting: boltronics
Quoting: throghYet this is only possible with non-free firmware, so in fact the Mesa-drivers are cool but not complete open. :(
Especially newer cards have those problems, when installing the libre kernel!
No, Mesa is completely open. It's the AMDGPU kernel module that requires the non-free microcode.

Speaking of which, it looks like there might be some hope for a free software microcode implementation soon as well.
http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PS4-Linux-Radeon-Driver-Mods

Thanks for correction and for the information! Much appreciated. :)
STiAT Jan 5, 2017
Quoting: JahimselfThat Marek dude is impressive.

All the (graphics) driver developers I know are a book on their own.. exceptional engineers. He's just one example out of them, where we can look a bit at the work because it's public :-).
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