So for newer AMD cards, is AMD GPU-Pro a viable driver, is it as fast as fglrx and is it stable. Also, is it's performance similar on Windows and Linux? Basically my question is whether AMD or Nvidia a better choice for Linux.
Right now AMDGPU is in its infancy but already is close to catalyst (fglrx) in performance. Eventually it will surpass it and AFAIK AMD have officially ditched catalyst (temporarily its crimson) AMDGPU will be the main driver in Ubuntu 16.10, catalyst on Linux is effectively dead . Not only do AMD have many more engineers now working on AMDGPU but the fact that it is opensource means game patches, bugs can be fixed and rolled out to testing branches faster than Nvidia could ( in theory ) even if that testing branch is an unofficial spin of the unofficial opensource driver.
Basically for things like Wayland AMD is first already as that works with AMDGPU right now and also for things like smooth desktop performance, vsync & power management the whole stack should talk better and work out of the box for everyone. Features missing on Linux vs Windows driver should eventually make their way over too and there is nothing to stop the community making a faster than offical tweaked AMDGPU driver and control centre.
But to answer your question right now its still Nvidia for performance and probably will be for the next few years with less and less differences between the two over that time span.
Go with AMD if you value open source or just want something different from the NV+intel builds but go with Nvidia if you just want performance straight out of the gate.
Make no mistake AMDGPU is a game changer though.
Oh OK Thanks. I would be cool to see some comparisons between linux -> windows performance differences on AMD vs Nvidia.
thats a loaded question :)
Right now unless the game is coded from an OpenGL base most games will be faster on windows by around 20 - 30% (which may or may not mean much for most people as modern midrange cards can handle 1080p fine at over 60fps absorbing that hit) This is often down to 3rd party middleware slowing things down.
Like for Like, no middleware pure OpenGL Linux can be faster but mostly there is a little drop here at the moment and windows can be a few to 10% percent ahead. One of the things to take note is that windows openGL performance isn’t great and games are made on windows and ported ( button push ) across, many of the engines are windows centric but that is changing.
Interestingly (well for me) is that some of the recent Eon Ports have been around 5 -10% faster on Linux, which is amazing considering they are what you could consider emulated games running the exact same game in D3D on Linux.. so there is an irony that D3D is running better on Linux than OpenGL in most Ports :)
There are many benchmarks online but as with any benchmark you need to take them with a large grain of salt.. for example: What driver is Linux running ? What compositor ? What desktop environment ? what kernal ? what hardware ? what resolution ?
Personally i prefer linux gaming as i type now my CPU is sat on 0.5% across all the cores and unlike windows and probably even OSX there isnt a glut of other services and programs running ..
Valve are making SteamOS which is a console OS pretty much out of a Stock Debian install .. Linux/BSD is in many consoles because it only does what it needs to do at the time it needs to do it, its just a solid OS with no Background BS.
Oh OK, so are the performance differences due to D3D being better than OGL or the drivers themselves. It seems like DOOM 4 would be a good game to do the benchmark since it uses OGL even on windows.
D3D is better it has a faster pipeline down to all the million $ invested and the market stranglehold Microsoft had on their API and graphics Vendors. OpenGL is complex and can in theory compete but really the time for Vulkan to come along is very much needed, not for higher FPS but for a smoother FPS and a more direct API pipeline into the graphics card with less fancy workarounds and tricks needed.
DOOM4 ran really well on Linux with Wine as its OpenGL ( points to cross platform support in the future ? ) unfortunately outside of Beta the DRM they included in the full game (Denuvo) locked out any chance of people playing this on Linux. Unless its cracked which apparently is hard or its ported ( more likely) then there can be no benchmark.
Oh ok, thanks for the information!
anytime :)
With kernel 4.8 amdgpu will probably even support freesync on linux.
The open source base of the driver makes it possible for the distro maintainers to adjust it to the new kernel e.g. this is especially good for rolling release distros.
Amdgpu even supports polaris already, so I'm confident that amd finally understood the importance of drivers.
So I would recommend AMD as I think that they will pull ahead very soon and the open source driver will likely cause less problems.
Very good points. And although no business is squeaky clean you have to wonder about all the shady things Nvidia has done over the years vs AMD sometimes at the direct expense of the consumer.
As the others are saying, overall it is looking quite good, in conjucture with the Mesa devs doing great work things are looking good.
IMO the only problem is the level of support. Personally my R9 390 is not supported officially, and is only supported with Ubuntu. I'd be willing to use Ubuntu, but my card needs to be supported of course. :P
But hey, if you can use it, it's looking very nice.
Give it a few months :)
I have already considering it launched in February, but that's how these things work.
I thought the 390 was supported with patches now ?
I have seen a post here and there of people doing special configuration to get it to work, but I don't know where to begin with that.
that’s my point though, there is fast pace on the AMDGPU, if you go onto the Phoronix forums they have a representative and he has mentioned about giving the last few generations support, it comes after the first few revisions. In fact Valve are now shipping beta SteamOS with AMDGPU support and you can be guraneteed a card as new as a 390 will be patched in less then a month or so automatically and the same will go for ubuntu graphics: drivers ppa.
Still for performance guaranteed ( although the desktop isn’t as slick in my experience with Nvidia ) you need to go team green. One of the major things that's swaying me is that i have a card with CUDA support but Nvidia gimped it on purpose and now i won't see benefits in Blender3D even though blender can see the card. At some point AMDGPU will get OpenCL and that will give me better rendering speeds, it won't get patched out on a whim.
Its things like that which hurt the little guys/girls, they call it business but i call it short sighted and petty, it hurts the content creators that make the actual games that you buy a card to run on.
Remember when Crytek allegedly added insane amounts of tessellation to a road blocks and other items in Crysis2 (Nvidia sponsored title) just so AMD's cards would tank ? Even though it effected their own customers..
AMDGPU PRO driver outperforms catalyst. However you may have issues getting it installed under certain software/hardware configurations. I run MATE Kernel4.6 and R9 390X.
Lots of things missing from the PRO driver, I really hope when Polaris cards come out the PRO driver gets a substantial update. I like the idea of the open-source drivers also, and if you run the Oibaf drivers you will get good performance, however they are OGL43 only, and apparently won't receive freesync? or Multi-GPU support?
AMD is EXTREMELY bad at letting the world know their intentions for the future, its all a magical guess work, then suddenly one day they release a driver or feature by surprise. You may get a nice driver update, or you may die of old age, that is AMD.