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Radeon Performance "Incredible" On Linux 3.12

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Good news for all you alternative OS users out there, the gang over at Phoronix says that the Linux 3.12 kernel brings "truly incredible performance improvements" to Radeon graphics cards. :cool:

Benchmarks of a Radeon HD 4000 series GPU showed the Linux 3.12 kernel bringing major performance improvements over Linux 3.11 and prior. Some games improved with just low double-digit gains while other Linux games were nearly 90% faster! Interestingly, the AMD Radeon Linux developers were even surprised by these findings. After carrying out additional tests throughout the weekend, I can confirm these truly incredible performance improvements on other hardware. In this article are results from ten different AMD Radeon graphics cards."
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What I find interesting is that they tested the 3.11 kernel with the same CPU but at 3.5GHZ and the 3.12 at 3.9. That right there can account for some of the performance difference.
 
///AMG said:
What I find interesting is that they tested the 3.11 kernel with the same CPU but at 3.5GHZ and the 3.12 at 3.9. That right there can account for some of the performance difference.
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They have a disclaimer for that:

(Ignore the reported clock-speed differences between Linux 3.11 and Linux 3.12. The Intel CPU was running at the same frequencies between 3.11 and 3.12 but now with the new kernel the cpufreq driver is reporting the Turbo frequency rather than the base frequency. The CPU speed was the same between kernel releases and it's already been verified to ensure it wasn't changed at all to impact the GPU test results.)
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I do wonder though how they tested that as I could see a scenario where the boost wasn't working or wasn't working consistently in 3.11. In any case, I'm looking forward to Phoronix Test Suite results as it has become pretty decent over the years.
 
Looks pretty good. With this and their forthcoming performance enhancing OpenGL extensions that expose the hardware much like Mantle, AMD's got SteamOS covered. Thank you Valve!
 
OmegaJimes said:
I know Valve said source engine games do.
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Yeah but all those games are DX9 on Windows, DX9 is incredibly slow compared to OpenGL 4.3. I'm keen to see comparisons between the Windows and Linux versions of Metro LL.
 
Yes, Half Life 3 is confirmed. It'll be Linux only. And AMD only.
 
Kai said:
Yes, Half Life 3 is confirmed. It'll be Linux only. And AMD only.
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With only true audio support for sound, and they brought back the TrueForm API for tessellation instead.
 
OmegaJimes said:
I know Valve said source engine games do.
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That was with an optimized version of the engine, which Valve said the Windows version would also see performance improvements if the same changes were made for that version. That Linux performance canard is getting kind of old, especially when taken out of context for the Source engine example.
 
Steve said:
Good news for all you alternative OS users out there, the gang over at Phoronix says that the Linux 3.12 kernel brings "considerably less suckage" to Radeon graphics cards. :cool:
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Fixed that for you Steve.

Nvidia got their Linux situation in order some time ago. Its about time the AMD situation improved so lets call it what it is. Getting things where they should be, not acting like its amazing performance that nobody thought the hardware was capable of.
 
Kor said:
Yeah but all those games are DX9 on Windows, DX9 is incredibly slow compared to OpenGL 4.3. I'm keen to see comparisons between the Windows and Linux versions of Metro LL.
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I thought they did it was something like 3% difference but they used 32 bit linux and 64 bit windows... In other words their blog published was just keen on misinformation that linux is fasters guy gabe no liez
 
BladeVenom said:
Yes, http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/ If publishers would get behind Linux, Linux would be better than Windows, and OpenGL is faster than DirectX.
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Yes OpenGL 4.x runs better then D3D9 with some 10.x features which is what that D3D is for L4D2. All they did was add a layer that converts D3D calls into OpenGL 3.x/4.x which like d3d10/11 removed the overhead that was in d3d9. they get 315(32 bit linux) vs 304(64 bit windows) which is the difference in 64 bit vs 32 bit not really the difference between linux and windows. Saying D3D11 is faster or slower then OpenGL4.x gets silly considering they share alot of the same code.
 
FYI, this was the open source Radeon driver. In 1-2 years it might be a viable alternative in Linux gaming, as long as AMD continues giving documentation to the project.
 
Nice, I can finally see the day when I'll switch to Arch full time on all my computers. :D
 
so the verdict is in! power settings was ondemand vs performance. so the cpu was spiking up an down in 3.11 vs a constant frequency in 3.12 which means ondemand is fixed in 3.12 ?

good read none the less
 
BreezeDM said:
FYI, this was the open source Radeon driver. In 1-2 years it might be a viable alternative in Linux gaming, as long as AMD continues giving documentation to the project.
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That is worth mentioning - the open source driver has made leaps and bounds but is still quite a ways behind the closed-source driver in performance. With AMD recently giving more open access to their hardware details this project should improve a lot in the future.
 
mr_zen256 said:
I foresee the days of dual boot once again on the horizon :rolleyes:
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I here you, i loved using ubuntu, but i got tired of switching back and forth to play games.
I wonder how Mantle will play in this?
Would love to have a partition with linux distro, small footpint, great performance on future Mantle titles. Might even build a mini box for my living room if this all pans out.
All this open source stuff pushing forward seems to be pulling Microsofts proverbial thumb off of us PC gamers. :)
 
cptnjarhead said:
I wonder how Mantle will play in this?
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From what I have seen, Mantle's role is to replace Windows Direct X 11 and provide better performance by utilizing a similar API to XB1 Direct X 11.x on Windows. If it takes off I could see them using it in Linux drivers, but I think that is not their main goal. I believe their main goal is to provide a better experience than Direct X 11 can provide. On the OpenGL side of things it looks like AMD is serious in improving peformance, see this. However this is still for Windowsland, and may or may not affect Linux. With the current momentum of AMD Open Source Linux drivers and AMD Catalyst drivers, it is more likely the AMD Open Source drivers will surpass AMD Catalyst Linux drivers in performance in 2 years.
 
BreezeDM said:
From what I have seen, Mantle's role is to replace Windows Direct X 11 and provide better performance by utilizing a similar API to XB1 Direct X 11.x on Windows. If it takes off I could see them using it in Linux drivers, but I think that is not their main goal. I believe their main goal is to provide a better experience than Direct X 11 can provide. On the OpenGL side of things it looks like AMD is serious in improving peformance, see this. However this is still for Windowsland, and may or may not affect Linux. With the current momentum of AMD Open Source Linux drivers and AMD Catalyst drivers, it is more likely the AMD Open Source drivers will surpass AMD Catalyst Linux drivers in performance in 2 years.
Click to expand...

There is hope though!
Initially the AMD Mantle API has just been implemented in the Catalyst Windows driver, but other platforms are planned to be supported. In theory it shouldn't be too much work for Mantle to come to the Catalyst Linux graphics driver given it's a largely shared code-base already right now with the Windows Catalyst driver, but will likely take Linux developer interest for AMD to ship it in their Linux blob
Click to expand...
 
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