Catalyst 8.11

[Nille]

The Calayst 8.11 is now aviable on the AMD/ATI Webservern but wen wait for the Release Nodes.

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/64bit/ati-driver-installer-8-11-x86.x86_64.run

Looks Like the Driver Support now Xorg 7.4

[Heiko]

I got them running, although I needed to do `aticonfig --initial -f' otherwise X would start (maybe this was also the reason I couldn't get 8.10 working... didn't try to force an initial config back then).

Anyway it works. Some impressions:
- starting Blender still makes my top and bottom panels go black
- tried to enable visual effects in Ubuntu 8.04 (I always have them disabled), but this cleared my desktop (except wallpaper) and my mousecursor turned in a clock thingy, but nothing happened (any way I can try to enable this in a configuration file or so?)
- glxgears doesn't give any strange errors anymore when shutting it down


Second impression:
- (probably) same problem as 8.10: a dual-head configuration causes X not to start (in fact system hangs completely, cannot drop to shell with Ctrl-Alt-F1).
- using `aticonfig --initial -f' works (causes second screen to be a copy of the first screen), when applying `aticonfig --initial=dual-head' this works too, I can even restart X with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, but when I restart the system, my screens stay black (and I cannot get into a shell).

For me, this probably means going back to 8.9 (as 8.10 had this problem too).
btw: using Ubuntu 8.04.1


Third impression:
I tried the same approach on 8.10 to see if it really was the same problem, did:

dpkg -P fglrx-amdcccle
dpkg -P xorg-driver-fglrx
dpkg -P fglrx-kernel-source

./ati-driver-installer-8-10-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/hardy

dpkg -i fglrx-kernel-source_8.542-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.542-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i fglrx-amdcccle_8.542-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
aticonfig --initial -f

reboot
X started (never had accomplished that before with 8.10)
logged in, opened terminal:

aticonfig --initial=dual-head

logged out, dual head worked nicely
logged in, logged out
did Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, dual head still worked
reboot, dual head still worked (tried this a few times)

So... very strange, it seemed to work with 8.10. So I decided to try the same approach on 8.11 (before I used the graphical installer). Followed exactly the same steps as above, except that I had some complaints when I tried installing the fglrx-kernel-source that it already existed or so. So before installing them I did:

dpkg -r fglrx-kernel-source

Thereafter it installed without complaints.
Rebooted a few times with dual-head already enabled and so far X started every time.
Not sure what causes this, but for now it seems to work again.


Another impression:
I think I found the source of the problems:
Dual-head works perfectly fine with 8.10 and 8.11, as long as I don't touch the underscan/overscan option and I don't change the size of the image on my tv. Because my tv has a Pal-B standard, I changed it to that after installation. This works fine. But then I see black borders in the top and bottom of my tv screen (have an old CRT 4:3 tv, I use 1024x768 with 60Hz resolution). Everything works fine, but if I change the size settings of the tv-screen in the catalyst control center, X does not start anymore when I restart my computer (I see my tv blinking a few times but both screens stay black).

[Stormking]

Still doesn't work with my Mobility Radeon 9700. Trying to insert the kernel module, I get

[ 1137.291557] [fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 1169 MBytes.
[ 1137.293424] [fglrx:drm_alloc] *ERROR* [driver] Allocating 0 bytes
[ 1137.293487] [fglrx:firegl_init_device_list] *ERROR* Out of memory when allocating device heads
[ 1137.293558] [fglrx:firegl_init_module] *ERROR* firegl_init_devices failed

Does ATI know about this bug? Will it take 21 months to fix it like with the xvideo-on-tv-out-bug some time ago?

Once again, I am pissed.

[Inkaine]

I got them running, although I needed to do `aticonfig --initial -f' otherwise X would start (maybe this was also the reason I couldn't get 8.10 working... didn't try to force an initial config back then).

That was the same for me. After deleting the ati driver database (/etc/ati/amdpcsdb on ArchLinux) and regenerating it with 'aticonfig --initial' 8.11 beta booted up all fine. Update to 8.11 final went all smooth and its working fine. Can't yet say if it's any better or worse than previous versions...

[PurpleGecko]

Has anyone tried this driver with the latest X? I noticed that though the website said it is not supported, the PDF does...

Before attempting to install the ATI Catalyst™ Linux software suite, the following software must be installed:
• XOrg 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4
• Linux Kernel 2.6 and above
• glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
• POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is required for 3D applications

Just wondering if that's a typo, or if I just got it wrong with the version numbers, before I try compiling everything just to find out it won't work.

[octoberblu3]

I just installed the driver with Xorg 7.4

The driver installer recognized it as such and had no issue.

[NeoBrain]

I just installed the driver with Xorg 7.4

The driver installer recognized it as such and had no issue.

Thanks for telling, gonna re-update my F9 XServer now.
Wish me luck

EDIT: *sigh* 72.3 MB? c'mon AMD...

[Peruna]

For me this new version fixed Fullscreen OpenGL issue (partly). Mplayer now plays with OpenGL, but I can no longer use force-pbo flag with gl driver and because of that this is much slower than before and I am not able to play 1080p with OpenGL anymore.

Version 8.10 didn't work even that well so better than nothing I guess.

I also noticed that when using 60 or 50 Hz FullHD I have black border and that "aticonfig --set-pcs-val=MCIL,DigitalHDTVDefaultUnderscan,0" command is not fixing it anymore. When I change to 30, 25 or 24 Hz I there are no black borders (DefaultUnderscan,0 is set currently).

Also installation of driver didn't go too well and I had to edit Makefile for kernel drivers to make it work. Installation seemed to work, but fglrx was not working since it did not compile and link most of the c-files.

Version 8.8 is still best for me since OpenGL was working fast and nothing was broken (since XV tearing is not bug but missing feature...).

[NeoBrain]

Just upgraded XServer to 1.5 and fglrx to 8.11, and works just fine.
Note to 64 Bit users: on the first try it gave me an error about /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so. I fixed that one by overwriting the lib file with the corresponding lib64 file. Not really clean, but works.
One other thing I had a problem with is that fglrx still can't detect my monitor's EDID correctly. However, at least with 8.11 fglrx falls back to a supported resolution (320x240 or so) instead of giving me a black screen because my monitor doesn't support the resolution.

Apart from that, great release for me

[ben0]

Version 8.8 is still best for me since OpenGL was working fast and nothing was broken (since XV tearing is not bug but missing feature...).

Were you able to avoid the xv tearing problem by using opengl? If so, how did you do it?