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by tormeh 4347 days ago
What's the state of AMD Radeon cards for gaming on Linux right now? I think I'll soon upgrade my desktop computer's graphics card, and I wonder if I'll have to restrict myself to Nvidia only. (Intel's not an option because of performance)
2 comments
karlgrz 4347 days ago
I put together a linux machine around tax return time this year with this video card: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-det...

It's been working great for me. I haven't tried Crysis or FarCry yet, but I can play Half Life 2 at maxed out settings at 60 fps steady and stable. I play a lot of older games, but Bastion, Shadowrun Returns, Rust, Beatbuddy, Fez, Portal (2), Dust, Civ5 all run beautifully. I realize these aren't latest power games, but considering the topic I think this is ok.

Then again, I am very, very comfortable messing around with drivers and settings. Every time I upgrade the kernel I have to recompile my drivers (using AMDs Catalyst beta 14.6 currently). I don't mind, but you might.

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bryanlarsen 4347 days ago
The open source version of the AMD drivers have gotten a lot better for very recent versions of the Linux Kernel. Is it better enough? Good question.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux316_...

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tormeh 4347 days ago
Yeah, I've heard complaints about short support periods, weird bugs and games that just crash, but performance seems as good as Nvidia's from what I've read.

This seems to suggest that Nvidia's drivers are vastly superior on new OpenGL 4 features, though they do come from Nvidia: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_apite... It's probably cherrypicking benchmarks a bit, but cherrypicking shouldn't have that dramatic results... Seems like I'll be sticking with Nvidia.

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