catalyst 9.6 is out

[energyman]

wget https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-9-6-x86.x86_64.run

works.

very, very slowly ....

[gururise]

wget https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-9-6-x86.x86_64.run

works.

very, very slowly ....

Do you have a changelog? I wonder what the improvements are.

[energyman]

not yet, no. The release notes are always uploaded a bit later in my experience. I don't think they will be available in the next 12-24h

but the driver package is a lot bigger than previous ones. 89mb instead of 85mb of 9.5 or 83 of 9.4, 81 of 9.3, 80 of 9.2, 79 of 9.1

[hpestilence]

wget https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-9-6-x86.x86_64.run

works.

very, very slowly ....

hehe beat me to it, but I can't compile it yet due to the same errors from 9.5 not building on kernel 2.6.29

EDIT: The 2.6.29 patch still applies "cleanly".

EDIT2: GL_VERTEX_SHADER_ARB:
GL_MAX_VERTEX_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS_ARB = 1024
GL_MAX_VARYING_FLOATS_ARB = 64
GL_MAX_VERTEX_ATTRIBS_ARB = 16
GL_MAX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS_ARB = 16
GL_MAX_VERTEX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS_ARB = 16
GL_MAX_COMBINED_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS_ARB = 16
GL_MAX_TEXTURE_COORDS_ARB = 16
GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER_ARB:
GL_MAX_FRAGMENT_UNIFORM_COMPONENTS_ARB = 1024
GL_MAX_TEXTURE_COORDS_ARB = 16
GL_MAX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS_ARB = 16 yay!

[energyman]

hehe beat me to it, but I can't compile it yet due to the same errors from 9.5 not building on kernel 2.6.29

EDIT: The 2.6.29 patch still applies "cleanly".

EDIT2: yay!

no 2.6.29? oh man - that sucks. Really. It does.

[energyman]

release notes are out.

[bridgman]

no 2.6.29? oh man - that sucks. Really. It does.

Just so you understand why we aren't spending all our time on the newest kernels, we have a number of workstation customers running on RHEL 4.7 which AFAIK uses a modified 2.6.9 kernel. No that is not a typo. Yes we have to support it.

[egon2003]

Just so you understand why we aren't spending all our time on the newest kernels, we have a number of workstation customers running on RHEL 4.7 which AFAIK uses a modified 2.6.9 kernel. No that is not a typo. Yes we have to support it.

What does that have to do with 2.6.29 and 2.6.30 which have been i rc for a few weeks. If Nvidia can do it so can AMD.

[lordmozilla]

If Nvidia can do it so can AMD.

What bridgeman is saying is that their dev team is inferior I think...

(nothing like a little banter to get some devs going...)

I mean come on 2.6.29 isn't even current now.

And we don't care if you have to support guys on RHEL 4.7. Thats your stupid agreements you made with them. Now aren't AMD at the forefront of technology? Or at least supposed to be?

[super.rad]

Well there was me hoping I could use the new driver, looks like i'll stick with the radeon driver instead

[energyman]

Just so you understand why we aren't spending all our time on the newest kernels, we have a number of workstation customers running on RHEL 4.7 which AFAIK uses a modified 2.6.9 kernel. No that is not a typo. Yes we have to support it.

I know that - and I am gratefull that people who don't use mainstream distros or compile their own kernels aren't left out. BUT:
2.6.29 is out for MONTH
2.6.28 is not supported by the STABLE tree anymore.

[nanonyme]

What bridgeman is saying is that their dev team is inferior I think...Actually iirc you usually have to use older driver versions with nVidia if you want to have support with older kernels. nVidia and AMD/ATi seem to have different target groups altogether. nVidia targets gamers with new kernels, AMD/ATi targets enterprise distros with older kernels. I doubt you'd get as fast updates with nVidia if they were also required to do backwards compat as far as AMD/ATi apparently does (2.6.9? That's amazing). With nVidia if you want to use older kernels you need to also use older unmaintained drivers so it's as if they think enterprise users wouldn't exist at all.

[energyman]

nvidia's latest official driver:
Software Element
Min Requirement
Check With...
Linux kernel 2.4.7 cat /proc/version
XFree86/X.Org 4.0.1/6.7 XFree86 -version/Xorg -version
Kernel modutils 2.1.121 insmod --version

so your theory has some holes.

[nanonyme]

so your theory has some holes.It's based on what I've personally experienced. Every nVidia driver version I tried was strictly limited to a range of kernel versions outside which it would either not compile or would run badly. (I did use nVidia for years on Linux before moving to an ATi card)

[wzzrd]

Come on, AMD guys, this is starting to get a bit sad now. As said above 2.6.29 is at least three months old now (because 2.6.30 is out).

Isn't it time you branch the 2.6.9 code away from the 2.6.29 code in your driver? I can't imagine your code being in a healthy state at the moment, supporting that vast range of kernels.

Interesting thing here, btw: you are supporting a 2.6.9 kernel for RHEL4.7 and 4.8, but you stopped supporting older cards in the recent drivers? Huh? Wouldn't you expect RHEL4.x workstations to sport those exact old cards? I mean, why have old software on a new machine?

[super.rad]

Interesting thing here, btw: you are supporting a 2.6.9 kernel for RHEL4.7 and 4.8, but you stopped supporting older cards in the recent drivers? Huh? Wouldn't you expect RHEL4.x workstations to sport those exact old cards? I mean, why have old software on a new machine?
Good point, I highly doubt the companys using RHEL4 are using R6xx/7xx cards

[hdas]

Just so you understand why we aren't spending all our time on the newest kernels, we have a number of workstation customers running on RHEL 4.7 which AFAIK uses a modified 2.6.9 kernel. No that is not a typo. Yes we have to support it.

I see, workstation customers use Radeon HD 3XXX series+ on RHEL 4.7 and stick to kernel 2.6.9 for stability, and they so much want a Catalyst 8.7 (hint: doesn't support r500). <sarcasm>Mmm, I just got a Core-i7 with RadeonHD 4870 and I would so much want to run a brand new distro called RHEL 4.99 with kernel 2.6.9.137, or better yet, 2.4.31 with nptl.</sarcasm> A wonderful company has wonderful customers too.

Dude, you guys have been caught slacking :D. Even if you did spend your time on rhel, please dont say it as it makes your company and customers look silly.

[bridgman]

I think the idea is to enable hardware upgrades while still supporting in-house apps which haven't been upgraded for newer systems. I will double-check re: the impact of dropping support for older GPUs though.

hdas, if putting in extra work to support what our largest customers ask for is slacking, then I guess we're slacking...

[forum1793]

I thought I read somewhere that the 2.6.30 kernel allowed for installing catalyst without patching. Has anyone tried?

So far I've only tried 2.6.30 kernel in 64 bit with catalyst 9-5 and it would not install. I haven't tried with 32 bit yet. Maybe in next couple of days.

BTW, for the newer qt4 and kde4 as part of slackware current, I compiled a 2.6.27.15 kernel and catalyst 9-5 installed and worked OK. Besides addition of a wireless driver or two and a TV-card driver, I haven't noticed much improvement in performance with newer kernels. If I wasn't trying out slackware-current I would be perfectly happy with a 2.6.27 kernel.

[RealNC]

hdas, if putting in extra work to support what our largest customers ask for is slacking, then I guess we're slacking...

And now, guess *why* those are your largest customers :D Because it sucks for the rest.

[mirv]

And now, guess *why* those are your largest customers :D Because it sucks for the rest.

They're the largest customers because they pay an awful lot of money. That's business. That the fglrx drivers (and let's all remember why it's called "fglrx" - firegl is the workstation series, not the home user graphics cards) have improved considerably in recent years shows that home user linux is a growing customer base. Let's add the open source push - if the open source drivers aren't as good as everybody wants them, you can not blame AMD for that one. Give it a break already.

[RealNC]

They're the largest customers because they pay an awful lot of money. That's business. That the fglrx drivers (and let's all remember why it's called "fglrx" - firegl is the workstation series, not the home user graphics cards) have improved considerably in recent years shows that home user linux is a growing customer base. Let's add the open source push - if the open source drivers aren't as good as everybody wants them, you can not blame AMD for that one. Give it a break already.

I can blame them and I will. Because there's always NVidia to compare too. I will stop when Catalyst becomes usable, or when AMD starts saying "don't buy our cards if you have Linux."

If neither of those things happen, I will continue to spread the word: AMD cards on Linux suck.

[lordmozilla]

I still can't play video with Kde4's compositor full screen.

Sucks i love transparency.

[Michael]

Continue Discussion @ http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17731