AMD Catalyst 11.2 Linux Driver Released

[mirv]

Well, I'd assume that AMD are working on improving out of spec handling - running to spec is one thing, but they need to handle out of spec too (if nothing else to prevent things from crashing).

[PsynoKhi0]

What you linked to I thought was more due to a wine bug actually. The AMD guys can make a workaround, but if something's not in spec, how do you blame AMD for that?

My thought exactly.
"We've fixed this issue" doesn't necessarily imply a bug being squashed, making the code align itself with WINE's idiosyncrasies also "resolves this issue".

Specs and standards are supposed to level the playing field. One of the many requirements for users to be able to grab a piece of hardware without having to sell one of their kidneys in the long run. Any "our stuff works specifically with hardware from this vendor, others will have to play catch-up" is not something anyone should look forward.

[monraaf]

The burden of proof is on AMD and its defenders. It's a little easy to say "Well the bug really is in wine, but we worked around wine's idiosyncrasies in our driver" and then hide behind closed source code and not disclose exactly what wine's 'idiosyncrasy' supposedly is at fault.

I challenge anyone accusing wine of having an 'out of spec' nvidia bias to not only accuse (which is easy), but also to disclose the specifics where wine supposedly is at fault. I don't think you can, but if you can I'm pretty sure if you file a bug report it will be fixed in wine.

[mirv]

It was mentioned in the link what was the issue. In this particular case, it was GLSL shaders not being properly formed, according to spec.
If you'd like however, and this isn't for wine but from my own programming, I have seen shaders missing things specifying the precision of floats in the fragment shader. This is required by spec - shaders on fglrx wouldn't work without it. Problem is, not much old code had it, and previous specs didn't require it - so if it still worked, why look for a problem?
This is why it's important to have at least 2 implementations of any spec - to check and make sure everything's programmed as it "should" be. No blame, no accusations, merely continued software development.
People are quick to always point the finger at AMD, and while their drivers have problems just like any (and every) other driver out there, it doesn't mean other software is perfect.

[PsynoKhi0]

If you'd like however, and this isn't for wine but from my own programming, I have seen shaders missing things specifying the precision of floats in the fragment shader. This is required by spec - shaders on fglrx wouldn't work without it. Problem is, not much old code had it, and previous specs didn't require it - so if it still worked, why look for a problem?
This is why it's important to have at least 2 implementations of any spec - to check and make sure everything's programmed as it "should" be. No blame, no accusations, merely continued software development.

Alrighty then, I suppose I got carried away, apologies where due.

[energyman]

With a Radeon HD 4890 I get about 60 FPS in Ubuntu 10.10 and 230 FPS in Windows with the Counter Strike: Source time demo. I ran a similar test with an older system using an nVidia 7900GS and got almost identical Windows/Linux FPS results. Is Linux performance with the Catalyst 11.2 driver that much worse than the Window driver or is there a specific issue with the 4980?

tearfree = vsync always on