Hardware AMD claims 'fastest graphics card in the world'

[J65nko]

From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...adeon_hd_6990/

AMD has unveiled a dual-GPU, easily overclockable, 3D-capable, DirectX 11–supporting consumer graphics card that it claims is "the fastest graphics card in the world".

Unfortunately the card is not cheap, and you will have to shop for a new power supply as well .....

The card is available immediately at a suggested retail price of $699, but make sure your system has the juice it needs to support it: according to Anandtech, their test system running an overclocked 6990 sucked up as much as 684 watts.

[adamk]

Unfortunately, that GPU will only work with the vesa driver on any of the *BSDs. At least till KMS is available.

Adam

[BSDfan666]

Last time I checked, xf86-video-ati still supported UMS.. even on later chips.

[adamk]

Ahhh, you are correct, but UMS doesn't provide any acceleration on anything newer than the HD4950. The only thing it does support is modesetting, so you can at least run HD monitors at the correct resolution, even if you can't do much else :-)

Adam

[adamk]

Nope, I was right the first time:

<glisse> ums support hd5xxx but there is no plan to do ums for hd6xxx or future(sic) GPU
<glisse> some hd6xxx are supported as they are just rebranded hd5xxx

So, no, there is no support in UMS for the HD6990.

Adam

[BSDfan666]

Hmm, well, that's depressing.. it is annoying how whatever is trending in the Linux world decides the fate of things.

OpenBSD doesn't have KMS yet, but apparently there is Intel GEM+DRI2.

[Oko]

It looks like they are catering their favorite market group (gamers). That card is not going to see many Linux installations. It would be interesting to see if one could use the card for something more serious like High Performance Computing (NVidia Tesla style). The card has over 3000 stem processors which is almost 4 times NVidia Tesla 2070 for the quarter of the Tesla price. I wonder how memory management compares to Tesla (poor). The price of the card is bargain. I would buy 10 if I could put them to serious use. By the way a typical Tesla based mini-supper computer is about $20 000 in parts only.

Do they have something like CUDA for this video cards? If they open this hardware to developers (unlike NVidia) that could mean rebirth of BSDs (NetBSD, FreeBSD) as a platform for supper computing.

Unfortunately due to the lack of compilers and drivers BSDs are all but dead when it comes to super computing.

[Oliver_H]

@oko Well, there is an ATI driver for Linux, but it is of rather low quality and has major problems if it comes to more recent X servers. I guess for anything graphics related nVidia stays the first choice and Linux is a must for more than just "moving pictures".

We're using e.g. some tailored packages for photogrammetry, GIS, etc. pp. together with CUDA. But there are more drawbacks then just nVidia. Even without the help of CUDA and friends most mentioned software runs way faster in Linux than in FreeBSD. Call it Linuxism in code, but developers are using what they are familiar with and so they are using the advantages of their chosen platform. It's a pity, but you'll find more administrators and mere users in FreeBSD community than real coders.

Finally, if I leave the spartan desktop, the server (in certain contexts) or administrative tasks per se behind me, then it's quiet impossible to get along with FreeBSD. Today I have to choose more than often Linux - at least from a professional point of view.

But that's offtopic I guess ;-) It's just an example why fixing "one detail" doesn't solve the whole problem.

[adamk]

There is OpenCL, available via the closed source fglrx/catalyst driver (on Windows and Linux) for all r700/r800 GPUs (this particular card falls into the r800 category). And, despite Oliver_H's claim, the fglrx driver is not of low quality and works just fine here on X server 1.9.* (I have not tried 1.10 yet).

Adam

[Oliver_H]

Originally Posted by adamk

There is OpenCL, available via the closed source fglrx/catalyst driver (on Windows and Linux) for all r700/r800 GPUs (this particular card falls into the r800 category). And, despite Oliver_H's claim, the fglrx driver is not of low quality and works just fine here on X server 1.9.* (I have not tried 1.10 yet).

Adam

Well, I know you're an ATI-fanboy, that's fine -- I'm sometimes a big fanboy myself, but I'm talking of a professional point of view. You know, the real world use. fglrx is defective by design (this is a know fact in the Linux community!) and OpenCL compared to nVidia's offer is just laughable in terms of maturity, support, etc.. So, I'm not a developer (at least not for such tasks), I'm using the mentioned software, I'm working with those people, two of them are FreeBSD users. I'm not talking about games and Oko also doesn't ask for games or 3D screensavers.

From my dmesg:

drm0: <ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3430> on vgapci0

FreeBSD moria 8.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE #0: Thu Feb 17 02:41:51 UTC 2011 root@mason.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64

Hope that's enough to satisfy you. But that's my machine at home, I like FreeBSD, heck I'm even satisfied with the free ATI driver. But you're referring to apples and I'm referring to oranges. And to support my common saying about FreeBSD, read this article: http://lwn.net/Articles/429597/

[adamk]

I'd hardly call myself an ATI fanboy. Due to my personal experiences, I dislike nvidia for my own use. If someone wants to use an nvidia card, have at it. Between AMD and Intel GPUs, though, the clear winner on performance and stability is AMD.

And while I would argue that games and desktop use are real world (more so than the more limited GPGPU usage), I do see your point that Oko was specifically asking about GPGPU usage. Unfortunately, my experience with either nvidia or AMD does not extend that far. I will have to defer to your judgement as it pertains to that market, though I'm sure there are others more qualified than I who would disagree.

As for your article... Do you really think it will be significantly easier to port radeon and nouveau KMS to FreeBSD once Intel KMS/GEM is done? The memory managers are different, the drivers are so GPU specific, and I just don't currently see anyone hanging around Xorg development on FreeBSD going "Now only if Intel KMS were done, I'm sure I could port radeon and nouveau KMS."

[Carpetsmoker]

Yikes, 77 decibel and 700W of power. That's like having a turbo fan engine heating up your room.

[Oliver_H]

>I dislike nvidia for my own use.

Well, I don't like many things: Apple (but I have to use it sometimes), Microsoft (sigh, another one), Linux (it just feels like a real mess), etc. pp. But this doesn't change my rational view.

>As for your article... Do you really think it will be significantly easier to port radeon and nouveau KMS to FreeBSD once Intel KMS/GEM is done?

It's not my article, I just referring to it, because it shows some common problems nowadays between Linux and BSD. No I don't think it will be easy at all in this context, because it is just one guy doing this job and this is a common problem in FreeBSD (one guy doing the job). But apart from that, it may be interesting for you: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...ch/066421.html Martin Wilke (aka miwi) got a new X server up and running

>Between AMD and Intel GPUs

I don't even call this thing of Intel GPU, it's a mock-up, including the drivers. But even then, if you wan't a GPU including descent drivers, that sucks less, then you have to go with nVidia.

[adamk]

Originally Posted by Oliver_H

It's not my article, I just referring to it, because it shows some common problems nowadays between Linux and BSD. No I don't think it will be easy at all in this context, because it is just one guy doing this job and this is a common problem in FreeBSD (one guy doing the job). But apart from that, it may be interesting for you: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...ch/066421.html Martin Wilke (aka miwi) got a new X server up and running

Sorry, thought you wrote it :-) Yeah, I saw Martin's post and even replied. I look forward to testing it myself.

>Between AMD and Intel GPUs

I don't even call this thing of Intel GPU, it's a mock-up, including the drivers. But even then, if you wan't a GPU including descent drivers, that sucks less, then you have to go with nVidia.

Sorry, but I don't consider random lockups that nvidia can't even diagnose "sucks less".

Adam

[Oliver_H]

>Sorry, but I don't consider random lockups that nvidia can't even diagnose "sucks less".

It sucks less is my saying for the whole enchilada. So most, not all, users have way less problems with nVidia than ATI. Another example: look at the new ATI driver in FreeBSD, many people have got problems with it, I don't. It works like a charm on my laptop. So people would probably conclude, that the former version sucks less for them ;-)

[adamk]

You've polled most users? :-)

Also those folks that have problems with the new ATI driver in FreeBSD should rebuild xf86-video-ati now that the patch that was causing lockups on r300/r400/r500 GPUs has been removed :-) Hopefully then they'd conclude that the new version sucks less.

Adam

[Oliver_H]

>You've polled most users? :-)

Nope, but as I have contacts to some devs of Debian and FreeBSD and I'm following different mailinglists I certainly can see a significant part of the whole picture. Then there is my very own experience as ATI user since Mach 64 and Win3.11 and last not least lots of articles from people in media. But look for yourself in ArchLinux forum, Gentoo forum, Slackware users on Linuxquestions, etc. pp. ;-)


>Also those folks that have problems with the new ATI driver in FreeBSD should rebuild xf86-video-ati now that the patch that was causing lockups on r300/r400/r500 GPUs has been removed

There are similar problems in Debian testing (freezes, etc.), so this isn't all FreeBSD specific. And especially this drivers renders many problems by chance on different hardware. It's hard to draw conclusions from this alpha/beta-quality driver.

[adamk]

Originally Posted by Oliver_H

>You've polled most users? :-)

Nope, but as I have contacts to some devs of Debian and FreeBSD and I'm following different mailinglists I certainly can see a significant part of the whole picture. Then there is my very own experience as ATI user since Mach 64 and Win3.11 and last not least lots of articles from people in media. But look for yourself in ArchLinux forum, Gentoo forum, Slackware users on Linuxquestions, etc. pp. ;-)

Sounds like the same things I generate my opinion on. I monitor mailing lists, I read and help out on forums, and I have lots of experience with all sorts of different GPUs, including recent nvidia cards. And I can say, with complete confidence, that there are lots of people with lots of problems with the proprietary nvidia drivers. I have seen nothing to indicate that "So most, not all, users have way less problems with nVidia than ATI. "

Adam