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Mesa has another patch that will be interesting for Linux gamers. This is actually a two-part fix as it was re-worked. The Witcher 2 [Steam, GOG] should have a lot less black flickering with this latest patch.

The first patch was here, but now Marek has re-worked a v2 of the patch here.

Checking on the bug entry for it, it seems it improves the situation greatly but is not a full fix, as Marek described:
QuoteThe remaining bug can be an instruction scheduling issue: v_interp is moved outside of the WQM or moved after the KILL opcode (which can break the WQM) or moved into a branch (same issue).


As always, great to see Mesa work progress and Marek is doing some really fantastic work for AMD GPU owners. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: AMD, Drivers, Mesa
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15 comments

cRaZy-bisCuiT Jan 9, 2017
Thank you very much Marek! That's exactly what we need: Bugfixing to get Games running and performance patches! As another guy said, bloating up the drivers is not the way to go. But as long as those patches are rare and slim and maybe even generic to the case of problems, I don't see any reason not to include them. :)
Leopard Jan 9, 2017
Wow,Marek you're the man!
soulsource Jan 9, 2017
Is this a fix for a driver issue, or a workaround for broken game-code?
buenaventura Jan 9, 2017
Performance for me in witcher 2 is just horrendous even on absolute bottom settings. I wonder if this patch will help? Is it already in padoka ppa?
chimpy Jan 9, 2017
Performance for me in witcher 2 is just horrendous even on absolute bottom settings. I wonder if this patch will help? Is it already in padoka ppa?

Have you enabled beta build for Linux in the properties tag? That gave me a bit more performance.
MayeulC Jan 9, 2017
Is this a fix for a driver issue, or a workaround for broken game-code?

Looks like a pretty generic fix to me (ie, not game-specific). I am not qualified enough to really understand the problem, though :)
MayeulC Jan 9, 2017
Is this a fix for a driver issue, or a workaround for broken game-code?

It looks like a generic fix, though perhaps not on a common code path. With Mesa being feature complete, I suspect we'll start seeing more of this type of thing in future.

Good work Marek!

Yup, now that mesa is 90% here, only the other 90% are missing :D

Marek deserves some cookies, that's true.
Shmerl Jan 9, 2017
Performance for me in witcher 2 is just horrendous even on absolute bottom settings.

It's very good for me on max settings (RX 480 / Mesa 13.0.2). What hardware and Mesa version do you use? Also, remember to always keep ubersampling disabled.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 January 2017 at 7:18 pm UTC
buenaventura Jan 10, 2017
Have you enabled beta build for Linux in the properties tag? That gave me a bit more performance.

I bought it on GOG, so I'm not sure how I would get that beta linux build :O

It's very good for me on max settings (RX 480 / Mesa 13.0.2). What hardware and Mesa version do you use? Also, remember to always keep ubersampling disabled.

Granted, my hardware is not particularly good (laptop with quad core 2.4ghz, 8gb RAM), this is my GPU:
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] [1002:9851] (rev 05) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

It's GCN 1.1 I hear, but clearly not very good (1GB VRAM it says on the sticker). However some games work quite fine - I play Mirror's Edge with Wine (gallium staging) quite OK for example. I use the drivers from padoka ppa, glxinfo says "OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 13.1.0-devel - padoka PPA".
Shmerl Jan 10, 2017
Granted, my hardware is not particularly good (laptop with quad core 2.4ghz, 8gb RAM), this is my GPU:
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] [1002:9851] (rev 05) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

It's GCN 1.1 I hear, but clearly not very good (1GB VRAM it says on the sticker).

Witcher 2 is pretty demanding. So no surprise it doesn't perform well on your GPU. You surely need to upgrade.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 January 2017 at 8:43 am UTC
buenaventura Jan 10, 2017
Granted, my hardware is not particularly good (laptop with quad core 2.4ghz, 8gb RAM), this is my GPU:
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] [1002:9851] (rev 05) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

It's GCN 1.1 I hear, but clearly not very good (1GB VRAM it says on the sticker).

Witcher 2 is pretty demanding. So no surprise it doesn't perform well on your GPU. You surely need to upgrade.

*grumble grumble* I don't get games these days, why all the shiny crap, I would be happy with witcher text-only-mode :( Just let me turn of all the stuff until it flows ;)
Shmerl Jan 10, 2017
Well, turn it off you can. But it sounds close to minimum requirements.
buenaventura Jan 10, 2017
Well, turn it off you can. But it sounds close to minimum requirements.

I did turn everything possible off, as in I played at 800x600, all draw distances minimum, EVERY SETTING minimum including all the ones in config files, and it was playable until the dwarwen city, but that place is just too full off useless fires and shiny stuff :<

Edit: what I mean is, I would like games to include options to remove most graphical effects. I do not care about lighting moving around, shiny handles on swords etc. in almost any game, I just need some decent framerates to suspend disbelief a bit. Shaky framerates just ruins everything. I feel that game developers waste a lot of energy making pretty graphics - that energy could have gone into making a great game instead! But alas, I guess I am the minority.


Last edited by buenaventura on 10 January 2017 at 9:17 am UTC
ripper Jan 10, 2017
I did turn everything possible off, as in I played at 800x600, all draw distances minimum, EVERY SETTING minimum including all the ones in config files, and it was playable until the dwarwen city, but that place is just too full off useless fires and shiny stuff :<
You probably already know this, but there's a LowSpecGamer channel on YouTube that contains useful tricks how to make new games run on very slow systems. For Witcher 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67H6WuMtnQ
buenaventura Jan 10, 2017
You probably already know this, but there's a LowSpecGamer channel on YouTube that contains useful tricks how to make new games run on very slow systems. For Witcher 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67H6WuMtnQ

Thats a nice tip, I did not know about that channel! I have now utterly butchered my witcher 2 (max texture settings=100) and it now occupies only a ninth of my screen (the resolution is so low, dunno how to get it to fill the screen), and it is still kinda stuttery and awkward .___. not worth the trouble getting back into the story really. But that channel is nice, thanks!
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