AMD Catalyst 9.7 For Linux Released

[nanonyme]

nononono..LOOL... on my system "glxinfo"

OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8975
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.40


GSGL 1.4 = openGL3.1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I seriously recommend sleeping it off, whatever it is you're taking.

[bridgman]

Yeah we know Fedora is cutting edge but why does your competitors drivers have no trouble with it? They work even with rawhide. It doesn't feel like good enough excuse. Maybe AMD should start replacing bigger parts of X like nvidia does, because frankly it seems like a lot better way. I mean it's proprietary blob anyway and people who install it realizes that (hopefully) so who cares how invasive it is as long as it works?

I really have answered this question a dozen or more times already, but let's go for lucky thirteen. Some of our competitors started supporting consumer users and distros several years ago, and today users of those products have forgotten all the problems and the the frustration they went through at the time.

Now it's our turn - we can either keep working at it or give up, whichever you prefer, but anyone who thinks it's possible to wave a magic wand over millions of lines of driver code (and yes, it does take millions of lines of code to implement a state-of-the-art driver these days) and transform it in a few months is dreaming.

I know it was comforting a couple of years ago to think that a handful of open source developers could write a better and faster driver in a few weeks if only they had specs, but I think everyone knows better today (the developers knew what to expect, but nobody asked them ).

The fglrx driver is seeing a lot of improvements, and along the way we need to make decisions about where to focus our efforts. Focusing on improving the core driver rather than extending support for new kernels definitely makes for some unhappy users, but if we changed the decision (say to favor new kernel/distro support over improving composite, video and Wine support) we would simply make a *different* (and larger) group of people unhappy.

Once we finish adding and stabilizing consumer features we probably will not need to make those difficult decisions, but we're not there yet.

Especially because free driver is going to take at least a year before it's anywhere near the catalyst drivers functionality and performance. All this waiting and these odd reasons for waiting are just frustrating. When nvidias drivers just works everywhere why would anyone bother with AMD clearly more unreliable offering. Doesn't make any sense.

By "odd reasons for waiting" do you mean "making our top priority improving the core driver functionality rather than making the driver work on more kernel versions and more distros" ? If you're using a faster-moving distro you might not like that decision but I wouldn't call it odd

There are all kinds of reasons for choosing one product over another. In the specific case of Linux, it might be a preference for open source drivers, or you might be a professional workstation user, or you might be using one of the distros where our support is already pretty solid, or you may be dual-booting with another OS... everyone has to make their own choice. I'm not trying to inflate what we have to offer, but I also think we have come a long way in the last couple of years and we're not done yet.

[djdoo]

Wow guys the conversation really caught fire!!

Well to chill out things a bit and from a more cold blooded let's say point of view we must put the facts into a correct order and weight them.
From the day the new coded fglrx driver arrived for us the long waited costumers for a modern linux graphics driver we have seen only improvements and big ones! The fact that we compare 3D and 2D performance today with the years more prepared nvidia driver and in many parts fglrx outperforms the nvidia or even the windows catalyst driver is the proof that the dedicated developers are really working on it!
Does anyone of you remember how awful was the old codebase fglrx was?? Most of the times it couldn't even install itself!!

@bridgman:
Listen my friend John, I understand that your team has a lot of work to do finetuning and rounding the sharp edges of the code and I known that in anything any work you do in life settings and finetunings require most of your working time and most of the testing but your team's greatest problem isn't us still complaining or time that is not enough or economic crisis let's say, it is still the ghost of the old codebase fglrx driver which was almost abandoned for long long time... Consider how much time was lost all those years for development and the mistake in ATI's policy not to see that linux will be growing pretty fast the forecoming years and take an important piece of the PC market cake always growing in fast rates and so important to make Microsoft write opensource drivers(Hyper-V) for Linux!!
And now you always have to run sprints to catch the development stream whereas nvidia still has a slow steady tempo over the years...

I have a preposition also, if we can do something to help there? Not in coding but in testing or writing-translating documentation for the driver make things more friendly for new linux friends anything that could make the developers have less questions in their minds and increase the number of answers...

Well for the history Fedora 11 does not even use an xorg.conf file...

[nanonyme]

so important to make Microsoft write opensource drivers(Hyper-V) for Linux!!

Wasn't the point of the driver that you will be able to run a Windows (tm) operating system on top of Linux kernel's virtualization layer fast?

Well for the history Fedora 11 does not even use an xorg.conf file...

It can use one, it just doesn't by default come with one since opensource drivers are autodetected and usually come with reasonable default settings.

[bridgman]

Wasn't the point of the driver that you will be able to run a Windows (tm) operating system on top of Linux kernel's virtualization layer fast?

I thought it was the other way round - improving performance when Windows was the host OS (ie running all the time) and Linux was running on top (when needed).

[djdoo]

It can use one, it just doesn't by default come with one since opensource drivers are autodetected and usually come with reasonable default settings.

Well the thing I know for opensource drivers is that they can use the 40% to say the most of your HD 2xxx or 3xxx or 4xxx card's abilities wereas fglrx currently utilizes almost 80% for me correctly...

They are still not ready for the modern cards even though they are more user friendly(no installation, automatic output detection and 2D acceptable usability) because think about the reasons you buy a new graphics card or a motherboard with a modern integrated one...

1. 3D performance on much higher resolutions new monitors have and new game titles.
2. HD Video playback and modern 2D features.
3. Combination of more GPUs -> Crossfire.
4. More than one screens.
5. Better power management.

Opensource drivers cover now only a part of the 2. reason and a part of the 4. too. 1-3-5 are of no discussion out of their abilities yet...
We will hopefully see improvements as Gallium 3D matures but for now nothing exciting for us...

[Qaridarium]

I seriously recommend sleeping it off, whatever it is you're taking.

realy.. what is your problem?

if you do not belive that wine have an wine specific OpenGL exansion in openGL3.2 tell this as an question to bridgman!

this extansion will make the transcode from dx to openGL much faster and modern features at the first time realy playaple..

becourse all the time you can handel all DX in an Software Rendericer.. but its not fast wine can't support games with slow Pur GSGL code.

the new exansion in openGL3.2... in wine 1.1.24 and up wine has code for invidia with this technologie to speeds up the transcode.

in wine 1.1.25 AMD/ATI works but only GSGL "slow" becourse to much overhead to controll the transcode.

OpenGL3.2 will speed up wine!

[smitty3268]

realy.. what is your problem?

if you do not belive that wine have an wine specific OpenGL exansion in openGL3.2 tell this as an question to bridgman!

this extansion will make the transcode from dx to openGL much faster and modern features at the first time realy playaple..

becourse all the time you can handel all DX in an Software Rendericer.. but its not fast wine can't support games with slow Pur GSGL code.

the new exansion in openGL3.2... in wine 1.1.24 and up wine has code for invidia with this technologie to speeds up the transcode.

in wine 1.1.25 AMD/ATI works but only GSGL "slow" becourse to much overhead to controll the transcode.

OpenGL3.2 will speed up wine!

Qaridarium, it's self-evident that wine doesn't have some requirement on OpenGL3.2. Why is that, you ask? BECAUSE OGL3.2 DOESN'T EXIST YET!!! And unless you work for Khronos, or one of the parties involved in creating the new standard, you really have no clue about what's going to be made a part of 3.2. Now maybe the nvidia extension you're talking about will be added, but you don't know that for sure. OGL3.2 could come out without it, and it would still just be a proprietary nvidia extension, and then I suppose you'd probably be coming here talking about how wine requires OpenGL 3.3.

[Dimarchi]

Gradual improvement. For the first time I can watch movies with Compiz on and not having the computer lock on me now and then. I still notice tearing, occasionally, with default settings...haven't yet tried others. Using Ubuntu 9.04 (64-bit), video card Gigabyte's 1gb 4870 connected to a Benq 24 inch LCD monitor with DVI - I have yet to use --buildpkg. The desktop is extended to include my analog TV using Display.

Catalyst reports my main monitor's max res the same as TV's res (1024x768). Set to correct res of 1920x1200 with Display. It also reports the LCD monitor as Display 2 - probably due to the way these monitors are connected (as specified in Gigabyte's manual). This is true in Vista, as well. The main effect in my daily use is that Firefox opens up to the vertically maxed res of 768 instead of 1200 (apparently), so that I have to stretch Firefox's window downwards. This used to be the case with Thunderbird, too, but it opens up correctly with this driver.

[Wintervenom]

..........

Really, what is your problem?

If you do not believe that Wine has a Wine-specific OpenGL 3.2 extension, ask Bridgman!

This extension will make the DirectX-to-OpenGL translation much faster.

You can handle DirectX calls with software rendering, but its slow, and Wine can't support games with slow pure GSGL code.

The new OpenGL 3.2 extension in Wine 1.1.24 and up has code for nVidia with this technology that speeds up the translation.

In Wine 1.1.25, AMD/ATi works, but GSGL is slow because there is too much overhead in the translation.

OpenGL 3.2 will speed up Wine!