Catalyst 8.11 and Radeon 9600/9700 (R300)

[dkasak]

I've seen this all before ...

This all smells like the way ATI removed r200 support ... http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=550&num=1

Initially, things broke, and not a single peep was heard from ATI on what the problem was. People complained. Please hypothesised. Then ATI 'officially' removed r200 support.

Is this what's happening now?

It's instructive to consider recent infighting in the Xorg dev community about xf86-video-radeonhd vs xf86-video-ati. The trusty xf86-video-ati driver supports EVERY version from r100 to r600. But ATI ( AMD, whatever ) are very keen to push the development of xf86-video-radeonhd, which only supports later radeons ( r500, r600 ). This is no coincidence. While ATI can't actively break open-source support for earlier cards, they can at least try to entice developers across to a driver which doesn't support older cards. And with all the changes on the horizon ( GEM, UXA, DRI2 etc ), I expect xf86-video-radeonhd will be quickly updated, while users of older cards will have to stick with 'legacy' drivers.

[Ren H?ek]

Same Problem with
Catalyst 8.12 (fglrx 8.561)
Mobility Radeon 9700
Ubuntu 8.04

Would be really sad, if they stop support this way. If they can't fix the driver they should at least fix the support list...

[Stormking]

Do you get the same errors with 8.12?

With 8.10-Ubuntu-Special-Edition (xserver-1.5-compatible-beta), official 8.10, 8.11, 8.12 and 9.1beta.

Just so I get this straight, R300 support is broken in 8.11 and 8.12.

I can only speak for myself and I have a Mobility Radeon 9700. But the same error message has been reported by people with Mobility Radeon 9600 and Radeon 9500.

[[Knuckles]]

Same problem here, with a Mobility Radeon 9600. C'mon ATI, if you're going to deprecate, at least warn users first!

Everywhere says that the current drivers should support R300. SO WHY!?

Bah, have to go back to openSUSE 11.0 on one of my laptops because of this crap.

[RealNC]

R300 works better with the open source radeon driver anyway. I would feel lucky if I were you

[yotambien]

R300 works better with the open source radeon driver anyway. I would feel lucky if I were you

No, it does not. While it is true that the open source driver used to be more stable than AMD's binary, that changed since the ~May/June releases (before that fglrx was unbearable). Now the differences are marginal, i.e. they both crash just rarely. On the other hand, 3D performance with radeon sucks compared to fglrx, and it also lacks some features needed to correctly run some programs (*). On top of that, fglrx's Powerplay is simply absent in the open souce driver, which makes a huge difference for laptop users.

The only scenario I can imagine prefering the oss driver over fglrx--religion aside--is when using a composite desktop. I don't, so fglrx works well for me.

Having said this, the Windows version of the driver is miles ahead of fglrx in every sense.

(*) No, this is not FUD. I know of at least a program I happen to use that doesn't run as it should with the oss driver, and many more that keep falling to software rendering.

[Kano]

Just try Zero Ballistics. But the system seems to be a bit slow for that game anyway.

[[Knuckles]]

yotambien: For R300 I'm stuck with catalyst 8.9, so all that goodness is not available for me.

I'm gonna do some tests with the radeon driver, at least for XBMC it seems to be comparable to fglrx.

As I wanted to use this pc as a media center only, if it has good performance and works with XBMC, it's golden.

But ATI could at least inform users that R300 is not working, it's fsckin lame to go to their site and follow that wizard-thingy where you select exactly your hardware versions just so they can send you to the same generic linux driver every time, and it doesn't even WORK.

[yotambien]

For R300 I'm stuck with catalyst 8.9, so all that goodness is not available for me.

I didn't want to sound over excited about fglrx. The 'goodness' I was talking about is better 3D support, performance and powerplay, as compared to the oss driver. This doesn't mean that it is good in absolute terms, you only have to compare it with the Windows version, or try to hook a second monitor, or look at all the problems people seems to have when going composite or playing wine games.

In any case, I'm using what's available in Debian unstable, which happens to be whatever version AMD released in July or perhaps even June. Maybe I'm luckier than you for it works well here.

I'm gonna do some tests with the radeon driver, at least for XBMC it seems to be comparable to fglrx.

I'd be interested in knowing how it goes (I've got the same hardware). I don't think fglrx is any better than radeon for video playback.

But ATI could at least inform users that R300 is not working, it's fsckin lame to go to their site and follow that wizard-thingy where you select exactly your hardware versions just so they can send you to the same generic linux driver every time, and it doesn't even WORK.

That's for sure. Especially when you think that the mobility radeon 9600 and 9700 cards are from 2003 and 2004, respectively, and only this year they started to provide something acceptable. I don't know what I would've done during these last 3 years if the oss driver didn't exist.

[[Knuckles]]

The oss driver works ok with multiple monitors -- even better than fglrx in my opinion.

I've been testing with XBMC, and it works fine, so i'll be keeping the oss one instead of using an old kernel and X.org just to please his majesty the fglrx.

I'm getting a bit of tearing in the video, I've got to investigate it more (unfortunately I didn't test it that far with fglrx, so I can't compare if there's a tearing problem with it too...), since XBMC uses opengl to output.

My media center project is now on hold for a while until I can get color with s-video tv-out on my crappy sony tv (I think it's one of those where i'll have to rig a scart converter, but I gotta look more into it before cracking it open).