AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta Driver For Linux Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta Driver For Linux Released

An AMD Catalyst "13.2 Beta 3" driver has surfaced on the Internet for Linux users relying upon this binary blob for graphics acceleration on Radeon and FirePro graphics hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI4NzU

[Marc Driftmeyer]

http://techreport.com/news/24285/cat...-now-available

Bits:

Here's a complete list of the changes in this driver, courtesy of AMD's Andrew Dodd:

• Improves performance up to 15% in high MSAA cases for the Crysis 3 beta release
• Future updates will be made to AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta to further improve performance in Crysis 3 for both single GPU and CrossFire configurations
• Significantly improves latency performance in Skyrim, Boderlands 2, and Guild Wars 2
• Improves single GPU performance up to 50% for DmC Devil May Cry
• Improves CrossFire performance up to 10% for Crysis 2
• Resolves Texture flickering seen in DirectX9.0c applications.

This release is the first in a series of promised driver updates intended to reduce the frame latency spikes we noticed in our Radeon HD 7950 vs. GeForce GTX 660 Ti revisited article.

[Rigaldo]

I don't really think those have to do with the Linux version ....

[RussianNeuroMancer]

There is for Linux version: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...13-2_Beta.aspx

[pete910]

It does go yo prove the point of when bugs are found in a driver of a game, said game company has more clout/push at getting a fix done.

Pete.

[Rigaldo]

So some graphic corruption fixed for Serious Sam 3 and apparently an updated performance profile for Team Fortress 2(up to 300% boost?! lol), or hopefully a general performance issue fixed. And that's pretty much it, it seems ...
Hopefully those aren't fixes specific to only these two games.

[newwen]

I wonder why they only say official support for Ubuntu 12.10 and forget the 12.04 LTS.

[Vim_User]

And the latest supported kernel is still 3.5, which is already EOL. AMD, you suck.

[totex71]

And the latest supported kernel is still 3.5, which is already EOL. AMD, you suck.

It works with later versions of the kernel as well, so i dont see a problem?

[entropy]

And the latest supported kernel is still 3.5, which is already EOL. AMD, you suck.

That's really something I don't get at all.

Yes, I know AMD targets the support of kernel and xserver versions shipping with the major distributions, i.e. Ubuntu, Red Hat.
And by 'support' they obviously have some idea about QA which involves testing - possibly a lot of testing (or maybe none at all).
At least that's the reason why they only target those kernel and xserver versions, AFAIK.

Now, why don't they just officially support those versions (what they claim in the release notes) but include the bits for
newer kernel and xserver versions as well? AMD could label the support "preliminary" or don't mention it at all.
IMHO, that would be already a major step forward.