Linux with AMD

[Dirk Broer]

Just brought my F1A75-V EVO back from Windows 10
-I had used the same install DVD as for the AM1 system, so according to MicroSoft not eligible for free real Win10 upgrade- to Linux, this time Linux Mint 17.2
At first no GPUs at all,
then -installing the distro's FGLRX files- CAL on the IGP only,
now -after adding some stuff (the prerequisites as AMD mentions them on their download page)-
OpenCL on all three GPUs -but no CAL anymore (just as with the AM1 under Win10).

[Alez]

currently changing all my linux machines over to lubuntu 15.04. All my nvidia cards are now under linux. Going to have to set up an amd card and try again see if 15.04 is any better than before.

[Dirk Broer]

currently changing all my linux machines over to lubuntu 15.04. All my nvidia cards are now under linux. Going to have to set up an amd card and try again see if 15.04 is any better than before.

Going to build another Socket AM1 based Athlon 5350 system, but planning to run that under Ubuntu. By running the same projects as the first, now Win10 running Athlon 5350, I hope to see whether the massive difference in BOINC benchmarks between Linux and Windows can be translated into some real-life performance.
The outcome might mean that I will run all my AMD based systems under Linux in the future....

[Silver]

Sounds like a good experiment Dirk, I'm sure a few will be interested to hear your results.

[Bryan]

I hope to see whether the massive difference in BOINC benchmarks between Linux and Windows can be translated into some real-life performance.
The outcome might mean that I will run all my AMD based systems under Linux in the future....

The benchmarks don't mean anything Dirk. If you want to compare 2 Linux machines then they might be an indication of which machine is faster. A Windows to Linux benchmark comparison means nothing at all. There are some projects that pay a little better on one OS than the other, but that is a function of how good the executable is.

There are a number of projects that are not fixed credit that Linux will crunch faster than Windows, but on those Linux will always request far less credits than a Windows machine.

[Dirk Broer]

The benchmarks don't mean anything Dirk. If you want to compare 2 Linux machines then they might be an indication of which machine is faster. A Windows to Linux benchmark comparison means nothing at all. There are some projects that pay a little better on one OS than the other, but that is a function of how good the executable is.
There are a number of projects that are not fixed credit that Linux will crunch faster than Windows, but on those Linux will always request far less credits than a Windows machine.

The exact same physical box working on SRBase:
CPU type AuthenticAMD AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3 [Family 22 Model 0 Stepping 1]
OS Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 Edition, (10.00.10240.00)
BOINC version 7.6.6
Memory 15296.18 MB
Cache 2048 KB
Virtual memory 17600.18 MB
Total diskspace 111.01 GB
Free diskspace 67.11 GB
Measured 'floating point' speed 2099.47 million ops/sec
Measured 'integer' speed 3784.07 million ops/sec

CPU type AuthenticAMD AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3 [Family 22 Model 0 Stepping 1]
OS Linux 3.13.0-53-generic
BOINC version 7.4.23
Memory 14913.64 MB
Cache 2048 KB
Virtueel memory 8152 MB
Total diskspace 101.61 GB
Free diskspace 71.64 GB
Measured 'floating point' speed 2311.72 miljoen ops/sec
Measured 'integer' speed 8987.59 miljoen ops/sec

[Bryan]

Yes Dirk, I'm well aware of what the benchmarks are on Windows versus Linux. All of my machines are dual boot. The benchmarks mean nothing except on the same OS! On SRBase, my Windows machines perform a little better than Linux. My integer benchmark on WIndows is 14333 and on Linux it is 26770. Those numbers are from the same machine (I7-3930K @ 4.2GHz).

When you start a new project you need to run a machine on WIndows for 5-6 hours until Credit New has finished screwing with you. Then run the same machine (or an identical machine) on Linux for the same period of time. Then check to see which will give you the bigger bang for the buck.

The executable is the difference and not the OS. Universe for example will pay about 30% higher on Linux than WIndows (the admin said they did more "tweaking" on the Linux app). LHC pays 50% higher on Linux. Denis right now on Windows is paying about 1000% higher than Linux because there is an optimized WIndows app.

EDIT: I will add that if I had to chose 1 OS for crunching I'd pick Linux. There are more projects where it has a "slight" edge on credits. But then there are those where Linux "always" request less credits for a WU than a WIndows machine does ... by a factor of 2 or more.

[Dirk Broer]

Yes Dirk, I'm well aware of what the benchmarks are on Windows versus Linux. All of my machines are dual boot. The benchmarks mean nothing except on the same OS!

At least I can hope for better results for my Raspberry Pi2 then. By installing some extra libraries supporting armhf and/or integer calculations I managed to change the benchmarks from the original (out-of-the-box Raspbian Wheezy)
292 MIPS floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU and
1143 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
to
489 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU and
1944 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
But now on Raspbian Jessie and with added libraries...

[Bryan]

Yes Dirk, I'm well aware of what the benchmarks are on Windows versus Linux. All of my machines are dual boot. The benchmarks mean nothing except on the same OS!

At least I can hope for better results for my Raspberry Pi2 then. By installing some extra libraries supporting armhf and/or integer calculations I managed to change the benchmarks from the original (out-of-the-box Raspbian Wheezy)
292 MIPS floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU and
1143 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
to
489 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU and
1944 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
But now on Raspbian Jessie and with added libraries...

Now that will make a difference. On the same machine w/ the same OS then the benchmarks are real!

You guys are all running these small machines ... when I get back from our winter home next spring I've got to look into that!!!

Here is a link I found and bookmarked a while ago for doing BOINC on a PI. HERE I have a PI B that I got with some bitcoin miners but I've never powered it up.

[Dirk Broer]

A word for the wary:

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS does not have a fglrx driver, nor will it work when you try to install the AMD fglrx driver of a previous version.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS now works with an open source driver.
The good: it recognizes the GPU and it's OpenCL capabilities upon boot.
The bad: it will -for the moment- only crunch when using GCN 1.2 and later -the very latest in Radeon.
My Athlon 5350s have a GCN 1.1 IGP (Kalindi, aka AMD RAdeon HD 8400) and give CL file build failures.
OpenCL-wise the open source driver is a -hopefully temporary- step back, from OpenCL 2.0 under the fglrx driver to OpenCL 1.1 under Mesa.

[Dirk Broer]

I decided to transfer my HD 7790 -that was banned by the admin while running Xubuntu 15.10- to my main Win10 box, retiring my trusty HD 4770 there. I must have an able Amicable Number cracker then .
I'll also update the Xubuntu 15.10 box to Kubuntu 16.04, to see whether the OpenCL problems I experienced with my Ubuntu 16.04 box were caused by the bad support for the internal R3 of the Athlon 5350.
I do have a Lubuntu 16.04 system running it's internal GPU of an older FM1 APU without problems... An APU of likewise vintage is in the Xubuntu box...

That sounded like a nice experiment, but installing BOINC on Kubuntu 16.04 gave 'no usable gpu'...and everything I tried to change that resulted in 'check cable connection' and a black screen.
Trying a terminal then gave a system where I couldn't login to
I think I've had it with the 16.04 release of Ubuntu and related distro's, I'll try FreeBSD next
Well, I've found an OS that sucks even worse with AMD cards than Ubuntu 16.04 releases: FreeBSD. It may have to do with the (video connector-less) ASUS F1A75 in combination with both an APU and a HD 6670, but I'll be dipped in dogs**t if I ever get this working the way I want it, with both Radeon GPUs crunching BOINC....