AMD and state of drivers?

Okay so this is more in relation to if I was going to purchase a R series card, Which is the better to have? I am thinking of this with the intention of passthroughs, and of course gaming performance.

I would ideally like to use FOSS drivers, but catalyst will suffice if need be.

Distro will more than likely be Fedora or OpenSUSE 13.2, need something stable but bleeding.

What would you recommend? mostly price/performance also.

OpenSUSE every day. I recommend using FOSS drivers as catalyst isn't in its best state. Nvidia sucks in terms of FOSS, but out does AMD in proprietary graphics. Try to snag a 290x. They go for circa $200 on eBay. Otherwise an oced HD 7950. The 300 series is coming soon as well...

  "[..] Try to snag a 290x. They got for circa $200 on eBay. Otherwise an oced HD 7950 [..]"

Why?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_utopic_amd&num=4

+1 on OpenSuSE, with the new Yast functionality, you can change the GPU driver on the fly through the GUI, you can even change kernel parameters... not that you'll need to, because with the new 3.17 kernel (which isn't distributed on OpenSuSE 13.2 yet I think, I think it's still at 3.16.6-2, but that will undoubtedly change in a couple of days), there are no more proprietary kernel modules for AMD, and Catalyst will only run in userspace. This has several benefits, one is that there will be no more problems with Catalyst, because the kernel modules are already part of the kernel and do not need to be compiled afterwards, and that provides a constant reference base for AMD to build Catalyst towards; a second benefit is that MAC's won't have to be set to make exemptions any more, the system becomes more secure in SELinux and AppArmor (which is what OpenSuSE comes with, and which has also been improved a lot, and which is faster than SELinux, and now also offers profile management through the GUI with the new Yast); the third benefit is that Catalyst will just act as a KMS driver, so modesetting will be done by the kernel even when you're running Catalyst, so no more failed resolution recognitions on some machines or monitors working at a lower frequency.

Catalyst is still what it is, it's a Windows driver ported to Linux, and not the greatest thing, just like the nVidia proprietary driver, but this is a huge step forward already, and it will make it easier for AMD to make a true Linux driver, which is something they will most definitely do in my opinion, now that they can be sure that they only have to make a single version to fit all Linux systems.

Thanks guys, I think ill go OpenSUSE, and I was thinking a 270X or 280X, if I was getting a 270X it would be a 4GB Frame buffer though, will run everything at full reso easily.

Also will the 3.17 kernel be introduced via zypper or will I need to download it manually?

 

Not sure what you mean by that.

In OpenSuSE, there are two different update systems in the GUI and there is zypper. One update system are security updates only and will update automatically, and check automatically for updates via a TSR. The second is the standard package manager in Yast, which will show you all the updates on your installed packages when you open it up manually. The third is to run zypper up, which will update all the pacakges on your system.

If you're going for 13.2, which is a release version, you'll have the latest entirely stable kernel at release, which is now 3.16.6-2 for dekstop installs I believe (It's at that on my Tumbleweed/Factory install, so I presume it's the kernel they distributed with 13.2 when it came out a couple of days ago). It's a decision of the maintainers to push a kernel update or not. They were talking about distributing 3.17 with 13.2 release, so I think they will push to 3.17 when they're satisfied with the testing results. If they don't push it, you'll always be able to just install it, either through the Yast package manager, or through with zypper in. The thing is, you have o make sure that your system with the packages that you need, work well with the new kernel, otherwise there is no point (well, you can try and if it doesn't work, you can set the boot parameters in Yast to go with the old kernel). 3.17 is still pretty fresh, and Catalyst isn't released yet for use with the new open source kernel modules, so it will be a few more weeks before everything will work as it should. Fc21 will come out soon, and I think they will base upon 3.17 and open source AMD modules, possibly with some extra stuff for OpenCL, and at that time it will most certainly already be available also for OpenSuSE.

I haven't looked what the state of things is in Factory, and I'm on nVidia and Intel machines now, I can't really look. If it's not clear by this weekend, remind me and I'll check on one of my AMD based Factory machines.

I wouldn't recommend using Factory/Tumbleweed installs for gaming until the open source kernel modules for AMD GPU's and the corresponding Catalyst are tried and tested. It's a drag to install Catalyst manually after every update, and generally, Release is just a tad faster than Factory.

Okay so what will the performance gains be you think with Fedora or OpenSUSE and a 4GB 270X and the new drivers? easy kernel swapping while been able to use OpenGL? as FOSS does not seem to have OpenGL latest

Catalyst has the same OpenGL support as Windows. If you change your kernel on the fly, with open source kernel modules in place, it will make no difference. What you won't be able to do, is to use the Catalyst version for open source kernel modules with a kernel with those modules, and then switch on the fly to an older kernel that doesn't have those modules, but requires the old Catalyst version. You'll have to change Catalyst versions too at that time.

Performance in gaming depends more on the game than anything else. Look at CS:GO, they went from being faster than Windows in Linux, to being well slower than Windows, to being very slow right now at under 40 fps on a system that should be at about 300 fps, because of business politics and stuff. There is nothing a new driver or new kernel or new hardware can do about that.

I'm on Factory and it's amazing how stable everything has been.

Yup, only thing I found wrong was a language support detail on non-EFI systems. A couple of weeks ago, Gnome 3.14 was buggy as hell for a couple of days, but then it always is when a new version comes out for testing lol. Factory is some really great stuff, definitely better experience than rawhide. I'm glad OpenSuSE went that direction.

I have just switch my laptop to opensuse from ubuntu (don't ask) I has been working great. 

Yast has improved so much since I last used it.

How will support for 300 series be?

Because a 7950 is like $75 on eBay and can OC to the point where it performs similarly to an R9 280x. The 290x, because it's the best AMD has out... I'd wait for the 300 series, but right now those are his best options.

Cinnamon has slightly been harmed in terms of applets, but that's about it for me. I couldn't stand Rawhide. It gets questionable how bleeding edge one needs a distro to be.

Okay, call me stupidly mental here, but look at this, I was looking at a GTX 970, these cards are amazing price/performance things, the fact they can beat a 290x and still perform higher and then stay cooler, seriously in Winter a 290x would be a god send, but in summer my 6870 already screams at me, so no thanks.

Now according to Phoronix the 970 is a good performer under Linux, with benchmarks it beats all AMD cards easy, now I know Zoltan is going to come back with something for this, but seriously, this card has to perform under Linux well, I mean the card along will destroy a 270x 4GB or a 280x easily, and well 290x I would rather not have.

Ideas people?

Well, you make up your own mind of course, but please note that it's well documented that Phoronix has a grudge against AMD because AMD doesn't give him freebie cards. He makes no secret of it, and only published very biased benchmarks. Phoronix is a bit of a moron, only use phoronix for links to other articles, not by phoronix lol. Don't believe anyone that says that a card with half the bus width outperforms a card from the same generation with double the bus width, it's just not going to happen.

With nVidia, you don't have the slightest chance of good KMS performance, they'd rather die than open source kernel modules, and nVidia cards suck pretty hard when it comes to OpenCL, because nVidia - again - refuses to comply to the open source standards. Also in terms of scalability, AMD complies to the open source standards for OpenCL and OpenMP, but nVidia doesn't, it has it's own protocol, viciously called OpenACC, because it's not "open" at all, and it just doesn't compile with GCC, so that's a big problem for linux users, it will only compile with LLVM/Clang if you add OpenACC, and that will bring nothing at all, for there is not a single application that actually uses it.

That doesn't mean that you have to stay away from nVidia, if you need lower power usage or really low noise for instance (even though the latest AMD GPU's aren't that bad either in terms of noise) in a really small form factor, nVidia is the way to go. The only desktop nVidia card that I would be interested in though, is the GTX 750Ti in very small form factor. I've had several GTX680's, those were my last high end consumer range nVidia cards, and just like their predecessors (I've used nVidia for years until 2012 because nVidia actually until then always had the best drivers for linux), they developed power supply problems, something I've never had with AMD cards, that have a much beefier power supply arrangement.

Just sharing my experience here, not judging, I still use nVidia cards in laptops where I don't need a lot of compute performance, it's a matter of what works for you, you have to decide yourself. I actually kept using an old 9800GTX because it's the best linux card nVidia has ever made, and it runs great with nouveau, I use it for the host when I PCI bind my AMD card to my Windows kvm guest on a desktop machine. But right now, for desktop linux use, I wouldn't drop any money on an nVidia card to be honest. For a very small form factor HTPC with Windows, I would go for an nVidia half form factor card, most definitely, because silent, low power, and good Windows performance, even though the nVidia experience bloatware sucks just as much as AMD Gaming Evolved crap, and for laptops with discrete graphics, definitely nVidia, but for desktops, I'll take AMD for the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4piRjbbHs

To make your decision easier.

Well the only other way I was thinking of is maybe a r9 270x 4GB, maybe get a second later on.

I plan to be using this for multiple cases, I expect that open uni will be using Windows and Visual Studio 2013 for their projects, now I know I can do the same with eclipse, but knowing my luck something will go wrong, with this in mind I would ideally like a a VM that I can passthrough with, if not I will have to go with dual booting, which I don't particularly want to do, but again saying that I will be purchasing a Windows 10 licence via student offers.

Also I have a Fractal Design Define R4 for my case, was not turning that down for a present no way :P

Anyways so it stands on use case, Dual boot but get Nvidia, or get AMD and attempt VM with possible failure :\, only reason I am leaning towards Nvidia is because I know I will get better raw performance in Windows for the times I need to use it.

I always thought Phoronix had a bias between AMD vs Nvidia, they seem to be all over them when stuff comes out, saying that so are people like Linus, Tek seems to be the only ones that gave AMD a chance and made some noise about AMD 8 Cores, Also TTL loves 7970s :P

 

 

I am leaning towards Nvidia is because I know I will get better raw performance in Windows for the times I need to use it.

Not for the same money you won't lolz. AMD rules for the price even in Windows, of course the difference really shows in OpenCL on Windows and Linux, and in Linux in general. It's worth it just for the audio quality alone. Since I have a TruAudio AMD card, I've disabled onboard audio in BIOS completely lol. That's just my opinion though.

Tek seems to be the only ones that gave AMD a chance

Hell no, everyone and their dog that does serious compute stuff and scales consumer hardware for super performance, uses AMD GP-GPU's. Look at what serious research teams and such use, if it's for compute, it's AMD, most often the super popular FirePro cards, which are compute monsters for a fair price.

Okay, reason I thought that was I thought 290 series was 400+, so lets scrap that, Okay so lets get back on topic, the 970 vs 290 vs 290x.

Now I dont want a card that screams at me as soon as load goes on it, I will of course be getting a after market design, if its the 290, Sapphires Vapor X OC 4GB model, a 290x MSI edition, I heard bad things about Gigabytes GPUs.

If it was the 970, which I don't think I will be getting now I know the prices of 290s, I would again be getting a MSI edition.

So which is quieter, better value and cooler, as said previously, I don't want a second heater :P

I have been using 290s for a while, but even with Catalyst the performance is sub-par and I can't game on linux with them - infact 3D performance is atrocious with AMD.

I will probably upgrade to the 900 series in a few months, although I still get tier-one performance with my 680's.

Mind you, I'm not a Stallmanite so I am quite happy to use proprietary drivers and still sleep at night.