Catalyst - games unplayable

[RussianNeuroMancer]

At least nVidia has unofficial forum.

So what? AMD have unofficial bugtracker, official tech. support and feedback form.

[kraftman]

So what? AMD have unofficial bugtracker, official tech. support and feedback form.

Thanks for pointing this. I didn't know.

[kraftman]

i dropped the catalyst for linux gaming the fglrx linux catalyst burn my mmr points in HON.
the windows clind in wine runs faster on the radeon opensource driver than the native linux clind run on the catalyst.
AMD claim that the catalyst is "faster" the "benchmarks" on phoronix claim the same but if you count mouse-input and keyboard input the catalyst do have some nasty input-lag bugs in hon this makes the driver complete useless!

i get the fastest mouse and keyboard input with the radeon driver !

gaming and hardcore gaming is not about fucking FRAMES PER SECOND (FPS)! harcore gaming is about mouse/keyboard-input-latency with visual response!

and everytime i wana drop an intem to another players hero the game input lag and the graphik lag!

you will never get this in a "benchmark" because in a "benchmark" there is no mouse/keyboard input.

I'm with you and I also had problems with HoN! I just realized they were Catalyst related. It's ridiculous I can't play nearly any game with Catalyst, because of damn lags. I thought there's something wrong with Xonotic, but with OS drivers it's flying. The same about ut2k4. I also tried StuntRally, 0ad and they're unplayable. StuntRally is very dark and runs slow like hell. In the past I had GF2 MX and Linux games worked better with it. The only solution is to use Open Source drivers or nVidia.

[storma]

What's this input lag you speak of? Are we talking 0.5 secs, 2 to 3 secs lag or?

Just curious. I haven't noticed anything like this with a 4870.

[Qaridarium]

What's this input lag you speak of? Are we talking 0.5 secs, 2 to 3 secs lag or?

Just curious. I haven't noticed anything like this with a 4870.

the input lags are not all the time its only if the game use some function.
in hon for example if you try to drop a intem on the ground or in an allied hero. then the game show a little picture over the normal game onside of your mouse pointer and in this moment the mouse input lag because the catalyst can't handle this.
but this functionality is essential in HON if you play as a support you need to drop heal pods on your allies to support them.
its more like 0.5 sec but you never hit the allied hero because they run around and you need to hit them with the item in battle!
if you turn of the desktop effects with the radeon driver you do have similar problems with exact the same effect and situation.
but the radeon driver runs very well with desktop effect activated.

i think the problem is the mouse acceleration if the mouse turn into a little picture of a "item" then the graphic acceleration fail and need to load the picture.

anyway without that but in fact the mouse input with the radeon driver is overall much better with direct visual response than the catalyst driver!

[psycho_driver]

Funny, i mainly tested Heaven and gl2benchmark (and Rage/wine but was very bad) with fglrx but not Xonotic I still don't get why Linux users get AMD gfx cards to play games...

Because phoronix is the only place you can see benchmarks of linux games and they continue to frame AMD cards in a favorable light (though not nearly as bad as they used to). Back when I had both ATi and nVidia cards reading the ATi articles here pissed me off, because I knew first-hand how terrible the drivers were compared to nVidia's. Anyone really wanting to see linux succeed on the desktop wouldn't have recommended ATi cards to anyone at that time. These days I can't comment since I'm ATi-free. It does seem like there is improvement in the drivers over those days. I'm actually hoping they catch up with nVidia, because I'd like to see strong Trinity support and performance.

[kraftman]

What's this input lag you speak of? Are we talking 0.5 secs, 2 to 3 secs lag or?

Just curious. I haven't noticed anything like this with a 4870.

0,5 or less. It's happening when I'm fighting bots in ut2k4 and sometimes in other situations.

[Kano]

It could be possible that some settings are just completely ignored by oss drivers. I saw speed issues with Intel onboard as well, i had to disable AA to get good framerates (AA is not that critical with high res, AF you see more). I would begin with less demanding settings first, no forced vsync/aa in amdcccle, just in app. Comparing oss against binary drivers is just like comparing apples and oranges.

[kraftman]

It could be possible that some settings are just completely ignored by oss drivers. I saw speed issues with Intel onboard as well, i had to disable AA to get good framerates (AA is not that critical with high res, AF you see more). I would begin with less demanding settings first, no forced vsync/aa in amdcccle, just in app. Comparing oss against binary drivers is just like comparing apples and oranges.

I had default Catalyst settings. I'll play a little more with it, but I'm nearly sure Catalyst is the culprit here.