AMD LINUX BUILD : Ryzen 5, RADEON RX580 - Gaming Performance
988So, I just got my new computer, and I started messing around with it a bit. here are a few impressions on how Linux runs on it ! It's a Ryzen 5 2600, Radeon RX 580, 16Gb of RAM desktop.
Watch part 2 where I try Manjaro on the same build: https://youtu.be/KuQGZMK8fMw
What I use to make my videos:
Microphone: https://amzn.to/2PsNWXl
Articulated mic arm: https://amzn.to/2Iy6DZ2
Tripod: https://amzn.to/2VeLRUt
Monitor: https://amzn.to/2UQRZTb
Speakers: https://amzn.to/2IR7qDR
Bluetooth USB adapter: https://amzn.to/2UQS89b
Keyboard: https://amzn.to/2IAuIyD
Smartphone lenses: https://amzn.to/2DnNrcr
Graphics card: https://amzn.to/2XCEaVo
Motherboard: https://amzn.to/2KZt63t
CPU: https://amzn.to/2IFjKrw
A few words to complement some topics I couldn't go into too much detail in the video: https://medium.com/@stouff.nicolas/trying-out-a-full-amd-build-on-linux-f01643b43c31
The Machine
I tried a full AMD build this time, so I went with a Ryzen 5 2600. This is a 6 core / 12 threads processor, with a base clock of 3.4 GHZ, and able to turbo boost up to 3.9. It is way beefier than my previous core i5 7300HQ, which wan "only" quad core, with a base clock of 2.5Ghz, and a max frequency of 3.5 ghz, which it could sustain for a lot less time, since it was in a laptop.
I went with 16GB of DDR4 RAM, which should be a nice upgrade over the 8gb I had previously.
The graphics card is a Radeon RX 580, with 8gb of VRAM. This is definitely a huge step up from the 1050TI mobile I had previously, with only 4Gb of VRAM, and neutered performance.
This PC came with a 1TB SATA hard drive, which I'll replace with an SSD pretty soon, and not too much RGB;, which suits me fine since I don't like to work under neon signs.
I bought it pre-built, without an OS. It actually came with a non activated copy of Windows 10, which I kept somewhere just in case, even though I don't plan to boot it up anytime soon.
Using elementary OS
I prepped a USB key to install elementary OS on this machine, since it's my distro of choice. Installation went smoothly and was fast, with every piece of hardware detected out of the box and working nicely.
In usage, the machine behaves as expected, with every core of the CPU being recognized. The graphics card is identified as a radeon RX 480, which is not all that surprising, since it's basically a small revision of that older model.
Rendering a video
Since my goal was to slice rendering times by a bit, I took one of my most complex projects, my GNOME vs KDE video, which has a lot of transitions, wipes, and multiple clips playing at the same time. Previewing the video in real time was faster, which has always been a problem on Kdenlive, with framerate tanking quickly as soon as you add a transition or composite a few video tracks.
As per rendering times, on the same project, the laptop completed the rendering in 58 minutes. The new AMD machine did the same thing in 52 minutes, which is 6 minutes less. While that does not seem that impressive on paper, shaving 10% of the time on a video render is still a great improvement, and I couldn't be happier about it !
Playing some games
I only game at 1080p, since I don't have a higher res monitor, and I don't really care about 4K for the moment. I ran a few benchmarks. I used the graphics drivers PPA for more up to date MESA and drivers, but I kept the default open source ones.
Dawn of War 3 got around 40FPS at ultra settings, running without Vulkan, and with OBS recording in the background. Without OBS running everything was a bit smoother, due to the reduction in CPU usage. The game crashed when I tried to start it with Vulkan, but after installing libvulkan1 and the mesa vulkan drivers( duh) it worked... with lower performance than without it.
Without surprise, CS GO ran above 60, but FPS was all over the place with OBs rrecording. Without OBS RUNNIng, it was a lot smoother, averaging 120 FPS.
Total War Warhammer 2 runs smoothly on High settings at 60FPS, during battles and on the map, which is great. It pushes the PC a lot, though, and you can definitely hear it. This build is not quiet.
And what about Steamplay ? This is where things started to go wrong. While my old laptop was perfectly able to run Vermintide through steamplay and DXVK, I kept getting an access violation error and could not get it to even start. I could solve it with starting it with wined3d11 but peformance was terrible, in the low 20s with everything set to medium. That was a bit underwhelming.
Space Hulk Deathwing had problems as well, but once I started it in windowed mode, it worked great, and I got 60fps with DXVK on a mix of high and max settings. Fullscren doesn't work, though, resulting in a transparent screen with audio playing but no image.
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