Open-Source AMD Fusion Driver Stabilizes

[Drago]

Mine Thinkpad x120e, with E-350 also runs good. I have to disable kwin effects to run fluidly on external 1920x1200 monitor, though. The biggest issue with this laptop is actually the BIOS.

[AnonymousCoward]

Mine Thinkpad x120e, with E-350 also runs good. I have to disable kwin effects to run fluidly on external 1920x1200 monitor, though. The biggest issue with this laptop is actually the BIOS.

What about about battery life, how many hours you get, and how much is it in Windows?

[wizard69]

It appears as if this is still a work in progress for LInux. That isn't a bad thing as it appears to be far enough along for one use I had in mind. That being a platform for EMC.

[runrun]

I'm running an e350 (zotac ad10) as an HTPC running openelec nightly eden builds (xbmc, catalyst 11.10) - It eats through 95% of 1080p .mkvs irrelevant of bitrate, 5% play 'perfectly fine' except all movement on the screen is followed by horrendous macroblocking

I knew it was going to be a rough ride for the platform in linux, and any sensible person would have bought an older, cheaper nvidia ION based device...
I do hope that things improve in the future, before it becomes completely obsolete.

I don't care about game benchmarks, desktop GUI performance or even proprietary/oss drivers (yes, I said it...) - Playing back video is the first thing I'm interested in, ATI are absolutely miles behind in this regard. VDPAU and nvidia binary drivers have worked pretty much flawlessly for as long as I can remember, ATI on linux still remains a disgraceful mess for many users.

[Drago]

What about about battery life, how many hours you get, and how much is it in Windows?

In Linux with wifi on, about 6 hours of browsing. This is no-flash setup.
In windows little more than 6:30-7 hours, no-flash also.

For Linux I have followed this wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IBM_ThinkPad_X120e

Do you have such laptop in possession? I want another Linux guy to test something.

[BlackStar]

I have an HP dm1z, which is close enough provided you don't wish to test BIOS-related stuff. (Both systems probably use similar Foxconn motherboards).

[Drago]

I have an HP dm1z, which is close enough provided you don't wish to test BIOS-related stuff. (Both systems probably use similar Foxconn motherboards).

Well, I actually want to test BIOS stuff. When I enter the bios, and when I exit it without any changes Linux won't boot. It hangs at "Booting the kernel...". I need to turn off the laptop, and then back on. Restart after windows...the same. Any ideas?

[AnonymousCoward]

In Linux with wifi on, about 6 hours of browsing. This is no-flash setup.
In windows little more than 6:30-7 hours, no-flash also.

For Linux I have followed this wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IBM_ThinkPad_X120e

Do you have such laptop in possession? I want another Linux guy to test something.

Not yet. I've one of these on my wish-list and I would have bought one already weren't it for the entire Linux driver mess. No suspend/resume with catalyst and no video acceleration with radeon

Well it's good to see that at least you get decent battery life. I'll probably wait for Intel Cedar Trail netbooks to hit the stores though (not much confidence in ATI, sorry to say).

[wizard69]

Fortunately the intention isn't to view videos if I go this route. One thing of note is that supposedly AMD drivers will get a major overhaul by the end of the year fixing many issues. Hopefully issues with this hardware.

I'm running an e350 (zotac ad10) as an HTPC running openelec nightly eden builds (xbmc, catalyst 11.10) - It eats through 95% of 1080p .mkvs irrelevant of bitrate, 5% play 'perfectly fine' except all movement on the screen is followed by horrendous macroblocking

I knew it was going to be a rough ride for the platform in linux, and any sensible person would have bought an older, cheaper nvidia ION based device...
I do hope that things improve in the future, before it becomes completely obsolete.

I don't care about game benchmarks, desktop GUI performance or even proprietary/oss drivers (yes, I said it...) - Playing back video is the first thing I'm interested in, ATI are absolutely miles behind in this regard. VDPAU and nvidia binary drivers have worked pretty much flawlessly for as long as I can remember, ATI on linux still remains a disgraceful mess for many users.

[madbiologist]

You can watch 720p video fine in VLC. Flash, however, is too slow - neither 10.3 nor 11.0 can play fullscreen video smoothly, *regardless* of the resolution, and everything above 360p stutters.

Anyone with the dual-core E-350 should benefit from the new Flash Player 11.2 Beta, which introduces support for multi-threaded video decoding. This will not improve video decoding performance on the E-250 as it is a single-core chip. Anyone who has been following the articles on Phoronix will probably know about this already, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. Flash Player 11.2 Beta can be downloaded from Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer11-2.html