Thanks to the ATI driver team

[Lord_of_da_Ping]

It's amazing to look on this forum and see the huge amount of negativity on some the posts for the ATI support for their products after the POS (point of sale). It is true that whilst their drivers are painful at times to deal with, (such as the current catalyst 8.8 driver set) we forget that it is only since the introduction of 8.41 last year that the speed and usability have increased for most users. I have only recently stopped using Windows XP and have opted to use a linux distro because of the driver problems with my ATI video card (X200M) and whilst some may snigger at the thought of somebody actually using this card for 3d at all, catalyst 8.8 works very well for all linux based games/apps. Sure, wine may not work well with it for 3d, but at least its playable for most of the linux based games and for 2d most apps run just fine. Yes the tearing in video is painful, but I would like to thank the development team/s for these releases, even though I believe that we are the beta testers some times for these drivers. A special thanks to bridgeman to keeping us up to date with developments and notifying use that issues we have raised on this formum are being listened to and are consideration. Well done ATI.:cool:

[zhark]

Well done ATI.:cool:

+1
I strongly agree. Thank you AMD/ATI.

[masteri]

catalyst 8.8 works very well for all linux based games/apps. Sure, wine may not work well with it for 3d, but at least its playable for most of the linux based games and for 2d most apps run just fine.
Well done ATI.:cool:
aye as said in first post it's been nice to see really good progress, i have noticed huge improvement between 8.3 -> 8.8 drivers, with my x1600. 8.3 works well but there's huge improvement between those drivers.
*bow*

[enzobelmont]

i can't belive to say this, but keep the good job ATI!

as an x200m user i'm almost satisfied:

- no flicker in compiz! wow you made it!
- god 2d and acceptable 3d.

just one more favor please.

SQUEEZE a little more this driver for us.


sorry my english.

[gregy]

I have to say it too. My notebook now working just as I need it to. Thanks.

[Kano]

Well RV410 "works" much worse than 1 year ago. I really hate flickering - which is "normal" since xserver 1.4.x it seems. It flickers with every xrandr command or when an app is started - completely useless. Before it did not flicker at least. It is fully crap that only new R500+ cards are supported better and the older ones are worse than before.

[cjr2k3]

+1!

The only driver that gave me problems is the 8.7 (didn't try 8.8). But it can be my fault.

Keep going ATI. Like a teacher told me once, "you will never know when you did a good thing, but people will always tell you when something is bad".

I think ATI needs to know they are really doing a great job.

[Melcar]

i can't belive to say this, but keep the good job ATI!

as an x200m user i'm almost satisfied:

- no flicker in compiz! wow you made it!
- god 2d and acceptable 3d.

just one more favor please.

SQUEEZE a little more this driver for us.


sorry my english.


I doubt they could "squeeze" anything more out of the 200m. I have such a chip on my laptop and all the crossplatform openGL testing I have done (and including some apps. with Wine) shows exact Windows to Linux performance. My HD3850 and x800gto also show similar results.
I believe that fglrx is for the most part on par with the Windows driver in terms of raw performance. It does fall behind on certain openGL operations (this is probably the main reason it does not work/perform that well in Wine and bad performance on certain games).
All in all, the ATI Linux team is doing a fantastic job.

[Nille_kungen]

I been thinking about making a thread like this one myself.
I think AMD is doing a great job and deserve less negativity.
But if something doesn't work they need to know it.
I use AMD on my computers and i'm satisfied.
And thanks to bridgeman for your work on the phoronix forum (even on hes vacation he replies).

[mirv]

I heartily agree to everything here basically! The drivers have come a long long way, and the community presence (which on the phoronix forums at least means you bridgeman) has been nothing short of fantastic. Keep up the good work - it really is appreciated!

[oblidor]

What amazes me with both ATI and NVIDIA is that they make all this advanced hardware, but still in 2008 are not able to make software drivers to actually utilise the hardware. Tearing and poor 2D acceleration should have been something one struggled with 10 years ago and not now.

However, I really like that ATI/AMD is now supporting Linux and releasing frequent closed source drivers and especillay documentation to make usable open source drivers!

I have just ordered a HD 4870 and hope it will work nicely in my Linux box.

[EmbraceUnity]

My first laptop had Nvidia and I had no video driver problems with Ubuntu Breezy Badger, and when I decided to build a desktop, I was really attracted to the ATI cards. When I first put my computer together, I knew very little about linux and was dismayed at my choice of an ATI card because of the lack of linux support.

However, it wasn't long before AMD bought ATI and committed itself to supporting linux. I have been able to enjoy many games on linux with my ATI card, and I am very pleased with AMD's dedication to open source. Even the open source drivers can now fulfill a great deal of my needs.

Hopefully you guys can support X.org 7.4 in time for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Of course, thanks to the open source drivers, I will be fine either way :)

Thank you AMD/ATI !!

[RealNC]

Yes, thank you ATI for the slow, tearing and unstable drivers that when compared to Intel's look like they have been written by 15 year olds trying to learn systems programming.

Thank you so much.

[Redeeman]

Yes, thank you ATI for the slow, tearing and unstable drivers that when compared to Intel's look like they have been written by 15 year olds trying to learn systems programming.

Thank you so much.
dont insult 15 year olds...

[Gregor A.]

Hello, I would say thanks to the developer if I would be satisfied.
But I am not!

I can compare between an latest NVIDIA and an latest AMD/ATI product and their drivers.

NVIDIA is much better if you have Dualhead configured.
It works simply stable and perfect.

AMD/ATI fglrx LINUX drivers causes hangs, freezes, tearing, slow performance.
Many games don't work in fullscreen mode or crash directly after start. (TORCS, Dreamchees)

a simple:
/etc/init.d/kdm stop
causes a black screen freeze.

Here is my xorg.conf:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11128

For me, this is not a usable state.

So I installed an NVIDIA GF8800 to my Dualhead system, and it run with the latest beta driver simply perfect.

I can watch a tearing free video on the first device display (resolution 1360x768) and play a 3D full screen game on the second device display (resolution 1280x1024), and it works simply stable and good, this is what I mean.

And if you have a problem with ATI/AMD, you didn't have any documentation about possible options.

Please compare self:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/177.70/README/index.html

Every NVIDIA Driver have a perfect manual.

Sorry, but this is really what I think.

[Exospaciac]

I would love to thank AMD for their great work on their Linux drivers.
Except, well, I get better performance out of this HD4850 using the VESA driver. :/

If I can't get this working soon I'm just going to sell it and never buy an AMD card again.

[kusuriya]

Yes I really really do thank ATI/AMD for all they have done and how far they have came soo fast, and while I don't want them to stop, it would be nice to see some more bug fixes for stopper problems (like the checkerboard of doom... yeah the work arounds are there but there is no guarantee a work around will work for you, like with my current setup the checkerboard of doom work arounds haven't worked yet, short of using mesa, and that has been a formula for bitter hatred for me) honestly feature wise where they are now at 8.8 is a good place to do a feature pause and fix all the bugs before you add more features. Honestly if you add too much at once before you fix your bugs its much like cleaning a room at the end of a project, the task becomes harder than it would have been if you had did it while you went, or took breaks to clean it up.
By no means am I harping on them and mad at them, hell this weekend im planning on going and getting a 4xxx card and probly replaceing this nVidia card that is failing in my DVR with an HD 2900, Im just saying honestly, as a consumer and fan, I would like to see more bug fixes before there are too many more features I cant even use because the bugs dont let me.

[RealNC]

I don't get the "thank you for how far you have come and what you have done" argument. They have done little. They released specs and are waiting for others to do something, but they themselves don't really do anything. They even paid someone to do something, but that someone doesn't seem to do, or be able to do it.

AMD, just freakin' do it yourself.

[mirv]

I don't get the "thank you for how far you have come and what you have done" argument. They have done little. They released specs and are waiting for others to do something, but they themselves don't really do anything. They even paid someone to do something, but that someone doesn't seem to do, or be able to do it.

AMD, just freakin' do it yourself.

I think perhaps you don't realise just how much ATI have done since they officially started to support linux (well I refer to when AMD bought ATI, as AMD has always has an interest in linux). From a barely working driver (where display lists wouldn't always work for me), they've since produced a full featured driver with a (mostly) stable core and are now working on the "extras". I put mostly in there due to linux being quite a difficult target to aim for, as it's constantly moving, and new bugs are bound to pop up every now and then. Add to that, they've also released documentation to better allow open source alternatives (and whatever their reasons, it's still a good thing for the open source community). They've made it viable to play commercial games under linux (etqw for example) with their cards and are both internally and externally (with documentation releases) improving drivers all the time, and keeping a community presence despite an awful lot of (in my opinion) undeserved negative feedback.

[RealNC]

Full featured driver? Can you give me a link, cause the ones I found are full of bugs.

[mirv]

now you're just trolling.

[kusuriya]

I don't get the "thank you for how far you have come and what you have done" argument. They have done little. They released specs and are waiting for others to do something, but they themselves don't really do anything. They even paid someone to do something, but that someone doesn't seem to do, or be able to do it.

AMD, just freakin' do it yourself.

My friend if you don't get that argument you must be relativity new to Linux. the first sets of linux drivers the ones before the version bump... lets just say IF you found them and IF you got them working on your consumer card, it made the bugs that we are experiencing a walk in the park, way way back when, I actually had FGLRX blow out an entire partition (not on its own, I added a new drive and was restripeing the array but still how it cause a kernel panic ill never know). They used to be sooo bad that ATI was the butt of many jokes of the Linux community and an example of How Not to do Things on Linux (TM).

[RealNC]

I'm not new to Linux. I'm using it since Slackware 2. That was 1994.

I'm only going to say "thank you" to Matrox and Intel. Rock-solid and fast drivers. ATI/AMD is full of problems. What's there to thank? It's a piece of crap. I ain't gonna say "thanks" for something just because it's less crap than before.

Don't say "thanks" to crap, even if doesn't stink as much as it did in the past. Only say thanks to good stuff.

I'll hold back my "thank you"'s until I get something that works. I don't need all features. I don't need leet stuff. I only need the *BASIC* functionality to work. (Not crashing, switching VTs, no tearing, etc.)

[kusuriya]

Intel I can agree with, but Matrox? Last I checked (its been a while since I have soo I will admit I could be wrong now) but try running the Parhelia in dual head, I remember seeing an entire forum dedicated to workarounds to get dual and tri head working, and still it never worked well, and you couldn't get 3d. and all I am really saying thanks for is they have came a long way from not supporting to where they are now. Intel didn't wake up over night and have the support they have for their vid cards now did they? Rome wasn't built in a day was it? yes its taking some time, and in the mean time you still have the xorg-ati drivers which now if you get the SVN ones support 3d accel on the rv500 and below and radeonHD will get there. Point is they are trying and while they do not deserve adoration just yet some simple recognition of how far they have come in such a short time is due, and always remember whine and cry about the FGLRX driver but like has been said they cant change the driver much for non FireGL cards because the driver is actually optimized for the firegl cards and most of the problems that exist on the consumer cards using the firegl drivers do not exist on the firegl cards and the fixes mess up the performance enhancements on the firegl cards. (And my personal Opinion of that awnser is well then fork them and make a consumer and a firegl driver but meh that makes sense)

[Joe Sixpack]

From what I've been reading all over the net, your experience with ATI drivers depends on 2 things:

Chipset and Platform.

Supposedly, the R500 line is a lot less problematic than the R600 series. Also, if you notice most people that who say they've never had a problem with ATi are using the 32-bit drivers.

I have a HD 3870 with and AMD64, so I'm double screwed. The kernel configuration is hit or miss, with different howto's often contradicting each other. I ended up saying "To hell with it", and just installed openSUSE 11 since they provide the drivers for you.

I must be honest and say that I didn't have any problems whatsoever with Nvidia drivers on my other computer - although I will admit that it was a 32 bit pc, not AMD64.

[mirv]

I can only speak with gentoo experience here, but it's been a while since there have been any real problems between 64bit and 32bit drivers from ati - I think it more comes down to drivers + "extra stuff" (libraries, x version, etc). Most often, half the "driver" problems I have (well, had, I don't have any at current) disappear with an update to xorg and associated libs.
But I will agree that I have a general sense of people with r600 cores having issues (I have an r500 core). That shouldn't be too surprising really - newer core, newer drivers, more issues. That being said, I've noticed a dramatically reduced "show stopper" (my definition: total computer deadlock) problems being reported in the forums. I've also heard more grumblings coming from nvidia users recently (not personally tried nvidia + linux for over a year now).
So while ati may not fix everything overnight, they do continuously work on it, continuously improve, and have stuck to releasing a new driver every month. So I still think they're doing a great job.

[deanjo]

I don't get the "thank you for how far you have come and what you have done" argument. They have done little. They released specs and are waiting for others to do something, but they themselves don't really do anything. They even paid someone to do something, but that someone doesn't seem to do, or be able to do it.

AMD, just freakin' do it yourself.


Hey, the FOSS community cried for documentation and "they would do it themselves". FOSS community claimed that's all they needed. It's up to the FOSS community to put up or shut up. Whatever ATI does extra is just "gravy". It's more then what the FOSS community asked for and should be treated as such. You want to scream at someone, scream at the same people that said that all they needed was documentation.

[Almindor]

Um, sorry but NO. I payed for this card and it still doesn't work 100% after a YEAR on Linux but ALSO ON WINDOWS because of their crappy driver and lame development mechanism (3 teams? come f-ing on!).

The worst thing is that while they fix N bugs, they introduce M new ones. For example, the ETQW SIGSEGV was fixed in 8.8 but now I get artefacts in the game. Flash fullscreen (the youtube version) doesn't work "again" (worked in 8.7, not in 8.6) AND they still can't get their act together on properly supporting Cg shaders.

That's just the Linux problems, now Windows (8.8):
Artefacts in Quake1! Quake f-ing one! That game probably used immediate mode people! How lame must the driver be??

Seriously, the OSS !reverse-engineered! done-in-free time by people who could be making big money elsewhere with their time is already better in some aspects (like text draw speed in 2D).

ATI/AMD should dig a hole and kill themselves for this kind of disgrace. I've been waiting for a year for them to get their act together but never again am I touching a card from this company.

If you want to thank anyone, thank the OSS people who work on the free driver!

[Janusz11]

Well, I personally wouldn't know what to thank ATi for either. When my old Radeon died on me a couple of years ago I consciously replaced it with a nVidia GeForce card because of all the problems I had with the Radeon. Needless to say that I first planned to get a nVidia card again when I planned to build myself a new computer lately. But I read almost as many complaints about the performance of the nVidia cards bigger than a GeForce 7xxx as I read complains about the driver for the ATi cards. So I decided to pick up a Radeon HD4870, because I think that's the best bang for the buck one can get momentarily.

I was really disappointed when I realized that not much has changed since I switched to nVidia a couple of years ago. Yes, the Catalyst driver now supports compositing desktop effects. But it still isn't working with any new Kernel or Xorg release. I think I could live with the latter and the odd behaviour of the driver (ignoring parts of the xorg.conf, not able to creating one when none is present and so on). But the fact that this card is absolutely useless for watching DVDs is not acceptable for me.

In this respect, I agree with others here in the forum: I can't understand why ATi isn't targeting those (basic) issues first instead of just adding new features to the driver.

I'm sure that all the hardcore gamers really appreciated that ATi has finally added crossfire support to the driver lately so that they can now enjoy Crysis in all its glory and don't have to worry about Far Cry 2 either- but wait, last time I checked those games weren't available for Linux anyway!

So, why add new features to a driver that probably only a minority will make use of (if at all) when you know that there are more important issues that should be fixed first.

That said, I don't see anything I could thank ATi for. In this respect I also have to wonder about the biased articles here at Phoronix. Just because AMD/ATi announced to support Linux is no reason to praise them to the skies now. It doesn't change the fact that their driver still has a lot of problems.