Does anyone know when OpenSource ATI GPUs power options are fixed?

[jrch2k8]

jrch2k8, how many cards did you test? 4870/50 is probably the best card ever for R600g... I bought lots of AMD cards just to test them with the open drivers, power management didn't always work.
Even with the same card, a vga from another vendor or with another bios may not work (for example pm on my HD5870 was as good as with catalyst except the flickering but other users had issues with dynpm).
We need a working, tear free dynpm enabled by default. This is first priority in a laptop (but last in a desktop IMHO).

mmm i tested too an igp 4250 seems fine too and an saphire 4890

this could be an issue with certain vendors bios or could be juniper+ specific sadly all my GPU are 4000 series and my next will be prolly southern islands so i can confirm with junipers+ cards

[Adarion]

I bought lots of AMD cards just to test them with the open drivers, power management didn't always work. Even with the same card, a vga from another vendor or with another bios may not work

That would be interesting to know for the driver developers. I always wondered how much freedom in design these card vendors have. Basically one would expect a generic driver for chipset X and Y just to work on all cards that make use of these chips. But then if X is not X but X' instead things become probably horrible. Then driver devs would have to check every model, every series, every larger charge of cards from any vendor. Maybe AMD should put some strict rules to vendors please not to touch certain things.
Especially on W32 driver downloads for laptops you sometimes find notes "if this device is used in a (e.g.) Dell Laptop please ask Dell for a driver not us". That would be worrying since then you can't write a driver without relying on good will of each laptop vendor.

[orome]

Sadly AMD wasn't treated well in past times by notebook vendors. If you finally found something than the vendors tried to keep it as cheap as possible and combined the AMD stuff sometimes with horrible chipsets or even worse - glossy screens (OMG-the-horror). Luckily situation seems to improve and there is more choice. On a notebook a lot of things have to play with each other it's not just the CPU and GPU.

I think one of the worst thing nb vendors do is they consider nb with AMD cards multimedia, that means 1336x768 for all models 13" 14" 15". (the guy, that thought that it is a sane idea to have same resolution for 13" and 15", should be hanged....)
The sole reason I have intel + nvidia (optimus) is that I was unable to find nb that would combine solid resolution, hdmi output, and 3year NBD warranty

[libv]

Bigger question, what happened to the whole "if only AMD would provide basic programming info the community would take care of writing open source drivers" idea ? That was what everyone was saying at the start of the project, not "let's blame AMD for not writing the whole open source driver themselves".

Does that mean that you have made public all the power management information? Because i have been hearing promises about documentation and information about powermanagement, i think, from the very start of the radeonhd project, which will soon be 5 years ago.

As for the latter part, actively supporting a competing graphics driver was not the best use of resources from AMDs pov, even though i understand the strategy from an ATI pov. Plus, the boring bits 80% of the time needs to be done by paid developers, the chances of finding someone interesting in doing boring bits from the community are very slim, i believe that we stated something along those lines in our proposal to AMD.

Oh, and when did ATI last provide documentation for the boring bits? All docs being made available since the death of RadeonHD, afaik, are the ISAs, and those are made available from AMDs GPGPU department (if that still exists), not by the former ATI.

[crazycheese]

Sorry, when did this happen ? I'm pretty sure I see all the outgoing communication related to Linux and I've never seen anything like this said.

We did hire two additional engineers to work on the open source drivers last year as you know.

Bigger question, what happened to the whole "if only AMD would provide basic programming info the community would take care of writing open source drivers" idea ? That was what everyone was saying at the start of the project, not "let's blame AMD for not writing the whole open source driver themselves".

The only question here is:

Are you interested in selling cards for Linux desktop market or not.

You are commercial company. You produce chips and cards (how many of OEM card manufacturers deviate from standard PCB layout provided by you?).

1. You must be interested in selling your hardware for Linux.

The other option is:

2. Doing it just for the flag. We have linux support. So we are no worse than nvidia or intel. Can you catch the idea?



If you reside to (2.), then things like "work just that it is "enough" " appears.
"Doctor, Im bleeding"
"Here, hold the finger here. Thats is just enough. Go home."

Are you following? You never go back to such doctor.

So please sit together with AMD crew, think and give community your answer. Are you interested in selling or linux is your hobby?

Because if you do this in windows area, you can kiss windows customers goodbye. Somehow it works on linux?!
Small segment for not hobby? But they do buy your cards, they are no different than windows users! They give money for your hardware. If you DONT have enough money to cough up the driver that is more than "just enough", but actually makes their amd card purchase worthy, why you are not using something like kickstarter?

Should all Linux users go programming or write drivers for the hardware that YOU are selling them?

If quality linux driver is not in budget of your driver department, why don´t you search for external sources to IMPROVE the situation in this segment.
Ok, the segment is small.
Ok, the amount of opensource hackers is small.
How much is amount OF USERBASE that is ready to BUY or PAY your for your driver? You have not done any research here.

I remind you again, YOU are writing driver for windows YOURSELF. You are getting BLAMED by windows users when your driver is buggy. You DONT rise such questions in these case "why they blame us for not writing driver to our hardware by ourself. We don´t own windows, users own it."

So please go ask your AMD team what is your position on Linux and then tell us. Because if you don´t consider it seriously, nothing serious will happen. Isn´t this the reason your drivers are so bad for linux and people ditch for nvidia?

And also, "if you do not interfere, then you agree with where it heads".
If you do not interfere or attempt to change situation, you get what you get, you are OK with this. MANY people are NOT ok, this is why they buy nvidia. And you are OK with this?

[crazycheese]

Because it is just like in the spirit:
Q: "Linux has small number of games"
A: "Go program more games. Cannot program? Learn it."

Q: "I have no fuel for car."
A: "Go create more fuel for car. Not chemist? Learn it."

Q: "I have problem with health."
A: "Go operate yourself. Not surgeon? Learn it."

This is childish.

[Drago]

The only question here is:

Are you interested in selling cards for Linux desktop market or not.

You are commercial company. You produce chips and cards (how many of OEM card manufacturers deviate from standard PCB layout provided by you?).

1. You must be interested in selling your hardware for Linux.

The other option is:

2. Doing it just for the flag. We have linux support. So we are no worse than nvidia or intel. Can you catch the idea?



If you reside to (2.), then things like "work just that it is "enough" " appears.
"Doctor, Im bleeding"
"Here, hold the finger here. Thats is just enough. Go home."

Are you following? You never go back to such doctor.

So please sit together with AMD crew, think and give community your answer. Are you interested in selling or linux is your hobby?

Because if you do this in windows area, you can kiss windows customers goodbye. Somehow it works on linux?!
Small segment for not hobby? But they do buy your cards, they are no different than windows users! They give money for your hardware. If you DONT have enough money to cough up the driver that is more than "just enough", but actually makes their amd card purchase worthy, why you are not using something like kickstarter?

Should all Linux users go programming or write drivers for the hardware that YOU are selling them?

If quality linux driver is not in budget of your driver department, why don´t you search for external sources to IMPROVE the situation in this segment.
Ok, the segment is small.
Ok, the amount of opensource hackers is small.
How much is amount OF USERBASE that is ready to BUY or PAY your for your driver? You have not done any research here.

I remind you again, YOU are writing driver for windows YOURSELF. You are getting BLAMED by windows users when your driver is buggy. You DONT rise such questions in these case "why they blame us for not writing driver to our hardware by ourself. We don´t own windows, users own it."

So please go ask your AMD team what is your position on Linux and then tell us. Because if you don´t consider it seriously, nothing serious will happen. Isn´t this the reason your drivers are so bad for linux and people ditch for nvidia?

And also, "if you do not interfere, then you agree with where it heads".
If you do not interfere or attempt to change situation, you get what you get, you are OK with this. MANY people are NOT ok, this is why they buy nvidia. And you are OK with this?

As I said in some of previous comments, if AMD don't take Linux seriously (read FOSS drivers), they will loose not only GPU sale, bug also chipset and CPU sale, with this APU initiative. Personally I am happy with my E-350, PM is little worse than in windows, but I could use some hw video decoding, and 3D performance. AMD please, optimize your open shader compiler.

[Asariati]

The question I have is, do the available docs allow the community to write better power management? And how close could the open driver get to catalyst in terms of power consumption?

These are actually very good questions and I see no answer here

[grege]

One thing also needed is an open source version of the Catalyst Control Center for the free driver. Changing power settings using cat and echo is so last century. Something imaginative like Radeon Control Center.

[Panix]

These are actually very good questions and I see no answer here

I think they're good questions, too. So, the community most likely doesn't have all the information at their disposal and they're expected to contribute (to a great extent) without pay and without critical info.

Power management seems like a major concern especially with laptops.

Also, this means that it's NOT 100% open (because of licensing, patents, etc.). I don't think programmers and writers of code who contribute to the support will be very understanding with these restrictions and lack of support (going by the history on the board here).

Not to mention crazycheese's good points as well. If they are just sharing code with Windows for the binary drivers, then why aren't they up to par with those drivers?