xf86-video-ati 7.9 / xf86-video-amdgpu 1.3 DDX Driver Updates

Michel Dänzer of AMD has announced new releases of their X.Org DDX drivers: xf86-video-ati 7.9 and xf86-video-amdgpu 1.3. The changes in the updates are similar while the xf86-video-amdgpu DDX is paired to work with the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver while the xf86-video-ati driver continues on for the mature Radeon DRM.

The xf86-video-ati 7.9 driver release now makes use of GLAMOR for 2D acceleration by default on R600 hardware and newer when running on X.Org Server 1.18.3 or newer. AMD GCN hardware has been using GLAMOR by default as its only means of 2D acceleration but now the older Radeon hardware has switched to this method of using 2D over OpenGL in a generic manner rather than relying upon the dedicated 2D graphics hardware. This DDX release also allows TearFree support to be toggled at runtime via RandR. This driver will also now support loading the AMDGPU driver from the ATI wrapper driver. There is also support for using DRM render nodes for DRI3 clients when available. Many bug-fixes are also present as outlined via the xf86-video-ati 7.9 release announcement.

Over with the xf86-video-amdgpu 1.3 driver there is also the support for toggling TearFree at runtime via RandR, the GPU marketing name can now be queried via libdrm_amdgpu, and DRM render nodes are used for DRI3 clients when available. There are also some bug fixes with xf86-video-amdgpu 1.3 having about 50 changes in this release as outlined here.