AMD Puts Out An OpenGL 4.2 Linux Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Puts Out An OpenGL 4.2 Linux Driver

While Mesa won't have OpenGL 4.2 support for some time, NVIDIA released an OpenGL 4.2 preview driver on Monday as soon as the Khronos Group had published the new specification. AMD yesterday has now released a beta Linux driver (of their Catalyst blob, nothing to do with open-source) that provides OpenGL 4.2 support...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTc4MA

[dimko]

I am AMD fan boy. I was using AMD processors for ages. Only AMD. I am poor, so it's better choice for me.

However, I won't consider open source driver for gaming platform. Don't buy AMD for no reason boys and girls.

For over a year AMD graphics drivers are not to a par with their binary driver and it seems they won't ever be. Where i stand - its just marketing step nothing more. So buy either AMD or Nvidia, based on price/performance/power consumption.

[DaemonFC]

It doesn't support GNOME Shell AND it has a watermark. Hooray. :P

Of course, Catalyst is so broken it may never support GNOME Shell or KWin's new OpenGL 2 backend properly.

It renders the browser pages upside down in Firefox if you try to use it in OpenGL composite mode. Can they not do better than this? But yes, I hear the response coming already. They only care about RHEL and SUSE users, and maybe some proprietary games on Ubuntu. I know, I know. :P

[mirv]

It doesn't support GNOME Shell AND it has a watermark. Hooray. :P

Of course, Catalyst is so broken it may never support GNOME Shell or KWin's new OpenGL 2 backend properly.

It renders the browser pages upside down in Firefox if you try to use it in OpenGL composite mode. Can they not do better than this? But yes, I hear the response coming already. They only care about RHEL and SUSE users, and maybe some proprietary games on Ubuntu. I know, I know. :P

It's only a beta....
Seriously though, when AMD say "beta", they mean it - expect bugs. It's more for those who want/need whatever the beta is directly aimed (OpenGL 4.2 in this case). So if you're not using for that purpose, then don't expect much. Have to ask though - how good is the GNOME or KWin backends themselves? They may not be the most stable thing on the planet either.
Anyway, good to see beta drivers out. Glad that AMD and nVidia are keeping track with OpenGL releases - the support from both companies by having drivers usable by developers is most definitely a good thing, and the Mesa folk aren't sitting idle either.

[DaemonFC]

It's only a beta....
Seriously though, when AMD say "beta", they mean it - expect bugs. It's more for those who want/need whatever the beta is directly aimed (OpenGL 4.2 in this case). So if you're not using for that purpose, then don't expect much. Have to ask though - how good is the GNOME or KWin backends themselves? They may not be the most stable thing on the planet either.
Anyway, good to see beta drivers out. Glad that AMD and nVidia are keeping track with OpenGL releases - the support from both companies by having drivers usable by developers is most definitely a good thing, and the Mesa folk aren't sitting idle either.

Yeah, except these aren't new. (except the watermark of course)

AMD's FGLRX team blows. Seriously, I have had nothing but problems out of that thing and all they do every month is bump the version and lie about more OpenGL extensions it doesn't properly support.

[DaemonFC]

I am AMD fan boy. I was using AMD processors for ages. Only AMD. I am poor, so it's better choice for me.

However, I won't consider open source driver for gaming platform. Don't buy AMD for no reason boys and girls.

For over a year AMD graphics drivers are not to a par with their binary driver and it seems they won't ever be. Where i stand - its just marketing step nothing more. So buy either AMD or Nvidia, based on price/performance/power consumption.

Their processors are fine, their GPUs only seem to work properly with Windows. But they are so far up Microsoft's ass it's hard to tell where they end and AMD begins lately.

Pimping Windows 7, promoting IE 9, advertising DirectX, running their site on Windows Server and IIS.

It's not too hard to tell where they're coming from, especially after you load their Linux proprietary blob and watch everything fall over and die.

[mirv]

Yeah, except these aren't new. (except the watermark of course)

AMD's FGLRX team blows. Seriously, I have had nothing but problems out of that thing and all they do every month is bump the version and lie about more OpenGL extensions it doesn't properly support.

Kind of strange, as I've had no such problems with fglrx, aside from a corrupt mouse cursor on a secondary monitor. That one is annoying; even if I'm back to a single monitor, I know it's still affecting others. I'm curious though - which opengl extensions doesn't it support that it claims it does? I think their early-bird OpenGL 4.1 driver had one (or was it 2?) issues where something wasn't on spec, but that was cleared up on official release. I've encountered no such issues with OpenGL 3.x, or with 2.x (which I admittedly don't program with anymore).
You also mentioned that the GNOME shell had problems - but what problems? Complaining is one thing, but aside from a single firefox issue (which could well be a problem with firefox, not the drivers) I haven't read any actual issue.

[Luke_Wolf]

I am AMD fan boy. I was using AMD processors for ages. Only AMD. I am poor, so it's better choice for me.

However, I won't consider open source driver for gaming platform. Don't buy AMD for no reason boys and girls.

For over a year AMD graphics drivers are not to a par with their binary driver and it seems they won't ever be. Where i stand - its just marketing step nothing more. So buy either AMD or Nvidia, based on price/performance/power consumption.

On the Contrary I would say that the open source radeon drivers are accelerating wonderfully, the fact that they're already at 50% speed is outstanding, and I have no doubt that in a few years that they'll close the gap. I mean think about it quite a lot of work has been put into getting up support for the older hardware and the newer hardware, and they still have plenty of work when it comes to supporting features according to their matrix, and so not as much has been put into optimization work. The fact remains however that they're already at 50% of the speed of FGLRX and climbing, I personally wouldn't be too surprised if radeon surpasses FGLRX by the time that Mesa is completely caught up (my personal guess on that being 2-3 years), that's how I see it anyway.

[mirv]

Their processors are fine, their GPUs only seem to work properly with Windows. But they are so far up Microsoft's ass it's hard to tell where they end and AMD begins lately.

Pimping Windows 7, promoting IE 9, advertising DirectX, running their site on Windows Server and IIS.

It's not too hard to tell where they're coming from, especially after you load their Linux proprietary blob and watch everything fall over and die.

So.....again, "fall over and die" doesn't really explain a problem. It actually sounds more like you either a) can't install driver properly, or b) want to blame AMD's drivers for any issue in the linux ecosystem. If it would make you feel better, I can point out some problems I have with AMD's OpenGL implementation, but it's all related to how the driver handles people not sticking to spec, and even this is being improved on greatly (when I do nasty things, it generally crashes only the program now, and not take all of X with it - which kind of helps in debugging). Of course, I can point to some nvidia problems I've encountered too. I can't mention anything on Intel, but good luck with their hardware and OpenGL 3.x.

[Luke_Wolf]

Their processors are fine, their GPUs only seem to work properly with Windows. But they are so far up Microsoft's ass it's hard to tell where they end and AMD begins lately.

Pimping Windows 7, promoting IE 9, advertising DirectX, running their site on Windows Server and IIS.

It's not too hard to tell where they're coming from, especially after you load their Linux proprietary blob and watch everything fall over and die.

Actually as far as I could tell, AMD is pimping out both linux and windows, such as here http://sites.amd.com/us/business/sof...es/redhat.aspx And if you want to really ask questions about advertising, why the hell is it that until I set up my DNS black hole, whenever I would go to any Linux site I'd see Microsoft Advertisements? I've seen more microsoft advertisements on linux sites than anywhere else.