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AMD RX 480 released, AMD will possibly open up Radeon Software
By bridgman, 2 July 2016 at 8:37 pm UTC

Quoting: AnxiousInfusionSo is powerplay enabled by default in kernel 4.6 AMDGPU? There should be preliminary support for Polaris in 4.6 and this determines how soon I can get a Polaris based card.

You'll need 4.7 to get Polaris support.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Slackdog, 2 July 2016 at 8:33 pm UTC Likes: 1

Got the survey for the first time last night!

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By bridgman, 2 July 2016 at 8:25 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: TheRiddickI doubt a software patch will fix a fault with a dpm hardware issue on a microprocessor die! Unless they down-clock all 480 card (lol)

Remember those on-chip microcode images we load at power up that some people complain about ? If a software update is not sufficient and the DPM logic actually needs to change that just means an updated microcode image...

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By raonlinux, 2 July 2016 at 8:04 pm UTC

The funny part is already cards having the same issue, and no one make a big deal.
If people that made so many articles and afraid to damage their hardware they just don' t need to do the test on their hardware usually places that make this kind of measures or testing, have plenty of hardware to reproduce the error or try to damage their hardware in some situations.

So people are making a big deal where is not. Let the places that make review do their test, then wait for the company to respond to that experiments found it.

Anyway the only things is that the graphics cards are demanding more power from the pci express, than usually. That is the only problem if this situation make failure hardware then we need to worry, they need do a better research and for that they need time.

About Creak said Amd said it will work on 6 pin connectors, and it does, isn't it? Remember when you make an specification for anything you can make tolerance, between some ratio that make the hardware works without problem, even when you calculate something you need to do that or to the found an error.

The main problem here is that articles are making a huge deal with the topic then when you read, the topic is already misleading. Even in GOL "The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of". The good things is explain and give some good advice as others company been in the past.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By SlithyTove, 2 July 2016 at 7:32 pm UTC Likes: 1

I've been using steam since steam's inception. I've never once seen one of these surveys on windows or on linux.

I had no idea that such a thing existed until I saw it mentioned on this site.

I've always wondered what triggers it and if that could affect the numbers.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By GustyGhost, 2 July 2016 at 7:29 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Comandante oardoThose games are not available for Linux, not because of the small market share, is because the devs lack of the proper programming skills...

Is a simple fact: Is necessary to have a powerfull brain for to develop AAA games for Linux, and those devs don't have it. The only team of devs with the skills for that is Croteam. That's why The Talos Principle is the only AAA game available for Windows, Mac and Linux from day 1.

While I don't agree wholeheartedly that devs who don't build for Linux are simply "too stupid", it must be said that a game like The Talos Principle certainly has the qualities and a theme that "powerful brained" individuals might find themselves developing.

Things that may spoil The Talos Principle if you haven't played it yet, tread cautiously:
Spoiler, click me
There are a ton of Yahoo answers type questions along the lines of "What is the ending of Talos Principle supposed to be about?". It is clear that Croteam had built a story around evolutionary computing (which is fascinating!) and it was such a refreshing change of pace from most other games being "Here, soldier. Take this gun and kill the bad guys."

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By kazriko, 2 July 2016 at 7:23 pm UTC

Another point of view for this is the adoredtv video about it. He points out that even though the average Watts is a little higher than other cards, many cards have significantly higher spikes in consumption with a lower average usage and that this is a common problem throughout the industry. Also, these high averages only occur with resolution, game, and quality settings that you would never run in real life because they're basically a slide show. Additionally a prior video notes that the best efficiency of power to performance on the card is when you set it to -20% power consumption. The new wattman software has fairly fine gained control of the power consumption at various temperatures and clock speeds so under clocking it just in these torture tests in software to prevent the problem should be easy with minimal performance drops in normal operation.

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By Creak, 2 July 2016 at 7:06 pm UTC Likes: 1

I must admit, I've read several articles, but not the one linked by GoL. So I just read it and I agree that the conclusions are far less catastrophic than what I've been used to read. It says that the power consumption isn't that high compared to other cards, and good custom cards that will be sold later should fix the problem by adding a 8-pin connector.

That being said, even in regards to this reading, I'm still disappointed by AMD who advertised a low-power consumption GPU and apparently tried to squeeze the card into this definition by using a 6-pin connector and being just above the limits of the PCIe specs. That is bad PR. It gives the impression that the GPU, although a brand new architecture, has already reached its limits. And it also gives bad press to the cards. It would have been better to have a product a bit less on the edge, at least for the first revisions. Now a lot of users won't even look twice at those cards because of what happened.

Because I really prefer AMD over NVIDIA for several personal reasons, I will continue to follow closely this topic and hope for a brighter tomorrow with the custom cards that seems to be on the way. But if the problems aren't fix by then, I'll be extremely disappointed by AMD.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By aironeous, 2 July 2016 at 7:02 pm UTC

I just got the survey as I was downloading/installing the atari library from steam on this weak laptop using NEON KDE. I answered it. My Zotac Nen will arrive here on Wednesday so I'll be playing on Steam OS from now on starting next week. I've got the survey many times on both windows and linux.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By slaapliedje, 2 July 2016 at 7:01 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Comandante oardo
Quoting: wolfyrionThat was ovious

20 Games Top Sellers, Only 5 Titles to Linux

Games like

DOOM,Rocket League,The Witcher 3,Dark Souls 3,Rise of The Tomb Raider etc

You think anyone who is a Pro GAMER etc,would switch to Linux?

For what? To play 2+ years old games and even with lower performance?

Like it or not thats the harsh true .

Linux still has a long road ahead and hopefully one day would be treated equaly in both new game releases and performance.

Those games are not available for Linux, not because of the small market share, is because the devs lack of the proper programming skills...

Is a simple fact: Is necessary to have a powerfull brain for to develop AAA games for Linux, and those devs don't have it. The only team of devs with the skills for that is Croteam. That's why The Talos Principle is the only AAA game available for Windows, Mac and Linux from day 1.

Quoting: fagnerlnWhat happens with cheaters? New account, +1 Windows account.

That's me. I have my old Steam account from my Windows era, and the new Steam account 100% Linux...
I am buying a lot of games again for to support the Linux ports...And I am buying new games only for the Linux account, like Dying Light, Alien isolation, Shadow of Mordor, Dead Island Definitive (and Riptide Definitive)

Croteam are awesome. They even turned down the Facebook money to make the new Serious Sam VR game Oculus exclusive. Hopefully HTC/Valve get SteamVR working under Linux soon and I'll be able to play that under Linux.

New Steam Client Beta adds fixes for 'upcoming' Vulkan games
By Purple Library Guy, 2 July 2016 at 6:39 pm UTC

Quoting: LeonardKVulkan is an important part in porting but it's also low-level -- which makes it harder to use for indies that do not rely on a 3rd party engine.
Mind you, that is not the kind of game Linux is badly lacking at the moment.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Comandante Ñoñardo, 2 July 2016 at 6:28 pm UTC

Quoting: wolfyrionThat was ovious

20 Games Top Sellers, Only 5 Titles to Linux

Games like

DOOM,Rocket League,The Witcher 3,Dark Souls 3,Rise of The Tomb Raider etc

You think anyone who is a Pro GAMER etc,would switch to Linux?

For what? To play 2+ years old games and even with lower performance?

Like it or not thats the harsh true .

Linux still has a long road ahead and hopefully one day would be treated equaly in both new game releases and performance.

Those games are not available for Linux, not because of the small market share, is because the devs lack of the proper programming skills...

Is a simple fact: Is necessary to have a powerfull brain for to develop AAA games for Linux, and those devs don't have it. The only team of devs with the skills for that is Croteam. That's why The Talos Principle is the only AAA game available for Windows, Mac and Linux from day 1.

Quoting: fagnerlnWhat happens with cheaters? New account, +1 Windows account.

That's me. I have my old Steam account from my Windows era, and the new Steam account 100% Linux...
I am buying a lot of games again for to support the Linux ports...And I am buying new games only for the Linux account, like Dying Light, Alien isolation, Shadow of Mordor, Dead Island Definitive (and Riptide Definitive)

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By micha, 2 July 2016 at 6:02 pm UTC

TBH I don't think it's that Windows has just grown quicker than Linux has. That would mean MacOS would have grown exactly the same as Windows.

I still think the survey is flawed. I don't have the survey on my Linux machine which I start Steam everyday in over a year but 3x during the same period at my office win-pc where I log into Steam like not more than a few times per month (all after upgrading to win10).

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By Creak, 2 July 2016 at 5:54 pm UTC

Quoting: dmantioneConsider this a non-issue. Yes the specification is 75W and the card can consume 77W. But a mainboard manufacturer taking only 2 watts of margin into account would be very, very stupid. You can assume safely that any sane mainboard manufacturer designs their board to be capable of delivering more than 75W.

This is mainly bad press for AMD, the amount of situations where it will cause problems will be near zero.
Maybe you're right, but from the benchmarks I've seen it wasn't just 2W above the PCIe specs, it was way more than that.

The PCIe specs says the maximum intensity the card should get from the mobo is 5.5A but, in Battlefield 4, it's up to 6.92A (that's 25% above the specs without overclocking anything!). Other graphics cards can do it simply because they have more than just a 6-pin connector. AMD should have at least an 8-pin connector by default on their RX 480.

Of course it is good if the mobo can handle it, it means that the mobo can behave correctly if you overclock some parts on it. But that's not how standards work! By default, any component should respect the specs. If it is indeed only 2W... then I promise I won't make such a fuss about it, but it doesn't seem so (I mean just read the articles, they don't even want to try overclocking because they're afraid to damage the other components on their test machines).

A good example of manufacturers not respecting the power specs and leading to dangerous products is the bad USB-C cables. That lead to burn your battery, and clearly it's not up to your phone to handle bad USB-C cables.

I really want AMD to do something about it, I really do, because I really want to buy an AMD card. But until a fix is found (whether it's hardware or software), I think it's stupid to buy an RX 480 card.

Watch the hilarity in our recent co-op livestream, now on Youtube
By Liam Dawe, 2 July 2016 at 5:43 pm UTC

Quoting: pcloudsI had to create an account just to complain that there was not enough FREEEDOOM yelling in the Broforce part. Especially from the guys in FOSS land!
Next time we shall try harder, bro.

Major new version of the open source itch store application
By Liam Dawe, 2 July 2016 at 5:41 pm UTC

Quoting: mr-eggitch.io is a great web platform , not tried the client as it won't work for me idk why. The only slight concern is that it turns into another Desura in 5 years from now.
Well, they already have much more support from developers than Desura ever had. A big problem Desura had was that they also ran indiedb, moddb and so on, Desura never got the attention it needed.

Watch the hilarity in our recent co-op livestream, now on Youtube
By pclouds, 2 July 2016 at 5:38 pm UTC

I had to create an account just to complain that there was not enough FREEEDOOM yelling in the Broforce part. Especially from the guys in FOSS land!

GamingOnLinux turns 7 years old on July 5th! We are going to celebrate in style!
By Liam Dawe, 2 July 2016 at 5:36 pm UTC

Quoting: EikeToo early to congratulate (at least that's the custom in my country), but not too late for a recommendation, I hope:
Do play Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime with her! I got a s**tload of swearing from my girlfriend/wife with that one! :D
Oh god, I played with the AI on that one and it was bad enough, couls be a good contender for a replacement of Nuclear Throne which refuses to pick up any second gamepad.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Breeze, 2 July 2016 at 5:35 pm UTC Likes: 1

Here I am looking at the OS X numbers at 3.6%. Stuck at OpenGL 4.1 and most are using a Macbook Pro with a crappy old integrated graphics or old mobile.

For a bunch of games, these people don't even count.

For new games, I wonder if more people with Linux can play them than with OS X.

Looking at the numbers, I rather support Linux than OS X. I wouldn't want to support an ancient OpenGL version on under performing hardware.

Know what would be useful to developers? If I put in the minimum requirements for the game I am making and then see the percentages. I bet Linux would look more significant in that context.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Kimyrielle, 2 July 2016 at 5:26 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: Tuxee
Quoting: wolfyrionThat was ovious

20 Games Top Sellers, Only 5 Titles to Linux

Games like

DOOM,Rocket League,The Witcher 3,Dark Souls 3,Rise of The Tomb Raider etc

You think anyone who is a Pro GAMER etc,would switch to Linux?

What is a Pro GAMER? And I assume that they (whatever they are) account only for a miniscule amount of the overall Steam player base.

I have no idea what a Pro GAMER is either. Probably the poster was referring to hardcore gamers. And no, these people are not going to switch to Linux anytime soon. Got to admit that.

But I still don't share the poster's gloom. Gaming has not (yet) become a reason to use Linux, but it has stopped being a reason NOT to use Linux. As long as you don't insist on always getting the newest and greatest games right away and can accept tiny performance losses here and and there, there is not (too) much reason to keep Windows around (let's just disregard MMOs for a second). For the time being, that's a fairly good development, given that 3 years ago the number of commercially produced games for Linux was a good approximation to zero.

GamingOnLinux turns 7 years old on July 5th! We are going to celebrate in style!
By Eike, 2 July 2016 at 5:17 pm UTC

Too early to congratulate (at least that's the custom in my country), but not too late for a recommendation, I hope:
Do play Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime with her! I got a s**tload of swearing from my girlfriend/wife with that one! :D

Developer breaks silence about 'The Silent Age', a point-and-click adventure for which a Linux port was promised
By Cimeryd, 2 July 2016 at 5:14 pm UTC

That's too bad. I played the first chapter on Android, and aside from the touch screen, I liked the game well enough. I feel confident in saying I would have bought this.

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By dmantione, 2 July 2016 at 5:10 pm UTC

Consider this a non-issue. Yes the specification is 75W and the card can consume 77W. But a mainboard manufacturer taking only 2 watts of margin into account would be very, very stupid. You can assume safely that any sane mainboard manufacturer designs their board to be capable of delivering more than 75W.

This is mainly bad press for AMD, the amount of situations where it will cause problems will be near zero.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Tuxee, 2 July 2016 at 5:06 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: BeamboomIt's so funny to see the steady flow of poor excuses and illogical reasoning every. Single. Time. an article about the Steam survey results are published. Get over it guys, we're small. Tiny. Almost invisible on the radar.
That's status quo today.

And we are talking about a 0.04% change in a random sample. That's probably one less Linux user that got the questionaire. Or maybe two.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Tuxee, 2 July 2016 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: wolfyrionThat was ovious

20 Games Top Sellers, Only 5 Titles to Linux

Games like

DOOM,Rocket League,The Witcher 3,Dark Souls 3,Rise of The Tomb Raider etc

You think anyone who is a Pro GAMER etc,would switch to Linux?

What is a Pro GAMER? And I assume that they (whatever they are) account only for a miniscule amount of the overall Steam player base.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Mohandevir, 2 July 2016 at 4:54 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: MohandevirJust a guess... Is it possible that the forced Win10 upgrade is triggering a lot more survey request to Win10 users because of the configuration change?

It would reflect in a Linux percentage drop, giving a wrong image of the real Linux marketshare.

Things might come back to normal after July 29th...
Wow, i didn't even think of that, but it is highly possible actually as it is likely that will cause the survey to appear.

This is why I'd prefer Valve to proceed like the survey here, when it comes to OS. Something like "current OS" in our user profile, that you supply on a voluntary basis, and stop triggering the survey because of an OS change. Even if some may cheat, it would give a much more accurate portrait whithout some external influence meddling with it...

Still I don't think it's Valve's goal with this HARDWARE survey and they are probably quite aware of the problem.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Beamboom, 2 July 2016 at 4:54 pm UTC Likes: 3

It's so funny to see the steady flow of poor excuses and illogical reasoning every. Single. Time. an article about the Steam survey results are published. Get over it guys, we're small. Tiny. Almost invisible on the radar.
That's status quo today.

The AMD RX 480 seems to have power issues you may want to be aware of
By Liam Dawe, 2 July 2016 at 4:45 pm UTC

Wow, someone actually came in the comments to have a go at me for this even though it's being reported across a large number of sites? Okay then. I deleted his comment as he seemed to edit it out himself.

As has been said, i am pointing out something that is concerning people who do these tests regularly and AMD are confirmed to be looking into it as it is an issue. I did not do the tests myself and never claimed to.

I would do the same for Nvidia, this is not anti-AMD.

If people get annoyed I reference others work, either fund me on Patreon so I can buy the equipment to do it, or bug AMD to get me the card ;)

Nightdive Studios are making a System Shock Linux demo after gathering feedback
By GustyGhost, 2 July 2016 at 4:33 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Zelox
Quoting: liamdaweYou can see their Steam forum post here. They stated later they are now doing it as they have heard us. Mac apparently is a lower priority as Linux has been in higher demand.

That's interesting, and that's got to be a first for me at least.
Hopefully the demo can be solid.

The second project in just a few days I've seen Linux put ahead of Mac by developers. The other being Zed, I believe. This is a trend I can get behind.

The latest Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux
By Overlord, 2 July 2016 at 4:24 pm UTC

It is most likely because of steam summer sale.which may caused a surge of windows user to buy&play those cheap game rather than doing their usual official/other business.There is nothing wrong with linux gamer numbers ,they are just crused by a behemoth in case percentage.after sales end and those ppl had enough of gaming.windows % will go down again.