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Radeon Gallium3D Is Running Increasingly Well Against AMDs Catalyst Driver
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After last week running new Nouveau vs. NVIDIA proprietary Linux graphics benchmarks, here`s the results when putting AMD`s hardware on the test bench and running both their latest open and closed-source drivers. Up today are the results of using the latest Radeon Gallium3D graphics code and Linux kernel against the latest beta of the binary-only Catalyst driver."
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35-Way NVIDIA/AMD Proprietary Linux Graphics Driver Comparison
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Last week with Phoronix turning ten years old I celebrated by testing 65 different GPUs with the open-source Linux graphics drivers from Intel, AMD, and Nouveau. I also followed-up with power efficiency and thermal benchmarks from all of the graphics cards that played nicely on the latest open-source drivers. Today I`m following up with the next round of testing by checking out the proprietary NVIDIA and AMD Catalyst graphics drivers under Linux with 35 different graphics cards."
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Windows 8.1 Still Outperforms Linux With Latest Intel GPU Drivers
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It`s been a while since last comparing the performance of the Windows and Linux Intel Haswell OpenGL graphics drivers. Last year when we looked at the Intel Haswell HD Graphics 4600 performance the driver speeds under Ubuntu Linux and Windows 8.1 were almost neck-and-neck, but since then it seems the rate of performance optimizations and improvements within the Intel Windows driver has outpaced the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver."
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Portal on the NVIDIA SHIELD for $9.99 @ Legit Reviews
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When Valve brought Portal out in 2007 it revolutionized what one expected from first-person puzzle-based video games. The game offers challenging puzzles to players that are based on physics and reality. Why are we talking about Portal today? Valve will be releasing Portal for Android devices on May 12th for $9.99 on Google Play. It turns out that most of the development work was done by NVIDIA as they wanted to bring big name game titles like Portal and Half-Life 2 out for NVIDIA SHIELD owners..."
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Catalyst On Ubuntu 14.04 Linux Competes Well With Windows 8.1
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After this week having carried out benchmarks showing Intel`s Windows 8.1 OpenGL driver is outperforming their open-source Linux driver but NVIDIA`s driver on Ubuntu Linux is commonly faster than Windows 8.1, the time has come to benchmark several different AMD Radeon graphics cards under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Windows 8.1 Pro x64 with all available updates and each OS using the latest Catalyst 14.4 driver."
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Testing NVIDIA Optimus / DRI PRIME On Ubuntu 14.04
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With Ubuntu 14.04 LTS there is improved support for multi-GPU laptops (commonly what`s branded as NVIDIA Optimus configurations) where there is a discrete NVIDIA GPU used for high performance workloads to complement the low-power Intel integrated graphics. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS features better support for these Optimus / DRI PRIME configurations on both the open and closed-source graphics drivers. Here`s the Ubuntu 14.04 multi-GPU experience along with some OpenGL benchmarks and power consumption numbers between the different configurations."
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NVIDIA 337.50 Driver Comparison
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From looking at the results, as long as you are not GPU bound, it seems as though the 337.50 drivers do offer some upside in most of the games tested. *Star Swarm* sees a 25% boost on the GTX 770 and the GTX 780 Ti is closer to 30%, exceeding the up to 21% stated on the release notes. In *BF4* the single card gains were minimal, as were the gains at 5760x1080. However when you run the SLI numbers at 1920x1080 you get an easy 5% to 6% boost. *Metro: Last Light*, much like *BF4*, shows minimal gains at 5760x1080, but shows promise in both the single and SLI testing at 1920x1080, with gains as high as 8%. The greatest performance boost in *Batman: Arkham Origins* bucked the trend of being GPU bound with a pair of GTX 780 Ti in SLI by bringing home a 10% boost in performance. *Far Cry 3* shows gains in almost every test; the largest gains coming from the SLI configurations at 1920x1080 with the GTX 770s delivering a 7% boost and the GTX 780 Tis delivering a 4% boost using the new driver."
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Microsoft Introduces us to DX12: My Thoughts on the Industry Moving Forward
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DirectX 12 is a much needed improvement to the line. It has been four years since DX11 was released with two minor iterations in that time. We have seen the rise of extreme programmability and parallelism that requires new thinking on the software side in order to harness that type of horsepower. My guess is that DirectX 12 will improve general computing in GPUs and APUs to a great degree as compared to what we have seen with DX11 and DirectCompute. The ball has been rolling for some time, but now that the industry has seen the advances that DX12 brings to the table, I am sure it will lead to some interesting developments on both the hardware and software sides. Good times await enthusiasts of this industry."
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Radeon Gallium3D Performance Gets Close To Catalyst On Ubuntu 14.04
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With the open-source graphics driver stack found in the forthcoming release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Mesa 10.1 + Linux 3.13), the performance of the community-developed Radeon Gallium3D driver is now close to that of the official AMD Catalyst driver for recent generations of Radeon graphics cards. In several OpenGL tests the RadeonSI driver can even run 80% the speed of AMD`s official Catalyst Linux driver."
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Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Is Still Sour For Some GPUs
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Nouveau, the reverse-engineered open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics driver that`s been in development now for the better part of a decade, is working brilliantly for some NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards while for other NVIDIA GPUs the experience is a sloppy mess. Using the Linux 3.13 kernel and Mesa 10.1-devel Gallium3D driver code installed on top of Ubuntu 13.10, here`s what the experience is like when trying a number of GeForce graphics cards with this latest open-source driver code."
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AMD Mantle Performance Explored
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1.html,It has been a long time coming but we take a look at early and initial Mantle performance. The upcoming 14.1 Beta driver will receive many improvements. At the simplest level, Mantle is an Application Programming Interface (API), or a language that game developers can use to write code that creates the beautiful graphics on your screen. In its current iteration, the Mantle API uniquely leverages the hardware in the Graphics Core Next architecture (GCN) of modern AMD Radeon."
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AMD Mantle BF4 and StarSwarm Testing Part 2 @ Legit Reviews
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On February 1, 2014 AMD released the first public beta of the Catalyst 14.1 drivers as Beta 1.6 with Mantle support. Previously we tested Beta 1.5 drivers, and found it increased the performance of Battlefield 4 by 15.8% on a Sapphire Radeon R7 260X video card. As this is a new build, we wanted to do some additional testing, focusing on how well Mantle works with both video card and processor overclocking. The percent performance increase from DirectX to Mantle varies greatly and depends on the video card that you are using. AMD provided us with a slide that shows performance of four discrete graphics cards on teh AMD A10-7700K processor and the performance gains ranged from just around 6% on the AMD Radeon R9 270X to over 40% on the AMD Radeon R9 290X. We`ve been testing with an AMD Radeon R7 260X due to the affordability of the card and the fact that many gamers are using it since it supports both AMD Mantle and TrueAudio technologies. Read on to find out what happens with overclocking."
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AMD Mantle API Benchmark Performance On Catalyst 14.1 @ Legit Reviews
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AMD has been talking about the potential performance increase that their new Mantle technology is going to provide, we have all seen the numbers that AMD and EA-DICE has been releasing. AMD has finally released CATALYST 14.1 beta drivers, so now we can do our own independent testing to check out performance with and without Mantle enabled. Read on to see what happens to performance!"
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AMD Mantle API Benchmark Performance On Catalyst 14.1 @ Legit Reviews
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AMD has been talking about the potential performance increase that their new Mantle technology is going to provide, we have all seen the numbers that AMD and EA-DICE has been releasing. AMD has finally released CATALYST 14.1 beta drivers, so now we can do our own independent testing to check out performance with and without Mantle enabled. Read on to see what happens to performance!
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