I have been trying to get the install to work using the instructions as I am fairly new to Ubuntu. I read the aarticle below that says I can't install the newest drivers on 16.04. What are my options. Do I somehow downgrade to 14.04 or use what is default to Ubuntu? Will that affect my performance hashing?
http://askubuntu.com/questions/765616/amd-r9-280x-drivers-for-ubuntu-16-04fglrx is no longer supported on 16.04. AMD discontinued support for its Linux driver, and it isn't compatible (you will break your installation if you attempt to install fglrx on 16.04).
For now, you have to stick with the open source drivers. AMD may be releasing a proprietary driver for Linux that works with 16.04, but it probably won't support very many cards.
Here's a comparison of how the default drivers on 16.04 compare to fglrx on 14.04, if you want to take a look:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu-1604-amd&num=1I've not noticed much of a difference with hashrates - the review you linked is "canned" performance metrics.
There is a pretty good tutorial on his GitHub
https://github.com/mbevand/silentarmyspecifically for Ubuntu 16.04. I've found minimal hashrate drops for supported cards (I had 390s and (1) 390X), compared with fglrx.
My 480s do ~40sols each with one-third the heat and power consumption - pretty good trade-off IMHO.
So are you saying just skip the amd driver inatall and use the stock ubuntu 16.04 drivers for my 280x cards and there is not much difference in hash rates or downgrade to 14.04 is best you think so I can use the amd drivers?