Ati, when are we gonna get DECENT OpenGL support?

[markg85]

@dandel after some more consideration i think this really is a driver bug not a Qt bug. Why?
1. 2 other pc's with an older 4xxx card both work just fine with the same example and the same driver version
2. It works on windows (same driver, just a recompile and works even on my 5770)

So that certainly looks like a driver bug to me.

ATI: Get this fixed please!

[gbeauche]

Although, I will state that frequently the bugs on linux with ati cards and these applications are usually because the developers only test against NVidia cards... See the next 3 paragraphs as examples.

Developers usually test against NVIDIA cards because the Linux driver actually works. It's a real pain to develop with ATI drivers. You have more chances to hit a driver bug than hitting a bug in your own program. i.e. if you develop a program and it crashes or doesn't work correctly: on NVIDIA platforms, you will suspect a bug in your program; on ATI platforms, you will firt suspect a bug in the driver because it's not reliable at all. And this generally is confirmed...

[LinuxID10T]

Developers usually test against NVIDIA cards because the Linux driver actually works. It's a real pain to develop with ATI drivers. You have more chances to hit a driver bug than hitting a bug in your own program. i.e. if you develop a program and it crashes or doesn't work correctly: on NVIDIA platforms, you will suspect a bug in your program; on ATI platforms, you will firt suspect a bug in the driver because it's not reliable at all. And this generally is confirmed...

From reading all your forum posts, it seems you have a lot of fun programming for ATI cards Seriously though, Unigine runs just fine on my ATI card, even though it uses OpenGL 4. HOWEVER, I do see why you in particular could suffer from this. You programmed the XvBA -> VA-API program, correct? Could it just be that you wandered into no mans' land (XvBA stuff,) or is it across the whole platform? I do quite enjoy your developing for NVIDIA vs ATI stint though.

[gbeauche]

From reading all your forum posts, it seems you have a lot of fun programming for ATI cards Seriously though, Unigine runs just fine on my ATI card, even though it uses OpenGL 4. HOWEVER, I do see why you in particular could suffer from this. You programmed the XvBA -> VA-API program, correct? Could it just be that you wandered into no mans' land (XvBA stuff,) or is it across the whole platform? I do quite enjoy your developing for NVIDIA vs ATI stint though.

My ATI platform in on the desk so that I can easily reach the reset/poweroff button... I also suffer from the fact that I have to write crap code and other workarounds to get something working kind-of. This is mentally troublesome.

ATI HW is good, only the SW on Linux is a pain. The platform is also good, and I am looking forward to using Bobcat/Bulldozer chips. Unfortunately, awful SW can ruin everything. It's a shame, and terribly frustrating. The most frustrating thing is support and bugs fixing from NVIDIA & Intel is way faster (even on GMA500) although we have *no* official support/project with them normally. And this was again proven no longer than this morning.

[Kano]

@LinuxID10T

Your definition of "perfect" would be differnet when you would own a hd 5 card and use the ATI 10-7 driver - OpenGL is broken with tesselation on Linux AND Win!

[nanonyme]

So you say Qt is the one buggy here and multisampling in the last catalyst driver is just working fine? That is fairly easy to test.. make an opengl application with the multisampling extension and you __should__ have nice anti-aliased lines...

Independent of what implementations are like (after all, it could be working on some platforms even though it's not supposed to) it could still be wrong. (ie doing something not quite covered in the standard)
Scrutinous review of the code against OpenGL standard might be required to find out whether or not it actually does what it's supposed to and nothing more. (the more bit is what gets us sucked into a friendly black hole)

[Panix]

Hi,
Understand my annoyance in this problem. I spend hours to fix something just to find out i can't fix it! Only ATI can! What good is my 5770 card if i need to use software rendering simply because ATI fucks up the OpenGL support!

Mark

Answer is never. Well, more realistically, probably 2210, the year ATI makes contact (with working drivers in Linux).

ATI's overwhelming priority is Windows; Linux is an afterthought. FOSS drivers that only cover older cards and sometimes they (i.e. drivers) are buggy or full of issues. Various features are then not supported. The newer cards may have an alternative in binary drivers but those are always full of bugs and lack various features (or they're always in progress). Once, your distro, if recent, moves to next kernel or X.org version, then ATI has no support for it until much much later.

It's just the open source zealots that preach ATI. If the support seemed to be more dedicated and more resources towards the support, I could see the validity of going ATI. But, unfortunately, I haven't read anything that it's there. If you go OSS or FGLRX, you have different problems but those obstacles prevent you from enjoying your card. You have to switch to Windows to get your card features. ATI's main priority is Windows and Workstations and won't invest money/time into Linux support.

[mugginz]

I for one am prepared to give them till the 10.8 drivers before I start looking at selling my 5870. I'm going to use the progression in 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 usability/stability results as a strong guide as to what time frame I can expect a fully pleasing experience with this card.

To all of those who were so convinced that the reported issues with fglrx were simply figments of users imaginations and/or end user incompetence, and that I wasn't entitled to an opinion on the subject because I didn't personally own an ATI card, let me say you were wrong.

Lets hope ATI continue the improvements to their drivers at a good rate of knots because I will absolutely not stick with ATI through a prolonged period of broken drivers as some have. While I may take a $200 hit when selling the card it's better then waiting for it to become worthless.

[Panix]

Imho, that's the sad part. Many 'ATI fans' were saying to those "complaining" that you don't own a card so how can you claim this or that. But, many here now own the cards. It's a shame because I doubt there's any dispute that the hardware is good and better than Nvidia's. Even the newest NVIDIA GTX 460 cards are an improvement but ATI HD 5850/5870 cards still run at a better temps/power efficiency (speculating, however). Those who dual boot might get away with such cards and that is why I was close to going with an ATI HD 5xxx series. But, the constant prevalence of bugs/issues especially when it comes to video output prevents me from such consideration. I embrace the open source concept but if the dedication to releasing decent drivers is nil, I'm not choosing ATI.

I also don't want to be forced to boot up Windows because the video choices are WAY better.