ATI fglrx 8.30.3 Display Drivers

[Michael]

Hitting on Halloween/the last day of the month is the ATI/AMD 8.30.3 Display Drivers!

No new features are in this release, but there is a chunk of resolved issues:

* Users with X Server X.org 7.1 can now play video using XV. The ATI AVIVO Video adaptor is now present. Further details and the workaround can be found in topic number 737-22852
* When failing to change the TV format the aticonfig --tv-info no longer report the failed TV format. Further details and the workaround can be found in topic number 737-23431
* Using the MPlayer to play a video file followed by dragging any window over top of the player no longer results in corruption being noticed and the video file pausing. Further details and the workaround can be found in topic number 737-23432

The Fedora Core 6 packaging scripts have also been included. So try them out and report back if there are any problems (mainly interested in the fglrxcontrolpanel problem).

The Phoronix ATI 8.30.3 Review can be found @ http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=7715

As always, we share all of the details down to the performance numbers and changes not mentioned in the official log.

The ATI 8.30.3 Release Notes are at https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206...ux_8.30.3.html

x86/x86_64 Download: https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206...ler-8.30.3.run

[Longshot]

These drivers don't give me a black screen now.. They lockup when the desktop starts. Have to drop back to the 8.24 drivers for the 200M chip set.

[numerodix]

Excellent, my lack of x-video is now history.

One thing I don't get about ATI is that they gradually drop support for older drivers. So if you have a card that's a few years old and you want to run xorg 7.2, the driver won't support it. So then what?

[Michael]

What support drop are you referring to? The R100/R200 cards have been removed since they are well, very old. The open-source Radeon drivers are excellent (pardoning the lower gaming performance). The R200 support that was recently dropped still remains in a different development branch, so ATI is capable of still releasing "legacy" drivers if they so desire. The firegl_public code between 8.28.8 and the latest drivers should remain compatible for a while, so support for new kernels, etc... can be attained that way. The R200 support was dropped to better spend the resources for developing features in the drivers that will only work on post-R200 hardware.

[shinytoaster]

Appears to have the same install issues as the previous version on FC6.

cp: cannot stat `x710/usr/X11R6/bin/*': No such file or directory
find: install/usr/bin/fireglcontrolpanel: No such file or directory

Guess I'll wait for the livna package again.

install log -

[Message] Kernel Module : Trying to install a precompiled kernel module.
[Message] Kernel Module : Precompiled kernel module version mismatched.
[Message] Kernel Module : Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
cleaning...
patching 'highmem.h'...
assuming new VMA API since we do have kernel 2.6.x...
Assuming default VMAP API
doing Makefile based build for kernel 2.6.x and higher
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6/build SUBDIRS=/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686'
CC [M] /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:89:26: error: linux/config.h: No such file or directory
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:456: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer typ
e
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c: In function ‘firegl_stub_open’:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:579: warning: assignment discards qualifiers from pointer
target type
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c: In function ‘__ke_smp_call_function’:
/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.c:3898: warning: passing argument 1 of ‘smp_call_function’ f
rom incompatible pointer type
make[2]: *** [/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x/firegl_public.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686'
make: *** [kmod_build] Error 2
build failed with return value 2
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to compile kernel module - please consult readme.

[Michael]

See http://phoronix.net/forums/showthread.php?t=318 there for fireglcontrolpanel fix.

[shinytoaster]

See http://phoronix.net/forums/showthread.php?t=318 there for fireglcontrolpanel fix.

Thanks for that but I thought they said they fixed install issues on FC6...

Don't want to jump through hoops to install a driver, I'll just wait for the livna package, which worked for me last time.

[stjepan]

Whoa, 8.30 sucks again!
Still no GLX_EXT_tfp support

[afterburntdw]

I didn't see it mentioned, but does the 8.30 release have support for AIGLX?

[Michael]

I didn't see it mentioned, but does the 8.30 release have support for AIGLX?

No, 8.30.3 doesn't support AIGLX.