AMD Catalyst 8.7 Linux Driver Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Catalyst 8.7 Linux Driver Released

Since last month's release of Catalyst 8.6 for Linux we've seen the introduction of the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards and we've been allowed to share with you that CrossFire is coming to Linux along with other yet to be announced features. Today AMD has released the Catalyst 8.7 Linux driver and it doesn't deliver any new ground-breaking features, but it does bring a few improvements. In fact, the new features in this release are just bringing official Ubuntu 8.04 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP2 support...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjYwNQ

[bugmenot]

I recently bought myself a new computer and installed today fglrx for the first time. My Impressions:
After a "successfull-looking" installation and a restart the activated driver was still "radeonhd". I needed to run "aticonfig --initial -f" in order to use fglrx.
After a second restart I got a "white screen of death" after logging in. After removing a few lines in xorg.conf that imply that AIGLX is not available and third restart it worked!
Scrolling in Firefox for example is not as smooth as with radeonhd, but compiz works. As soon as radeonhd supports compiz I'll switch back to radeonhd, though.

My System:
Ubuntu 8.04 64 bit
GigaByte GA-MA78G-DS3H (3200 onboard)
3 GB RAM

Edit: Graphics corruption when I shut down and error messages when trying to suspend (it works though). Very bad, for now I'll switch back to radeonhd.

[d2kx]

Support for Mobility Radeon X2000 and X3000 series seems to be added.

[Vighy]

Support for Mobility Radeon X2000 and X3000 series seems to be added.

mhhhhh I will tell you if it's true once I will try it! XD

[Alexander Heß]

Resolved Issues

* An X segmentation fault no longer occurs when launching SUZI/textured video. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35214

Known Issues

* An X segmentation fault may occur when launching SUZI/textured video. Further details can be found in topic number 737-35214

What the…?

Did they fix it or didn't they?

[NeoBrain]

Resolved Issues:
Creating two successive connections no longer results in direct GL context to fail.

I hope that's what disabled my 3D accel in 8.6 when I started a second X server, sounds promising.
TOO BAD however, that they still don't seem to have fixed the damn Wine bug >_<
Well, bug fix releases are better than nothing though, keep up the good work ;-)

[NeoBrain]

What the…?

Did they fix it or didn't they?

Guess they fixed it but forgot to remove the "known issue"...
After the watermark from 8.5 it wouldn't surprise me ;-)

[NeoBrain]

Okay, first impressions (jumped from 8.4 to 8.7):
Everything on first X server works like on 8.4 (2D, 3D, compiz), no clear improvements (can't tell without benchmark, it's fluent); Firefox scrolling is still damn slow with compiz, but we all know that already
On the 2nd X server I still get no 3D accel (it fails to init my AGP)

Ah yeah, nearly forgot to test Wine...
Great, worse than before: Got a corruption for about 5 secs, then the usual problems arised, I quitted Wine and the corruption luckily got fixed... turning off Compiz doesn't change anything.

Guess I stick with that release though, won't get much better than staying with 8.4

This is on a Sapphire X1600 PRO 512 MB AGP.

[Wise Ferret]

Xv working for me now on x1600.
Interestingly, I can even run full screen 3d apps under compiz without flickering. Video still flickers under compiz.

Keep up the good work!

[Forge]

TOO BAD however, that they still don't seem to have fixed the damn Wine bug >_<

Oh, COME ON AMD!!!

This is the only bug I had in 8.6 that was a show-stopper for my 4850. Windows issues were largely avoidable, though annoying.

I use Wine a LOT. Having it unavailable is a much bigger thing for me than any of the things that were fixed.

I took out my 4850 for my 8800GT last night, it looks like it'll be at least 8.8 before I put it back in. At this rate I might be on RadeonHD sooner.