The AMD R9 Fury Is Currently A Disaster On Linux

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The alternative OS gurus at Phoronix are saying that AMD's R9 Fury is a disaster on Linux. Ouch.

When AMD announced the Radeon R9 Fury line-up powered by the "Fiji" GPU with High Bandwidth Memory, I was genuinely very excited to get my hands on this graphics card. The tech sounded great and offered up a lot of potential, and once finally finding an R9 Fury in stock, shelled out nearly $600 for this graphics card.
 
Not a surprise.

The summary of Linux drivers are as follows:

Nvidia:
Open Source: Not very good.
Closed source: Very good. Similar experience as in Windows.

AMD:
Open Source: Very good.
Closed Source: Awful

Intel:
Open Source: Pretty good (some hardware video decoding is iffy, but in general good)
Closed source: Do these even exist?

So, people who use Nvidia GPU's generally use the closed source drivers, and Nvidia makes sure those drivers are ready by the time the GPU launches. The latest drivers may not be int he package manager for your distribution, but one can always add a PPA, or download and install manually. These drivers still provide the best experience in Linux, though many open source fans berate them for being - well - closed source.

Personally, my take is, whatever works. I'd prefer open source all things being equal, but the most important part is that my hardware works.

People who use AMD GPU's - however - tend to rely on open source drivers, as AMD's FireGL drivers are miserable. This is great if you are a dedicated open source supporter, but th eproblem is that Open Source drivers are often reverse engineered, and where they are actually supported by hardware vendors, are usually not a huge priority. They will eventually get good for Linux, but open source drivers have a poor track record when it comes to new hardware. it usually takes a while for them to catch up.
 
Intel is closing up their drivers. They USED to be great at full open Linux support, but not anymore.
 
Spire3660 said:
Intel is closing up their drivers. They USED to be great at full open Linux support, but not anymore.
Click to expand...

Interesting.

I'm not even aware of any closed source Linux Intel drivers.

My HTPC is a hacked Asus Chromebox with a Broadwell Celeron in it, running Kodi (formerly XBMC) and everything mostly works. Some of the hardware deinterlacing modes cause odd artifacts, but other that, the experience has been pretty good.
 
can someone remind me again what % of total pc users are primary linux users?
 
DracoNB said:
You forgot to limit to ones that will own a $650 gaming card ;)
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This. Most of the gamers I personally know who game on a Linux distro are budget gamers who are running 2-3 generation old graphics cards.
 
Shyne151 said:
This. Most of the gamers I personally know who game on a Linux distro are budget gamers who are running 2-3 generation old graphics cards.
Click to expand...

You must know more Linux types than I do. The Linux gamers I know use whatever was built into their CPU.
 
Most the Linux gamers I know would never buy an AMD card in the first place unless they use open source drivers exclusively.
 
Do any of you actually know a Linux gamer personally?
I currently use Ubuntu 15.04 and have a better experience with DOTA2/CS:GO than I did in Windows 7.
I am using the community drivers (which are the Omega closed source released last Octoberish) and I get around 100 fps in both games with all settings full (except for AA at 2x).

If we could stop instantly assuming one company is shitter than the other without actually testing the hardware ourselves (not relying on some other persons experience), this site would consist of intelligent debate and not this pandering fanboy crap.

As for Linux users using old hardware: I bought this card 2 years ago and haven't seen a significant jump worth taking (from either camp); I am hoping now that we have HBM on the field, this next set of cards (14nm AMD/16nm NV and HBM2 for both) will provide enough of an improvement for me to care.

As for the $650 comment: that's because most Linux users are not gaming, why the hell would someone buy a sports car if they plan to use it as a daily driver?

Specs:
Acer 1440p 60 Hz IPS
FX-8350
16 Gb DDR3 1333
R9270x ASUS DCII
Hybrid SSD/HDD
 
CarbonVirus said:
Do any of you actually know a Linux gamer personally?
Click to expand...

I know one very well, myself.

Kubuntu 15.04
Intel Core i7-4790K
Nvidia 980 GTX

Here is a link to gamingonlinux.com survery

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/gol-survey-results-june.5629

Most people use Nvidia. Half the AMD people use open source drivers. And if you look at the steam survey, the difference between discrete cards and integrated look similar.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=linux
 
The saying comes to mind, "it does what it says on the tin", Linux an't on the tin, go figure these drivers are place holders just to get the hardware running not optimised in the least.
 
I run Linux as my primary operating system.

I use it as my primary on my desktop, it is on all my HTPC's, all my servers (except the two that are BSD based) and my stepson's desktop.

I still dual boot to Windows for games though. (It's the only thing I still use Windows for, unless you count the Win7 VM I have in my linux install I use solely for running the ESXi management console)

Linux gaming has improved IMMENSELY over the last few years, but I still don't think it is quite ready.

- Most titles I want to run still aren't available in Linux (though title availability is vastly improved!)
- I've had some trouble in Cinnamon with the games not being able to figure out which one of my screens is my primary, and opening 90 degrees rotated on one of my side monitors
- Sometimes it works though, I have run Civ5 successfully, and it works well, but it is still better in Windows. The highest settings are absent in the Linux version, so it doesn't look as good, and it can be a little jerky in Linux, whereas it is perfectly smooth in Windows.

I'm hopeful that Valve will be able to successfully push more and more linux compatibility such that one day I can remove windows completely, once and for all.

Until that day, I will still be dual booting.
 
I'm sure the 0.87% of Steam users who are on Linux are very disappointing in the results of this test.
 
I've run games on Linux before. It was a loooong time ago on a Slackware install. I run Windows at home for games now so I don't have to deal with all the different issues running on Linux (or on OS X, for that matter, though that's my preferred work OS).
 
I only play 1 game on linux and that is Brutal Legend. I have never been able to get that game to even boot up in a window environment. It would always make it to the video scene and then lock up.

I personally have always used AMD's drivers for my A10-7850k in Ubuntu. I tried both the open source and AMD's and didn't really see any difference except with the open I couldn't make any changes to visuals. The only complaint I have with AMD's drivers is that you have to open up CCC through the terminal to make any changes.
 
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