Mesa 17.1 release is now scheduled for May

I think NVIDIA plans to have 1100 series cards ready for VEGA, so AMD is going to find it hard asking for that $600-700 price-tag it no doubt will have on launch. Already I think AMD has LOST a significant percentage of videocard buyers due to the 1080ti, which is exactly what I predicted NVIDIA to do, they never pass up a opportunity to snatch market share.

Nvidia don't iterate that fast. So I doubt 1100 series will come out any time soon. On the Linux side of things, Nvidia will continue losing market share, until they'll open up their drivers, but it probably won't be enough of incentive, until they'll actually fall behind AMD there.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 March 2017 at 11:43 pm UTC

LOL, I don't think many people care about open-source drivers to be honest. Most desktop users who buy these cards just want them to work and not care about the status symbol of having open-source drivers.. LMAO.

Also NVIDIA has been sitting on the 1080ti for quite some time, its not a new card, its the same TI spin their being doing forever, the 11xx cards will already be undergoing driver/performance/development tweak testing atm!

RX Vega set to launch mid year, so still VERY far away, plenty of time for NVIDIA to at least announce their new cards.

Quoting: TheRiddickLOL, I don't think many people care about open-source drivers to be honest. Most desktop users who buy these cards just want them to work and not care about the status symbol of having open-source drivers..

That's the problem right there. Nvidia doesn't work that well on Linux. Performance is good, true. But the rest is pretty bad. I.e. integration with kernel (KMS/DRM), desktop (like tearing free experience), Wayland support, lm-sensors support and so on, and so forth. With Mesa performance catching up, AMD is a clear winner for Linux users.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 March 2017 at 11:55 pm UTC

I have had some issues under Ubuntu installing NVIDIA drivers resulting in bootup blackscreen, but I rock a functional distro now called manjaro and its NVIDIA drivers work fine without a hitch. Also the screen tearing doesn't appear to happen with FULL COMPOSITION turned on in the nvidia-settings, however I suspect it could impact FPS?!

And YES I do believe AMD open drivers will eventually become a big win for Linux and even surpass NVIDIA in areas, but until that happens the majority of people will not care. We still have some rather terrible performance with RADV atm which NEEDS to be fixed asap...

Yeah, radv needs to catch up, but it's in rapid development now, so things look good. Would also be interesting to see what AMD will do with their current closed Vulkan driver.

But my personal favorite feature is GALLIUM_HUD. It's so easy to use, and nothing comes close to that with Nvidia blob. Mesa developers said, they plan a similar feature for radv.

Quoting: libgradevBarring the fab that makes the parts burning down, mine will (Ryzen + Vega).

Amazing isn't it: moved to Linux a few years ago, wouldn't touch an AMD card (I actually had one and the support was so bad I grabbed a GTX670 after a couple of months) - now I can't see myself buying another NVidia card again...

Turnabout eh?

The exactly same happened to me! I bought an HD5850 in the past but after switching to Linux I was very unhappy considering the performance, integration into the Kernel, bugs etc - fglrx just sucked. Therefore I bought a GTX 560ti which was ment to be slower - under Linux it performed much better, thanks to the driver.


Now im very happy with my RX 480 since I could max out almost everything. "Deus Ex Mankind Devided" excluded. (;

I must be part of the minority of people that does care about open source drivers. I care so much that I will take a performance hit (gladly) in order to avoid using proprietary drivers.

Luckily, I don't have to worry about that scenario with my AMD card because AMDGPU open source graphics drivers simply eats the proprietary driver's (AMDGPU-Pro) lunch, and they keep getting better. I think I would be very unhappy if I had an Nvidia card (Almost bought a GTX 970 a couple years ago) knowing the open source driver is, to be polite, not up to snuff in comparison to the proprietary blob. And I know I said I would gladly take a performance hit but that is far too much of one, especially when the open source AMD drivers are much better.

Nothing against Nvidia folks of course, or to those that choose to use the proprietary driver, and no offense to Intel either but Intel has always been a little too pricey for my taste. But, you buy and use what you like and that's fine. I totally support and encourage choice. But, because my personal choice is to be as open source as possible and still have a modern rig, AMD is the only choice for me.

I am excited for the future, competition can only be a good thing. ^_^


Last edited by Joeyboots80 on 10 March 2017 at 2:03 am UTC

Most gamers on Linux are using NVIDIA cards, I can't remember the exact percentage but its pretty high. So saying open-source drivers are the most important thing for Linux gamer is kinda misleading given that fact.

Basically its the most important thing for YOU, but the rest of the world just wants a good gaming experience under linux and could give a crap about open/closed drivers.

Quoting: TheRiddickMost gamers on Linux are using NVIDIA cards, I can't remember the exact percentage but its pretty high. So saying open-source drivers are the most important thing for Linux gamer is kinda misleading given that fact.

Basically its the most important thing for YOU, but the rest of the world just wants a good gaming experience under linux and could give a crap about open/closed drivers.

Gamingonlinux statistics are saying 75% are using closed drivers. I am not saying people should avoid nvidia and closed drivers. In fact I am actually using them on my desktop that for some reasons is not my main machine. But people should care about having choice. Open source are not important to me to be better in every way but it is important to be viable choice. Having choice is good so if nvidia drivers would stop existing somehow that would be bad (unless of course mesa had become better in every way). But not having mesa would be terrible much worse. So while I am not against nvidia drivers, in this sense I say mesa is more important than nvidia.


Last edited by lucinos on 10 March 2017 at 7:25 am UTC