Mesa 18.0 released, further advancing Linux graphics drivers

I fear that list of bugged Mesa games is not even 50% complete.

The list is populated by volunteers specifically for the purpose of bringing more attention to these bugs. Feel free to add what's missing if you know of any games like that.

Sorry but the list is outdated and lists mainly game bugs. Also I didn't saw any dev ever reacting to that list.
Like the X3 bug, that one got even bisected, anything happend until now?
What's up with those many game related bugs? Is valve doing any work on them? Have they actually ever respond after they said "let's create a list"?
I think I'm not the only one who got the feeling that nothing happens here anymore.

We don't have your PC info, do you already run AMD mesa drivers? On what hardware?
I'm planning on switching to AMD with the next gen, and I'd be interested in that kind of details...

I'm running Mesa git / LLVM svn / amd-staging drm-next git on a SI card (Radeon HD 7970).
The support for newer GCN generations might be better but I experience micro stuttering and heavy frame drops in a numerous games. This is either related to a bug in the support for the SI architecture or a general problem with the shader compiler.

In general I wouldn't recommend to get a new AMD product to early. Except you want to ride a staging kernel. Because it usually takes months till support appear in a stable release. See that raven ridge disaster. I'm actually not sure those are in an working state today.

If you want to to see a list of current problems:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&component=Drivers%2FGallium%2Fradeonsi&order=changeddate%20DESC%2Cbug_status%2Cpriority%2Cassigned_to%2Cbug_id&product=Mesa&query_format=advanced

I'm very sure even valve should be able to read this. Sadly this doesn't even include general Mesa bugs.

One more thing to mention is that Mesa has problems with games needing compat profiles. Also there are problems with VP ports, just see that Arma 3 bug.
Oh and lastly I recommend to use Mesa git and LLVM svn. Because everytime you create a bug usually the first reaction is to test again with current git. Basically meaning that there is no support for stable releases. I just remember the bug in LLVM 5 which affects multiple games and never got fixed, and won't be fixed as they don't make a new release of LLVM 5 and suggest to use LLVM 6. Of course your distro don't have LLVM 6 available, so you are better of managing software yourself.

@Shmerl
I'm sorry but I do complain for good reason. Basically valve called for a list but unfortunately never gave feedback.
It's like I said with the X3 bug. If valve would really care they reproduced the issue and opened a bug on the freedesktop bug tracker. But that didn't happen.
People are frustrated because they thought their problems get solved but they didn't receive any feedback at all. As a result, the list is now out of date because users don't see its worth maintaining it.
I appreciate your work here though. I just keep working with the freedesktop bug tracker.

I'm sorry but I do complain for good reason. Basically valve called for a list but unfortunately never gave feedback.
It's like I said with the X3 bug. If valve would really care they reproduced the issue and opened a bug on the freedesktop bug tracker. But that didn't happen.

Who reported the issue in the first place? No one stopped them from submitting a Mesa bug report. That's the proper process. Not reporting Mesa bugs first is counter productive. And saying that list is incomplete doesn't help either, if you don't want to add to it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 April 2018 at 6:30 pm UTC

No it doesn't help. But it also doesn't help to waste effort and energy to a list which neither valve nor any Mesa dev cares for.
How long is that X3 issue known? One year? Two years?
It should be obvious that the original reporter won't fill a bug report. Still, did valve anything to resolve this problem? No? I think there is no better proof than that, that this list is dead.

Claiming there aren't more bugs because they aren't on that list is just not true.
I can only add bugs which I encounter myself. But there are many more games and configurations out there. What's with them?

It should be obvious that the original reporter won't fill a bug report.

Well, it sounds like it doesn't bother anyone else either. As the saying goes, if you don't want to file bug reports - don't complain.

And not every bug is a Mesa bug for the reference. There are application bugs that Mesa developers can do nothing about. May be that's the case?


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 April 2018 at 11:24 pm UTC

So...the only list I can find that you might be referring to is community run on GOL. The hopes are that it will help people know about games with problems and possible solutions, not to act as a bug report section for Valve.
Also, Valve are not responsible for fixing an X3 issue. Which you haven't linked to, so I'm assuming my google-fu is pointing to the right place.

So I'm not sure what your problem actually is here.

It sometimes makes sense to read some more posts in a thread....

Anyway the list we talk about is this one:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/wiki/Games_broken_on_Mesa

A valve employee twittered it would be nice to have one.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-are-looking-to-gather-a-list-of-games-that-dont-work-with-radeonsi.8874

Unfortunately that was the last time someone from valve was talking about that list.

Again some posts earlier I mentioned that Mesa has way more bugs than the list contains. After that I was quoted by Shmerl to add missing problematic games. Later he said, I should not complain if I don't want to add new entries.
But thing is that those bugs still exist having them added to the list or not.
Also I claim that the list is obsolete. As neither valve nor Mesa devs gave ever any feedback. If they were serious on this, I would expect they go through the issues one by one. But instead, nothing has happened.
Back to my initial statement, as I have the feeling my message got somehow lost:
Mesa's AMD team desperately needs an extra dev solely caring for bug handling, stable release managing and get in touch with game developers and porting companies.
This is a full time job and needs profound knowledge. This can't be done by volunteers.
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't report bugs anymore. But it is unacceptable if bugs stay open for years and stable releases are broken and don't get fixed. AMD and valve are multi billion dollar companies, this isn't a fan project, this is the official amd Linux driver. This is a problem which needs to be solved. But it doesn't look like there is a solution in sight. So the community needs to rise awareness. And it doesn't get better if we doing like there are no problems.

Sometimes it makes sense if people tried to make sense.

AMD _do_ employ people to fix Mesa.
Valve do as well.

That's not the point. Of course those devs fix bugs from time to time.
But they usually add missing features to Mesa. Their main task is not to ensure product quality.
This is a job someone else has to do but currently there is no one in AMDs team.
Intel team has someone like that,I really don't understand why it is so hard to believe AMD needs someone too.

Sometimes it makes sense if people tried to make sense.

AMD _do_ employ people to fix Mesa.
Valve do as well.

That's not the point. Of course those devs fix bugs from time to time.
But they usually add missing features to Mesa. Their main task is not to ensure product quality.
This is a job someone else has to do but currently there is no one in AMDs team.
Intel team has someone like that,I really don't understand why it is so hard to believe AMD needs someone too.

What are you even talking about?

Of course AMD has people working on driver quality. It's easy to see if you bother checking the mesa git log. New features get more news exposure than less exciting bug fixes, but that doesn't mean they're the only thing being worked on or even the main focus of AMD developers.

Anyway the list we talk about is this one:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/wiki/Games_broken_on_Mesa

And Timothy Arceri from Valve posts updates in that lists periodically. I already told you to check history there. So Valve are clearly paying attention to it.

Check also this list: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/wiki/Games_with_recent_fixes_in_Mesa

So again. If you want to do something constructive - help filing bugs and keeping the list up to date.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 April 2018 at 2:21 pm UTC

Sometimes it makes sense if people tried to make sense.

AMD _do_ employ people to fix Mesa.
Valve do as well.

That's not the point. Of course those devs fix bugs from time to time.
But they usually add missing features to Mesa. Their main task is not to ensure product quality.
This is a job someone else has to do but currently there is no one in AMDs team.
Intel team has someone like that,I really don't understand why it is so hard to believe AMD needs someone too.

What are you even talking about?

Of course AMD has people working on driver quality. It's easy to see if you bother checking the mesa git log. New features get more news exposure than less exciting bug fixes, but that doesn't mean they're the only thing being worked on or even the main focus of AMD developers.

Do they though as if you go to the driver page and select linux the last update was march 17 last time i ran a amd gpu was the old faithful 7770 so have no idea what its like these days but when i rocked that things were bad.

Do they though as if you go to the driver page and select linux the last update was march 17 last time i ran a amd gpu was the old faithful 7770 so have no idea what its like these days but when i rocked that things were bad.

Mesa is supported through upstream. You aren't supposed to use pro packages, they are targeted for legacy users who need compat profile.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 April 2018 at 5:59 pm UTC

Check this out (number of patches from AMD developers): https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/project/mesa/patches/

Check this out (number of patches from AMD developers): https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/project/mesa/patches/

But is that actual AMD contributions or is it employees contributing code in their own time i get AMD just do not have the R & D budget of Nvidia but the work the mesa guys do is very impressive

I'd assume it's AMD contributors. As far as I know, AMD have a plan to replace their pro stack with upstream Mesa (except for their amdvlk). So direct support for Mesa is expected.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 April 2018 at 9:07 pm UTC