What's the best option for Radeon drivers?

[philip2009]

I'm currently considering using Ubuntu 14.0.4.1 LTS as my main desktop but I'm a bit concerned by the AMD graphics card drivers.

I started off installing the ATI card drivers listed in the Ubuntu software centre. They seemed to work great(excluding a significant malfunction when an anti screen tearing option was used) for a while on my dual monitor setup. Then I started getting constant web browser crashes that seemed to be linked to the graphics driver(fglrx listed in crash dump). So I installed some ATI drivers from xorg-edgers PPA and these so far have avoided the browser crashes(except a bit worryingly for a few minutes earlier today).

The other difference is that the software centre drivers performed better giving a glmark of about 4500 while the current drivers give a glmark of around 1600 - quite a big difference.

But anyway I'm really disappointed that something as fundamental as a display driver for a well known graphics card(in my case the AMD R9 280 with 3GB) seems to be unstable or perform poorly to a greater or less degree on Linux. What's the solution to stable AMD drivers under Linux/Ubuntu?

 

[stopper]

I personally would change to Nvidia if I was making a full switch to linux and wanted to use it for gaming.
Other than that, last i heard the open source drivers are way ahead of AMD's official ones.

 

[Bigsy]

The catalyst drivers generally have the same performance as they do on windows in 3d, but 2d performance is poor: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon_1404_win81&num=1

I run a older AMD card in my work machine and find the open source driver excellent, it has way better 2d performance than the official catalyst omegas and is probably 85% there in 3d performance, it was totally fine playing TF2 on the work lan over xmas.

Issue with the open source drivers is that the latest architecture (like you have) takes a little while to become optermised I run the latest mesa (10.5 I think) from here: https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers

Bottom line is that open source is stable (for me) and performance great in 2d. If you need to game on the latest hardware woth the best fps then catalyst but your 2d desktop is going to suck especially if you have a multi monitor setup.

 

[philip2009]

After faffing around it turns out the open source Gallium drivers(from xorg-edgers) weren't being used and I needed to purge the ATI proprietary drivers. My right hand DVI monitor is working, my left monitor - DisplayPort->DVI connector - is showing a visible but corrupted desktop image, maybe I'll have better luck when I switch to DisplayPort->DisplayPort ... lead arrives soon.

I personally would change to Nvidia if I was making a full switch to linux and wanted to use it for gaming.

Care to suggest cheap NVIDIA dual mini/DisplayPort cards? Not really a graphics card nerd myself.

Bottom line is that open source is stable (for me)...

That's what I'm mainly after, rock solid stability, though obviously I'd also like reasonable card performance. The current proprietary drivers are buggy under certain circumstances.

 

[CEUOTC]

I found that the following cards were solid in Linux:

GTX 650 Ti.
GTX 750 Ti.
GTX 770.
GTX 780.

For me the GTX 770 would be ideal as you should be able to get it relatively cheap or a GTX 780.

 

[mortals]

I'm currently considering using Ubuntu 14.0.4.1 LTS as my main desktop but I'm a bit concerned by the AMD graphics card drivers.

I started off installing the ATI card drivers listed in the Ubuntu software centre. They seemed to work great(excluding a significant malfunction when an anti screen tearing option was used) for a while on my dual monitor setup. Then I started getting constant web browser crashes that seemed to be linked to the graphics driver(fglrx listed in crash dump). So I installed some ATI drivers from xorg-edgers PPA and these so far have avoided the browser crashes(except a bit worryingly for a few minutes earlier today).

The other difference is that the software centre drivers performed better giving a glmark of about 4500 while the current drivers give a glmark of around 1600 - quite a big difference.

But anyway I'm really disappointed that something as fundamental as a display driver for a well known graphics card(in my case the AMD R9 280 with 3GB) seems to be unstable or perform poorly to a greater or less degree on Linux. What's the solution to stable AMD drivers under Linux/Ubuntu?

I'm going to quote a previous post

I have also been using linux on my desktop systems for years (since 1997). I had problems with the ATI drivers back when I had a x1900 (2005-2006?).

In more recent years I haven't had any problems relating to AMD GPU drivers. (other than poor performance)
I've had a HD5770 for the past 4 years without a problem (running dual monitors using xrandr)
I also have a sempron laptop with x600 integrated GPU and have had no problems with the GPU drivers

Maybe related to ubuntu I guess but I've not had any problems relating to the AMD Catalyst drivers other than the performance on archlinux. (I had catalyst on my HD5770 and open source drivers on my laptop)

Graphics on linux - nvidia v AMD performance

I now have a NVIDIA GTX 560Ti and the performance is much better, FPS wise there is little difference between windows and linux in games like DOTA2.

Spoiler

I guess it depends on what you use your system for.

NVIDIA drivers still have quirks and issues.
As you have a R9 280, an equivalent NVIDIA card would be expensive so I personally would question if it is worth it.

There seem to be some reports on chrome + chromium crashing on ubuntu with catalyst drivers but most replies suggest disabling hardware acceleration - in settings or with a commandline switch " --disable-gpu"

 

[philip2009]

I'll stick with the Gallium drivers for the time being(Oibaf PPA) and frankly after staying up until 2AM to get the hardware acceleration switched on I'm too knackered to remove them.

 

[pete910]

The catalyst drivers generally have the same performance as they do on windows in 3d, but 2d performance is poor: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon_1404_win81&num=1

The 3d in *nix is nowhere near the windows driver Its half to 3/4 at best
Mike at phoronix is maybe not the best source in all fairness , using openarena/Xonotic and what not is not really a test of high end cards. Hell, he cant even use the scoring system with the Heaven/valley benchmarks (That's a personal gripe mind)


Like what Mortals has said, I have had no problems with AMD cards/drivers it's just performance compared to the windows driver.(Don't run *buntu's either) Having said that the 5870 I had ran very well to be fair. Its the R9-xxx series that seems worst off.

The new metro redux release is unplayable in *nix with my 290x (11 fps avg) and that's with a 4970k pumping it

I must confess though, I think a lot of Metro's problems is game/port code, as all the others run fine. Mine runs the new Civilisation game fine.

Food for thought, Make a note in the AMD drivers thread to get Mat to badger AMD about it

 

[purplesky]

It really depends on what your uses are. Nvidia is leagues ahead of ati and if you want to game, you really should just get a decent Nvidia-based card and go that route.

Since most people don't really use Linux for gaming, it really doesn't matter. I personally have a hd5850 and use the Radeon proprietary drivers. They are a lot better than earlier efforts, but still not as stable as Nvidia. The open source drivers are more stable than the proprietary offerings, but suffer from a performance point. But as I said, for basic use including general multimedia, they are good enough.

I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card soon and will be going with Nvidia. Not because of Linux, but because I have an Nvidia Shield (handheld) and want to stream games to the shield from my windows partition using GameStream.

 

[pete910]

It really depends on what your uses are. Nvidia is leagues ahead of ati and if you want to game, you really should just get a decent Nvidia-based card and go that route.

Since most people don't really use Linux for gaming, it really doesn't matter. I personally have a hd5850 and use the Radeon proprietary drivers. They are a lot better than earlier efforts, but still not as stable as Nvidia. The open source drivers are more stable than the proprietary offerings, but suffer from a performance point. But as I said, for basic use including general multimedia, they are good enough.

The proprietary ARE stable its the damn performance thats bad.

I do have a go at AMD's drivers but it bugs me with people coming out with statements like that.

But yes, To be frank going to see what the next GPU gen is going to offer and if NV price their offerings well with the performance, I'll jump ship back to them too.

 

[Audigex]

Stability is definitely fine with the cards I've used: AMD is certainly usable in Linux assuming you don't care about getting good performance out of your card. nVidia do better, although still can't match the Windows drivers

That said, who's gaming on Linux anyway? Horses for courses, and all that.

 

[stopper]

nVidia do better, although still can't match the Windows drivers

That said, who's gaming on Linux anyway? Horses for courses, and all that.

I game on Linux, in fact it is my only gaming OS now.
And driver wise, performance is exactly the same as Windows as the driver uses the same code base. Linux is even outperforming Windows 8 in some cases.
The Unigine benchmarks are perfectly optimized for Windows and Linux, and most scores are identical. If there is any serious performance issues, it is mostly down to the actual game or lazy openGL porting.