GeForce RTX 3060 Ti arrives December 2, hits RTX 2080 SUPER level performance

Quoting: 3zekiel3/ With AMD, the number of time I have to go and use some copr to get latest kernel/mesa for my wife is actually much higher, and I rarely see you guys bragging about that.

This interests me. On my fedora systems with AMD cards, I have never needed any copr/third party packages. What was missing?

Quoting: minfaer

Quoting: 3zekiel3/ With AMD, the number of time I have to go and use some copr to get latest kernel/mesa for my wife is actually much higher, and I rarely see you guys bragging about that.

This interests me. On my fedora systems with AMD cards, I have never needed any copr/third party packages. What was missing?

A few times for games, where it required very recent radv/aco. And for a bug where the screen sync was broken (strange horizontal), where a colleague who had same issue on Arch told me latest kernel solved it (and it did).
Most was stuff with android dev stuff where solution was to "update to latest driver, i.e. kernel + mesa". If it had been nvidia, I could have just updated to latest driver instead of pulling the kernel. And if it had been Intel, from my track record, there would not have been any such bugs :)

@Pj another thing I did is simply use nvidia over xrun. Is not perfect, but I actually got slightly(very slightly) better fps too (used openbox as DE for the nvidia card). And then, Intel card just run wayland.
For me I just did a quick try on second partition for the xwayland stuff since I don't wanna update main install to fedora 33 just yet, it did run gnome and a game (Atelier Ryza), did not test more than that. I expect nvidia settings is broken, and I had no gsync, did not search much more. It's true that for now xrun solution is really the best in many way, also avoid wasting electricity I guess.
Well another solution is just to use X, I did not yet face a use case where I needed wayland right now. It's true the security part interest me, but well.


Last edited by 3zekiel on 2 December 2020 at 7:45 pm UTC

Quoting: 3zekielwhere solution was to "update to latest driver, i.e. kernel + mesa". If it had been nvidia, I could have just updated to latest driver instead of pulling the kernel.

AMD provide dkms for their updates outside the kernel, same as Nvidia do. So you could use that, Nvidia doesn't have any special difference in this regard. What differs is that AMD also provide upstream kernel driver, while Nvidia don't.


Last edited by Shmerl on 2 December 2020 at 9:12 pm UTC

Quoting: PJNot really, but to I should had been more clear what I mean. If you're creative you probably need good opencl and stable opengl that works well in professional content creation apps (no matter 3d, video production etc). Sadly this means Mesa won't be enough.

Bare in mind that you can use ORCA or PAL along side Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan. Also, not sure what do you mean when you say that Mesa OpenGL is not stable.

Quoting: PJThus when you're on AMD you need to install AMDGPU PRO. And my experience is that as you don't have a repo for amdgpu pro for most distros provided by AMD after each kernel update you end with a blank black screen and you neeed to reinstall the driver.

That shouldn't be the case. AMDGPU-PRO is normally used in workstation, so a kernel version update is not very common and if the kernel mayor version is updated, the dynamic module will not be required anymore (a.k.a. everything will work out of the box).

Quoting: PJWith Nvidia it is just way simpler - you get the rebuilt driver after a kernel update (or at least should - which worked for me in the last 3 or 4 years) as Nvidia offers repos for the most popular distros.

Which are the "Nvidia officially supported" drivers repos you refer?

Quoting: 3zekielTo be perfectly fair, neither nvidia(mostly with cuda stuff, never for gaming to be fair) nor amd give the hassle free/clean road so far, both have their catch.

I am thinking the same, from what I have read here and there (I am curious about Intel stuff though...)

Quoting: furaxhornyx

Quoting: 3zekielTo be perfectly fair, neither nvidia(mostly with cuda stuff, never for gaming to be fair) nor amd give the hassle free/clean road so far, both have their catch.

I am thinking the same, from what I have read here and there (I am curious about Intel stuff though...)

For Intel, for me is both experience at home/work + features. The one that is really a killer feature for me is GVT-g (Intel's hw accelerated GPU virtualisation). Now, new Ampere cards support SRV-IO, Nvidia's equivalent, but it is not enabled by default ..... so that's the bad part about proprietary drivers .... And AMD kills the feature at hw level (if the company has bad behaviour, making open source code drop from time to time will not help either...).

Main difference with Intel also, is that they are really open source, in the sense that they dev everything upstream (with Qemu/Xem devs for virtualisation, in mesa for vulkan), while AMD mainly makes code drops (AMDLVK stuff) and then let the comunity make smthg usable out of it (RADV). So the result is overall better code quality.

Now they just need a powerful dgpu ... But the architecture of this dpgu seems actually pretty cool, so hopefully they make it good, wait and see now.


Last edited by 3zekiel on 3 December 2020 at 8:34 am UTC

Quoting: x_wingBare in mind that you can use ORCA or PAL along side Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan. Also, not sure what do you mean when you say that Mesa OpenGL is not stable.

Honestly - I don't even know what you're talking about. I know just one thing - with Nvidia regular desktop user has OpenGL / Vulkan / CUDA / OpenCL working well out of the box (and sadly no Wayland). With Amd I don't - I need to install AMDGPUPRO.
When I'm talking about mesa opengl is not good for creatives I mean it regularly fails in professional creative apps (Maya, Modo, Substance, Resolve etc). Often those apps don't work at all (with Modo I've been able to report mesa related issues and Modo was tweaked to work with it). Also when I've used amd mesa drivers it was the only time I've encountered hard lockups on Linux.

Quoting: x_wingThat shouldn't be the case. AMDGPU-PRO is normally used in workstation, so a kernel version update is not very common and if the kernel mayor version is updated, the dynamic module will not be required anymore (a.k.a. everything will work out of the box).

I agree it shouldn't. But if you're creative it is. If you read my post you'll notice that I've specifically pointed out if you're a regular desktop user and a gamer mesa can be enough.
But if you're getting our of that comfort zone more than often it isn't.
I've managed a workstation with AMDGPU-PRO and I'm just reporting my findings. More than often after a kernel update I had to fix my box by reinstalling the driver. I get it that there may be a way to set it up better, so those won't break that easily / will get rebuilt. But that requires knowledge and setup that a creative / regular user shouldn't have to have. It's really not a way to expand linux user base.
That's the reason why when someone asks me about setting up a linux box for 3d I strongly recommend going with Nvidia despite my reservations about them as a company.

Quoting: x_wingWhich are the "Nvidia officially supported" drivers repos you refer?

I mean repos for distros like Ubuntu , OpenSUSE etc... And I don't care whether they're maintained by Nvidia or other organization. I'm just saying that from an average Joe perspective those are easier to handle. You enable the repo and you stop worrying about the driver - and again that it my experience, haven't had any major Nvidia driver related isssues for years.


Last edited by PJ on 3 December 2020 at 9:42 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: slaapliedjeI think I've decided I am going to attempt an AMD RX6800 XT as well. The big question is... where can you get one? :P

I'm waiting for Sapphire to release their Pulse model of RX 6800 XT. But I don't think it will be available anywhere until next year at least.

Thar brings up the question... last time I think I bought a Radeon it was in a laptop (3200 I think) and the time before that they were still ATI... so which board partner do people buy from? I was leaning toward Sapphire myself.

Quoting: PJ

Quoting: x_wingBare in mind that you can use ORCA or PAL along side Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan. Also, not sure what do you mean when you say that Mesa OpenGL is not stable.

Honestly - I don't even know what you're talking about. I know just one thing - with Nvidia regular desktop user has OpenGL / Vulkan / CUDA / OpenCL working well out of the box (and sadly no Wayland). With Amd I don't - I need to install AMDGPUPRO.
When I'm talking about mesa opengl is not good for creatives I mean it regularly fails in professional creative apps (Maya, Modo, Substance, Resolve etc). Often those apps don't work at all (with Modo I've been able to report mesa related issues and Modo was tweaked to work with it). Also when I've used amd mesa drivers it was the only time I've encountered hard lockups on Linux.

Quoting: x_wingThat shouldn't be the case. AMDGPU-PRO is normally used in workstation, so a kernel version update is not very common and if the kernel mayor version is updated, the dynamic module will not be required anymore (a.k.a. everything will work out of the box).

I agree it shouldn't. But if you're creative it is. If you read my post you'll notice that I've specifically pointed out if you're a regular desktop user and a gamer mesa can be enough.
But if you're getting our of that comfort zone more than often it isn't.
I've managed a workstation with AMDGPU-PRO and I'm just reporting my findings. More than often after a kernel update I had to fix my box by reinstalling the driver. I get it that there may be a way to set it up better, so those won't break that easily / will get rebuilt. But that requires knowledge and setup that a creative / regular user shouldn't have to have. It's really not a way to expand linux user base.
That's the reason why when someone asks me about setting up a linux box for 3d I strongly recommend going with Nvidia despite my reservations about them as a company.

Quoting: x_wingWhich are the "Nvidia officially supported" drivers repos you refer?

I mean repos for distros like Ubuntu , OpenSUSE etc... And I don't care whether they're maintained by Nvidia or other organization. I'm just saying that from an average Joe perspective those are easier to handle. You enable the repo and you stop worrying about the driver - and again that it my experience, haven't had any major Nvidia driver related isssues for years.

I found recently that Nvidia has a repo for RHEL/CentOS. Though unfortunately they don't seem to have 686 packages, so you can't really get steam to work. Then again, who uses RHEL/CentOS to game?

Quoting: PJHonestly - I don't even know what you're talking about. I know just one thing - with Nvidia regular desktop user has OpenGL / Vulkan / CUDA / OpenCL working well out of the box (and sadly no Wayland). With Amd I don't - I need to install AMDGPUPRO.

What I mentioned is the steps you have to do in order to get "good OpenCL" running in your system. Depending on your distro, you may or may not get the packages from the repo. But still, is quite simple to install using AMD packages.

Quoting: PJWhen I'm talking about mesa opengl is not good for creatives I mean it regularly fails in professional creative apps (Maya, Modo, Substance, Resolve etc). Often those apps don't work at all (with Modo I've been able to report mesa related issues and Modo was tweaked to work with it). Also when I've used amd mesa drivers it was the only time I've encountered hard lockups on Linux.

As I don't use those type applications, I cannot give an answer regarding of which could be the problem there. But, once again, for OpenCL the AMDGPU-PRO drivers work perfectly fine.

Quoting: PJI agree it shouldn't. But if you're creative it is. If you read my post you'll notice that I've specifically pointed out if you're a regular desktop user and a gamer mesa can be enough.
But if you're getting our of that comfort zone more than often it isn't.
I've managed a workstation with AMDGPU-PRO and I'm just reporting my findings. More than often after a kernel update I had to fix my box by reinstalling the driver. I get it that there may be a way to set it up better, so those won't break that easily / will get rebuilt. But that requires knowledge and setup that a creative / regular user shouldn't have to have. It's really not a way to expand linux user base.

It requires the same knowledge as with Nvidia. Both proprietary drivers ships their kernel modules using DKMS (with AMD not requiring a blob binary) so the risk to getting a broken system after a kernel update is exactly the same on both, with the difference that even if your DKMS build/installation process fails on a kernel update on your AMD system you will probably still be getting a working system if the builtin kernel drivers are new good enough for your GPU.

Either way, in both cases the best thing to do is to use a LTS kernel version as long as you can.

Quoting: PJI mean repos for distros like Ubuntu , OpenSUSE etc... And I don't care whether they're maintained by Nvidia or other organization. I'm just saying that from an average Joe perspective those are easier to handle. You enable the repo and you stop worrying about the driver - and again that it my experience, haven't had any major Nvidia driver related isssues for years.

AFAIK, those repos are maintained by the community, just like the community also have special repositories for the latest stable or bleeding edge versions of Mesa. If the average Joe knows how to install the latest Nvidia driver on a distro, he should also be able to keep to date the AMD counter part as it will require exactly the same steps.

I really fail to understand why so many Nvidia users says that AMD driver support is inferior when they are actually providing the type of solution as Nvidia and more.