OpenSource AMD drivers (with OpenGL) on Linux is such a mess! lazarus / 70-OpenGL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Graeme · 2017-02-07 12:18 I'm a FreeBSD guy. So last night I tried Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS - I only try LTS releases). The reason for this was, because I have an AMD Radeon HD7870 GHz Edition video card lying around that I can't (or rather won't) use under FreeBSD. The reason is, AMD/ATI doesn't support FreeBSD, and you have to resort to the sucky open source drivers. So instead, I'm using a cheap NVIDIA GeForce 730 under FreeBSD with proprietary NVIDIA drivers. Now I was curious to see the difference in performance between these two cards. So I did a simple test - the Minecraft game running at 1280x720.   Under FreeBSD with the NVIDIA card I get around 80-90 fps average. Not bad for a cheap card. Installed the HD7870 and booted Ubuntu 16.04..... Oops, AMD doesn't support the Catalyst driver any more due to X.Org 1.18.... So I tried the "new" AMD-Pro driver.... My monitor is stuck at 1920x1080 (instead of its native 2560x1440). So I had to revert to the open source Radeon driver. Yeah, the monitor works again. Run the Minecraft game, and it maxes out at 60 fps (VSync on or off, it doesn't matter). That's disappointing. The cheap NVIDIA card runs much faster than the beefy HD7870! I then tried to run my FPC+SDL2+OpenGL project I've been working on. Oops, it doesn't run under Linux with the HD7870 card.... The Radeon drivers only support OpenGL 3.0!!!! WTF! So none of my dynamic render pipeline and shader code can work with the open source radeon driver. My cheep NVIDIA card supports OpenGL 4.5 and everything that goes with it under FreeBSD. I did some internet searching. Every Linux distro that is based on Ubuntu (and there are tons of them), all have this exact same problem.  I have to revert to using Ubuntu 14.04.4 (no later) to allow me to use the "old" AMD Catalyst drivers. Any later Ubuntu and I'm screwed. Note to all:    Stay away from AMD video cards (if you are not running Windows). Go with a    company that knows what they are doing and supporting multiple OSes - NVIDIA! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leledumbo · 2017-02-07 12:34 Stay away from Ubuntu from me. There are a lot better distros out there, don't lock your option to only one just because it's the most popular. Popular <> best, you do exactly know the same story from Pascal world P.S.: Never a fan of AMD, my nVidia cards never disappoint me, both my 9 years old old GT220 and my current GT940M. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SymbolicFrank · 2017-02-07 12:59 I have the same experience with AMD GPUs, on Debian and CentOS as well. The OpenSource driver is the only one that works at all, in most cases. Although the installation of the NVidia driver now requires a lot of manual steps and recompilation, while they provided packages in the past. But it does work well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2017-02-07 13:39 Ubuntu + AMD VGA is bad. I had an AMD low end with gaming capable card. But my Ubuntu 12 can't support it, I only got 1024 resolution display. I only had 1 choice, sold it and bought me an NVidia card. Many AMD users already complained about it since some years ago, and on AMD forum the developer just said they're developing better support for Linux. I'm not an NVidia fanatic, but yeah AMD is really an inferior especially for Linux users. --- edited: The title of this thread says: "OpenGL on Linux is such a mess!" I think the problem is not OpenGL, but AMD. I currently use NVidia GeForce 430 on Ubuntu Mate 16.10, no problem so far although the installation didn't run too easily just as what SymbolicFrank said. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- marcov · 2017-02-07 13:54 I have a system with a HD7850 and a system with a 7850k APU, and both worked out of the box. I even configured the dual monitor with one rotated configuration for HD7850 in ubuntu LTS and it worked fine. The two are different but subsequent generations (resp. GCN 1.0 and 1.1) I also have a laptop with a HD7650, which also works fine and immediately for simple desktop use. So maybe the performance sucks, but for me the out of the box experience (and not having to drill down to commercial drivers and add umpteen other repos for packages that should have been in the core set) was great. I only work on FPC though under Linux, so never tried opengl. P.s. I'm not an AMD fan, just happened to be the best buy when I bought the machines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2017-02-07 14:07 Accoding to this page: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/mid_range_gpus.html HD7850 and HD7650 are both high and medium high end cards. If you don't use it for graphics editing or gaming, what a waste. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- marcov · 2017-02-07 14:17 Quote from: Handoko on February 07, 2017, 03:07:01 pmAccoding to this page: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/mid_range_gpus.html HD7850 and HD7650 are both high and medium high end cards. If you don't use it for graphics editing or gaming, what a waste. I do, just not on Linux.  The 7650 is not that great btw, but enough for Diablo 3, which is all that matters for the laptop :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SymbolicFrank · 2017-02-07 14:19 @marcov: yes, they do work, unless you use OpenGL (or anything GPU related, really). Even more so: as the AMD driver is OpenSource, it is installed automatically under most Linuxes, while the current NVidia driver has to be installed separately, in most cases. Then again, look at the FFmpeg GPU support, for example. Says it all, really... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2017-02-07 14:25 Quote from: SymbolicFrank on February 07, 2017, 03:19:45 pmThen again, look at the FFmpeg GPU support, for example. Says it all, really... In the page, they mentioned Linux Intel and Linux NVIDIA. Can anyone please explain, what are they? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SymbolicFrank · 2017-02-07 15:16 Embedded Intel GPU (i3/i5/i7 CPU) when running Linux, and NVidia GeForce GPU when running Linux. FFmpeg is the dominant video processing library. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2017-02-07 15:34 Okay, thank you. I thought they were Linux flavors. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Graeme · 2017-02-07 16:00 Quote from: SymbolicFrank on February 07, 2017, 03:19:45 pm@marcov: yes, they do work, unless you use OpenGL (or anything GPU related, really). Agreed, the open source AMD/ATI drivers worked perfectly on my system using my HD7800 card. It even managed to set up my 3-monitor system. Outer two rotated and centre monitor in landscape. Playing Minecraft was silky smooth at a constant 60FPS, and so too when I played HD videos via VLC. The raw performance [of the open source drivers] just sucked compared to proprietary drivers and so too with the OpenGL feature level supported. So for the average user, they would probably be perfectly happy with that setup. Unfortunately I'm not the average user.   So back in the bottom drawer goes the HD7870 card. :-/  Over the weekend I'll install Ubuntu 14.04.4 with the AMD Catalyst drivers and see how that goes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Graeme · 2017-02-07 16:01 Quote from: Handoko on February 07, 2017, 02:39:07 pmThe title of this thread says: "OpenGL on Linux is such a mess!" I edited the title - well, I hope I done it right.