AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support

[Panix]

This is the current situation on my laptop (HP 615, AMD 780GM/HD3200, Slackware -current):
Support with fglrx is fine, even if I had to patch the 12.3 to run with my kernel.
When I switch to the radeon drivers I have sloppy 2D (even fast scrolling in a browser will stutter), high CPU usage and 15°C higher CPU temperatures.
I don't care about performance, this laptop is not meant for gaming. But if they don't fix the power consumption issues before dropping support in fglrx my laptop will basically become useless for mobile use. This laptop is a little older than two years and running fine for it's intended use. I don't want to replace it now.
Also, common I should change the distro to be supported for more than a few months? Running Ubuntu? If I want a buggy system I can change to MS. Going to CentOS or Debian? Running the same software for years, without getting the chance of new features or, in the case of Debian, even bugfixes? Nope.
When the support ends for my system and AMD has not fixed the power issues on systems like mine I will not recommend AMD anymore, and I regret buying a HD6870 a few months before if this will be the case. Can I expect that support for this card ends in 2014? Probably also without having real support from the OSS drivers?

Thanks, but no, AMD.

I get stupid replies when I criticize AMD such as I haven't bought an AMD card and such. I haven't had the experiences but I can read them on here. Who is smarter, the ones who buy $300 AMD cards or $1000 laptops with AMD cards (well, older tech) or just waiting? I'd only buy a cheap or used card and and the latest as possible.

The power consumption problems seem to persist and there's issues with either driver. But, if you boot up Windows 7, you probably have minimal issues that are tied to graphics or video drivers. If Linux is using the Windows driver for their binary drivers, why is AMD/ATI continually having problems and why have some of these go end of life? If you boot up Windows, does that card suddenly stop working? You don't have video anymore?

The endless number of features that aren't supported is another problem.

The assertions that AMD does a good job supporting Linux is a fallacy. The evidence shows otherwise.

[Hirager]

I get stupid replies when I criticize AMD such as I haven't bought an AMD card and such. I haven't had the experiences but I can read them on here. Who is smarter, the ones who buy $300 AMD cards or $1000 laptops with AMD cards (well, older tech) or just waiting? I'd only buy a cheap or used card and and the latest as possible.

The power consumption problems seem to persist and there's issues with either driver. But, if you boot up Windows 7, you probably have minimal issues that are tied to graphics or video drivers. If Linux is using the Windows driver for their binary drivers, why is AMD/ATI continually having problems and why have some of these go end of life? If you boot up Windows, does that card suddenly stop working? You don't have video anymore?

The endless number of features that aren't supported is another problem.

The assertions that AMD does a good job supporting Linux is a fallacy. The evidence shows otherwise.

I have to disagree with you. AMD is trying its best to develop free drivers. Remember that they are in a tough financial situation! Their efforts just have not yet paid off. The whole problem with feature parity proves just how highly developed are those GPUs.

[LinuxID10T]

The announcement I read states that 12.7 will probably be the last mainline catalyst release supporting these chipsets, and support of these chipsets will move to a new branch. And there will be at least bugfix releases for that branch.
If That includes bumping the supported kernel and xserver is beyond my knowled

It will not be supporting new kernel and xserver releases, I have asked the AMD devs.

[Michael]

AMD confirms elsewhere now.... Under Windows they call this a new 'support model' - http://www.ngohq.com/news/21725-amd-...00-series.html

[Alejandro Nova]

Its a piece of cake to force a different dpi setting without kde 4.8. This is for kdm:

DPI=100
perl -pi -e "s|(ServerArgsLocal=-br -nolisten tcp).*|\1 -dpi $DPI|" /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc

A similar setting is possible for any other dm. That works even before you login.

I use the following setting in /etc/X11/Xresources (if it doesn't exist, create it and X will recognize it)

Xft.dpi: 135

Like the former solution, this will be effective when X starts. Even your login manager will be covered by this DPI setting.

[squirrl]

Allow me to pontificate,

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Linux Kernel version 2.6.27.
It still works with Catylist 9.3 which still works with the radeon 9800.
And all that still works with Ubuntu 9.04 and Slackware 12.2.

FACT: The hardware divide is there because Linux runs like crap beyond.

It's not like anybody is upgrading or has upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 - 12.04, Fedora 13 - 17, Slackware 13.1 - 13.WTFS, or etc.
Let's elaborate on that statement; anybody doing real work on older hardware is still using older versions of the operating system.
I have a lot more ATI cards than I do NVidia. I personally think they run damn good under Windows.

FACT: I recently tried Windows 7, Ubuntu 12, and Slackware 133.wtfs on a 6200pci laden Celeron; Windows 7 was the clear winner.
Linux-land better get it's head out of it's proverbial a55. Because it's sad the compatibility blows as bad as it does. I be damned if I'm donning a robe and singing hymes to the praises of GNU with a console and Emacs stuck up my a55.

Try to the see the humor in this. They're all in cahoots. They want you to throw away your old hardware for new stuff. Xorg is just bascially a game designer these days. You want to know where the Linux games are? We got the best RPG, MMOGRAM, WTF there is, XORG 2.0: A new beginning. It's bascially become so huge of an online work that they are creating the Cell-phone apt version called Wayland. Sounds like Weyland-Yutani from Aliens to me. You'll spend so much time tweaking and tuning that you end up missing your brothers graduating and your somehow getting gray hair.

On topic,
Granted I'm mad they never offered up the RAGE Theater 200 specifications. I had gatos and it never made a sound. But XP is a sufficient tool for video work.

[Kano]

It would not be logical when W7 would not "win" for games. However your example card is only DX9, so even XP would be enough from driver perspective. W7 is only needed for DX10+ cards.

[squirrl]

It would not be logical when W7 would not "win" for games. However your example card is only DX9, so even XP would be enough from driver perspective. W7 is only needed for DX10+ cards.

Many A-rate titles are still DX9 compatible. They are ports from the Xbox 360. Force Unleashed, SkyRim, GTA4, practically anything using Unreal tech.

I have an HD4200 onboard. The OSS drivers can't even handle HDMI correctly. Let's not even speak of gaming. S3TC: non existant.

[Kano]

Your 2 examples are bad. You can use hdmi audio (which i think you missed) using

radeon.audio=1

override. That works up to hd 4 series with kernel 3.2 and since kernel 3.3 you can use hdmi audio with hd 5 as well (you should note that this was reverse engineered and NOT because of amd made docs public).

Next: adding s3tc support is a piece of cake. in debian multimedia is libtxc-dxtn and if you are fine with s2tc support you can use libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 (which are directly in wheezy/sid). s2tc support is also available in u precise universe repository (not really hard to understand as this a just a sid snapshot repo).

[locovaca]

AMD confirms elsewhere now.... Under Windows they call this a new 'support model' - http://www.ngohq.com/news/21725-amd-...00-series.html

This is completely different than physically removing a driver from Catalyst. My read of that page is that Catalyst will support the 2k, 3k, and 4k series with the monthly driver release, but for months 2 and 3 there would be no changes for those particular cards. Should they continue the same model on Linux as Windows (which seems plausible given the sharing of code), there would be no change in the use of Catalyst other than the arms race for installing the latest driver once a month. And if they continue on Linux in this same regard, I would see no reason they wouldn't keep up with X.org/Kernel ABI updates. This smells like a lot of nothing.