AMD Catalyst 12.3 For Linux Officially Released

[allquixotic]

@Michael I think this comment is more true than yours. Can you please start using it in the future Catalyst for Linux news? Because of this truth I dropped some time ago all Radeons and buy only Intel/Nvidia and recommend them to others. Maybe Radeon is similar or equally good hardware when compared to Intel or Nvidia but who cares if these features are not exposed by driver to the user and Operating System. The hardware is as good as its drivers - I do not remember who wrote this but this opened my eyes as hardware buyer and I always follow this.

IMHO the radeon open source drivers are the best hardware drivers available for Linux. Problem is, they only start to really look good (and by that I mean, actual gaming and professional 3d applications, NOT just KMS and a composited desktop) for a given piece of hardware after it's been on the market for about 2 years. It's their "goal" to reduce this time, but they seem to be making baby steps toward their goal, not leaps and bounds.

But if you're willing to wait, it's the best.

[Kano]

Btw. when you look at version it can be only a slight modification of the former one (everything after 8.911 is broken). 12-2 was not released in feb, so 8.94 was most likely too broken... but 8.951 is definitely a joke...

11-11 - good - 8.911 - Tue Nov 8 10:30:38 EST 2011
11-12 - bad - 8.92 - Wed Dec 7 11:21:44 EST 2011
12-1 - bad - 8.93 - Thu Jan 19 11:56:34 EST 201
12-2 - bad - 8.95 - Wed Feb 29 15:34:55 EST 2012
12-3 - bad - 8.951 - Fri Mar 23 16:38:51 EDT 2012

Get rid of that stupid monthly releases. Fix the drivers and release it when done!

[evolution]

Btw. when you look at version it can be only a slight modification of the former one (everything after 8.911 is broken). 12-2 was not released in feb, so 8.94 was most likely too broken... but 8.951 is definitely a joke...

11-11 - good - 8.911 - Tue Nov 8 10:30:38 EST 2011
11-12 - bad - 8.92 - Wed Dec 7 11:21:44 EST 2011
12-1 - bad - 8.93 - Thu Jan 19 11:56:34 EST 201
12-2 - bad - 8.95 - Wed Feb 29 15:34:55 EST 2012
12-3 - bad - 8.951 - Fri Mar 23 16:38:51 EDT 2012

Get rid of that stupid monthly releases. Fix the drivers and release it when done!

This time, I've to agree with you. They should spend more time and resources in developing their FOSS driver (as it's already being caught by nouveau ), and less with Catalyst (they should do releases, for instance, for every Xorg update cycle or 3 months, and not every month).

Btw, time to test CUDA with bumblebee in my new nVidia laptop... (hope it works)

Cheers

[Kano]

So as 12-3 was a useless test i tried the OpenCL1.2 beta. Surprise, the hd 5670 issues are fixed there. But amd still does not manage to fix the drivers for kernel 3.2.13+ on 32 bit. So lets add this:

OpenCL1.2beta - good - 8.96 - Fri Mar 16 04:03:00 EDT 2012

I set this driver a default in my script now, the control file was different however, but my hd 4550 did not show an unsupported watermark. The supported pci-ids are the same from 8.95 to 8.96. I really hope that amd could get rid of forced watermarks. Nvida NEVER did that - those watermarks caused by the control file are just plain stupid and the check if a valid signature file is there is so old that nobody cares about. Best save some bytes and remove th

The supported pci-ids did not change at all from 12-2 to 12-3 when you look at the fglrx kernel module. from 12-1 to 12-2 only 2 ids where added (679e and 990a). So the only change could be in the control file to get rid of unsupported hardware. And the devs needed so long to do that, really really bad joke. That whole control/signature file thing is pure crap, give it up! at code. It was introduced first with 8.39.4 driver, but then it was disabled for 8.39.4. As those drivers are always generic there is absolutely no need to annoy users with watermarks, if the drivers dont work be sure they will not use it anyway if amd tested it or not...

One last thing to add: usually not only the control file has got a supported pci id list, also the amdconfig/aticonfig tool has got one. That should be removed as well of course. Do you agree bridgman?

[bridgman]

The supported pci-ids did not change at all from 12-2 to 12-3 when you look at the fglrx kernel module. from 12-1 to 12-2 only 2 ids where added (679e and 990a). So the only change could be in the control file to get rid of unsupported hardware. And the devs needed so long to do that, really really bad joke.

Kano, I know you understand this and are just having fun, but in case anyone else was confused by this...

The PCI IDs in the code determine which hardware the driver will *try* to run on. The code might work perfectly, or be buggy, or fail to run at all.

The PCI IDs in the control file show which hardware the driver has passed QA on. The time and effort is not to add IDs to the file (that's all automated anyways) but to do the testing, bug fixing and re-testing required to pass QA on the hardware.

Once testing and bug fixing on specific hardware is completed, the IDs in the control file are updated to reflect that these binaries form a production driver for the hardware it's running on, whereas previously it displayed a "hey this might run but be aware it's not a production driver" message.

Is the watermark too intrusive ? In my personal opinion something like a one-time splash at startup would be better. The question though is whether the devs should be working on getting production support in place more quickly or spending that time on rewriting the watermark code so that running a pre-production driver isn't as annoying. I would put available people on speeding up production support myself, which is what seems to be happening, but I realize not everyone agrees with that and it's kind of academic because I'm not involved with fglrx development anyways.

As we get more consistent at posting SKU-specific launch drivers if a regular Catalyst release with support isn't coming out at the right time, I think you'll find the watermarks become less of an issue anyways.

[grigi]

I think the issue with the watermarks is, that sometimes the driver works perfectly, but the watermark stays on to annoy users.
Fglrx is notorious for the annoying watermark, and I have had drivers where the watermark appears with an update.

I wonder if the watermark there causes less or more frustration? On this forums (and any other I have ever been on) it _seems_ more, but most people don't complain vocally.

[Kano]

Nvidia has got a beta splash, add that if you want, but use all pci-ids from fglrx kernel module for aticonfig, everything else is stupid for a generic driver. No watermarks! Btw. i never saw a watermark with win drivers (as you have to use there always betas when you look what is recommended for gamers) just Linux users get that shit.

[storma]

Even a simple checkbox within amdcccle to acknowledge that you are using an unsupported driver/hardware and that you wish to continue at your own risk, to turn off the watermark.

[zzarko]

I just got new ASUS HD 7950, and I installed 12.3 on my Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit. After generating deb packages and installing them, I got 1024x768 on Dell U2412M (it should be 1900x1200). When I started CCC, my monitor was disabled, I enabled it, clicked on apply and got Segmentation Fault for CCC:

(process:3411): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_new: assertion `G_TYPE_IS_OBJECT (object_type)' failed
Segmentation fault

There were some errors in Xorg.0.log:
[ 39.063] (EE) fglrx(0): atiddxDriScreenInit failed, GPS not been initialized.
[ 39.441] (EE) fglrx(0): XMM failed to open CMMQS connection.(EE) fglrx(0):
[ 39.441] (EE) fglrx(0): XMM failed to initialize

When trying to play video from VLS, I get:
[0xa0a4e9c] xcb_xv generic error: no available XVideo adaptor
[0xaf6ac3e4] main video output error: video output creation failed
[0x9f1618c] main decoder error: failed to create video output

What now? OSS driver gives me 1900x1200, but it barely works (I cannot play any video, nor 3D).

EDIT: VLC info

[nej_simon]

Wow, sleep/resume still doesn't work on my laptop! Only one more release and it'll have gone a year since they broke it! This issue is very common btw. My next laptop certainly won't be AMD based.