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Mesa 17.2 officially released

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The open source graphics drivers, Mesa, have been updated to 17.2 which is a major new release bringing in many changes.

It's worth noting, that the Mesa developers recommend waiting until 17.2.1 for people looking for a stable experience.

Here's the major new features they've listed:

  • GL_ARB_bindless_texture on radeonsi
  • GL_ARB_post_depth_coverage on nvc0 (GM200+)
  • GL_ARB_shader_ballot on i965/gen8+
  • GL_ARB_shader_group_vote on i965 (with a no-op vec4 implementation)
  • GL_ARB_shader_viewport_layer_array on nvc0 (GM200+)
  • GL_AMD_vertex_shader_layer on nvc0 (GM200+)
  • GL_AMD_vertex_shader_viewport_index on nvc0 (GM200+)

This release expands the threaded OpenGL whitelist, to improve performance in certain games. Games that are already whitelisted include Alien Isolation, Borderlands 2, BioShock Infinite, Civilization 6 and more. You can see the full list here. The performance gain will vary between hardware of course, but it should now be enabled by default.

Of course, on top of that there's heaps of bug fixes and other general improvements and clean-ups. These games particular had some issues solved: Stellaris, The Witcher 2, Rocket League, Dying Light, DOOM 2016 + wine (RADV) and more. So all of those should see some form of improvements on Mesa 17.2. Also, Dawn of War III should now work on Mesa with OpenGL.

Truthfully, since I don't actually make use of Mesa on my main machine I'm not entirely up to scratch on it all. Their release notes could sure use a little work in explaining things at least a little more thoroughly. Still, I don't want to detract from their awesome work as it's a lot of work to summarise I'm sure.

See the release notes here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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10 comments

vickop Sep 4, 2017
Waiting for openSUSE Tumbleweed
sr_ls_boy Sep 4, 2017
I thought they would wait until LLVM 5.0 was released.
I never could compile the 17.2 branch with 4.0.
damarrin Sep 5, 2017
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They don't list LLVM on their compiling page, so maybe it's just that no-one is doing any work to make it compatible?
tumocs Sep 5, 2017
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Quoting: sr_ls_boyI thought they would wait until LLVM 5.0 was released.
I never could compile the 17.2 branch with 4.0.

I've been compiling 17.2 and 17.3 with llvm 4.0 for a long while without problems. Just because I can't be bothered to keep up with llvm-svn especially since it tends to cause shitton of problems quite often.
FireBurn Sep 5, 2017
If you've an AMD card this is a must, far superior for OpenGL that the binary driver
appetrosyan Sep 5, 2017
Quoting: FireBurnIf you've an AMD card this is a must, far superior for OpenGL that the binary driver

Any compile time optimisations? I found that the rx480 has some quirks, and thought maybe there are some Flags that could help.
PublicNuisance Sep 5, 2017
Waiting on the Padoka stable PPA to get this but then I am also waiting on my money to get my RX 580 early next week so I got time.
calexil Sep 5, 2017
It's out
PublicNuisance Sep 7, 2017
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: PublicNuisanceWaiting on the Padoka stable PPA to get this but then I am also waiting on my money to get my RX 580 early next week so I got time.

You can use Oibaf ppa, it is updated every day often.
https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers

Is it updated with stable drivers or unstable ?
property Sep 9, 2017
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: PublicNuisanceWaiting on the Padoka stable PPA to get this but then I am also waiting on my money to get my RX 580 early next week so I got time.

You can use Oibaf ppa, it is updated every day often.
https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers

Thanks for the tip. I just tested the 17.3 preview and it is amazing.
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