If this is true this is just an excuse. AMD devs are not forced in any way to use only ubuntu to do development. Just to remind: NVIDIA support the lastest Xorg, usually before the stable release (at least with a beta driver, QA is not quick and this is good) and more over they support a lot more OS than AMD. Intel supports Windows and Linux as AMD and their driver just works with every version of Xorg, being it even the most bleeding edge git branch. Indeed it does, it is an open source driver. The radeon driver does the same, with the difference the intel driver has a more high support level.
In other words AMD is in the middle between NVIDIA and Intel, with the sum of doing two half working or half supported driver, i.e. the worst situation for all users. I will be very very happy if AMD will follow the intel way in the future and put more effort on the radeon driver (btw, the radeon team already does wonders being it so small), but it will be usable even with NVIDIA way, it is not the best, but still works.
Right now using cpu fullpower governor it's running @ ~80°, I think the full fan power comes on a bit higher around 83° I hit that with the previous kernels and it would lower the temp to 77-78° and be on constant until I switched to dynamic gov.
Also running glxgears it gives constant ~50 fps small and there is no change when going fullscreen on the external monitor, last time I ran it it gave like several hundred fps small and would chug along fullscreen.
oh, and I use an external monitor like 95% of the time, 15 -18 hours a day with full power gov. ~8 hours a day 5 days a week for the last two years.
My previous nvidia card didn't get nearly as much use but gave up, console spotty an I can only use svga and if I connect an ext. mon. it locks up.
I just upgraded to 12.10 and no longer have amd driver support for my 3470. I hope that the amd driver team gets cancer and their children get raped by filthy gypsies and their mothers get struck by lightnings while working in a whorehouse. Fuck you AMD! Fuck you! How can I get a refund you motherfuckers you stole my money you losers! AMD just fucking die already you with your shitty decisions and your shitty cpus.
12.10 beta 1 is available since 10.09.12
you can use r600g, which is still being heavily worked on.
I think your aged GPU is actually one of the best supported by open driver. I think its the best that can happen to an old card. Much better than no driver at all.
But if you are despirate and can cough some money for newer GPU, why don't you send the 3470 over to radeon developers? Ask on IRC.
Last edited by crazycheese; 09-12-2012 at 08:33 PM.