AMD Catalyst 8.12 Linux Driver

[The_Monkey_King]

Same with me and the 790GX. No Christmas miracle for me here.

I guess I'll just have to give up Linux completely until they are ready with HTPC-level features. Currently I look in on this site and OpenSUSE's radeonhd development list daily but now I wonder if it really is worth it. Maybe once a month...

Kick a guy while he's down, stupid 790GX. Though I suppose I knew what I was getting into, picking up a 'new' board.

Thankfully, I came up with a fool proof backup plan for this event -- mainboard swap I'll put this board into a less important system until the video tearing is resolved.

[pflynn]

Well, the new driver doesn't bring any fixes for me ;/ its even worse, now i can't even get my GPU temps cause im getting :

ERROR - Could not find library: libatiadlxx.so

although it is located in /usr/lib/

Same thing here. Downgrade back to 8.11

[bulletxt]

ahhaah then people over say I should stop talking bad about AMD drivers. lol I won't even try to update the driver, I already know there is a 70% chance it's gonna mess up my system.

[eddt]

Kick a guy while he's down, stupid 790GX. Though I suppose I knew what I was getting into, picking up a 'new' board.

Thankfully, I came up with a fool proof backup plan for this event -- mainboard swap I'll put this board into a less important system until the video tearing is resolved.

I also have a 790GX. I had tearing problems on the uppper cm of my display. Using:

----
Driver "fglrx"
Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "TexturedVideo" "On"
# 0 - basic, 1 - better, 2 compat (for Wine)
Option "UseFastTLS" "1"
# Experimental
Option "Textured2D" "on"
# forced turned off so TextureVideo is used
Option "VideoOverlay" "Off"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "Off"
----
and
----
Section "Extensions"

# enabled disables 3D in some cases
Option "Composite" "On"
Option "RENDER" "On"
Option "XVideo" "On"
EndSection
----

In xorg.conf solved the problem here. Running xorg 7.3 with 8.10 works well, 8.11 on gentoo 64bit is unstable.

Ed

[FunkyRider]

I was going to get an HTPC for living room and was keep looking various 780G motherboards for the past 2 months.

But, after 2 years of disappointment of FGLRX (start with X1900 era) and recent not so great announcements, I went to buy a GeForce 6100 motherboard.

Result:
1. Saved $$$ - Gigabyte 6100: $80 vs Abit 780G $120
2. Saved hassles - nVidia driver works great at everything, fglrx keeps messing up
3. I am overall happier.

Although I have been buying Radeons for the past 2 years, I've always been suffering from the Linux driver issues. My main rig with Radeon 4850 can't even watch video with compiz enabled so I have to keep switching it on, off, on, off, .... If this card doesn't have proper support when it passes its service life, I will indeed go to nvidia and never look back. Sure 9800GTX is slower and GTX260/280 more expensive, but I'd rather having a slower system (is it really slower under Linux?!?!) or spend several more hundred bucks to buy happiness!

[FunkyRider]

One question to Michael:

What do you mean by:

...there is improved video playback support in a composited environment ...

could you explain this clearly?

[dkasak]

I will of course try when I get home, but does anyone know if the 'no glxfbconfigs' error is fixed with a recent ( ie 1.5.x ) xserver and compiz? The release notes say that only xserver versions up to 1.4 are supported, so I assume not?

Anyway, here's hoping we'll get that r600 code release Christmas present everyone's been crossing their fingers for.

[charlie_D]

I also have a 790GX. I had tearing problems on the uppper cm of my display. Using:

----
Driver "fglrx"
Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "TexturedVideo" "On"
# 0 - basic, 1 - better, 2 compat (for Wine)
Option "UseFastTLS" "1"
# Experimental
Option "Textured2D" "on"
# forced turned off so TextureVideo is used
Option "VideoOverlay" "Off"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "Off"
----
and
----
Section "Extensions"

# enabled disables 3D in some cases
Option "Composite" "On"
Option "RENDER" "On"
Option "XVideo" "On"
EndSection
----

In xorg.conf solved the problem here. Running xorg 7.3 with 8.10 works well, 8.11 on gentoo 64bit is unstable.

Ed

I'll check my PVR's xorg.conf; when I originally set things I tried a lot of these, but it can't hurt to try again.

I actually get crystal clear 1080p playback with zero tearing using opengl through mplayer, but TV playback is near-useless with all the tearing. I'll post back if any of these work for me, though.

Charlie

[monraaf]

For me the main concern is: does it support the soon-to-be-released kernel 2.6.28 yet. Anyone tried on an rc?

I have got it running 2.6.28-rc7 here. I don't see any difference with 8.11 though.

2D and 3D work fine but Xv definitively needs improvement. I don't use any fancy 3D desktop effects but when playing a movie I can still see the effects of tearing in scenes with fast motion, not much but very annoying nevertheless.

[Yfrwlf]

I wanted to say that, too.
With the upgrade from Kubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 I've said goodbye to FGLRX - and I've found the open source Radeon driver is a lot better for people which cards are supported by it. Even if it's framerate in linux games is half of the FGLRX and doesn't have GLSL, it's a lot better for desktop with composite+desktop effects, xvideo, etc. - even in games it doesn't have such awful bugs as FGLRX.

Video is still a flickering mess with mplayer/xv, a little better with vlc/xv, but all-in-all completely unwatchable in a composited environment. Radeon-driver is currently way ahead in this area. ATI X1400/R500, Ubuntu 8.10 x86.

Maybe AMD will eventually just start supporting the open RadeonHD driver instead and drop fglrx, though of course fglrx is further ahead in other areas still.

Any updates on video tearing?

Apparently, it still sucks, and more video acceleration standards is kind of silly, I wish they'd just stick to one good open standard if possible and be done with it but oh well. Actually interested in Intel's video efforts for a good HTPC solution (since Intel sucks at 3D still). They were also the ones really "going after" tearing, or so they said, but of course it's one thing to talk about it...

Great to hear it supports Hybrid CF now.

The CPU should always be doing all it can to help out, same with the GPU, the northbridge, and the southbridge. Your whole computer even! So, I'd label this as a gimmick, but whatever, as long as it's an open standard and not just an effort to tie the CPU to the motherboard to the GPU even more. We're already sick enough of different CPU "socket types" (no reason for this, seriously) preventing us from directly comparing CPU performances by swapping them out, we don't need AMD *computers* vs. Intel/Nvidia *computers*. Where did the standards go to allow for competition...oh yeah, they don't like competition.

I was going to get an HTPC for living room and was keep looking various 780G motherboards for the past 2 months.

But, after 2 years of disappointment of FGLRX (start with X1900 era) and recent not so great announcements, I went to buy a GeForce 6100 motherboard.

Result:
1. Saved $$$ - Gigabyte 6100: $80 vs Abit 780G $120
2. Saved hassles - nVidia driver works great at everything, fglrx keeps messing up
3. I am overall happier.

Although I have been buying Radeons for the past 2 years, I've always been suffering from the Linux driver issues. My main rig with Radeon 4850 can't even watch video with compiz enabled so I have to keep switching it on, off, on, off, .... If this card doesn't have proper support when it passes its service life, I will indeed go to nvidia and never look back. Sure 9800GTX is slower and GTX260/280 more expensive, but I'd rather having a slower system (is it really slower under Linux?!?!) or spend several more hundred bucks to buy happiness!

Actually, because of AMD/ATI doing well, at least with Windows drivers and performance (and to some degree Linux performance as well), Nvidia has dropped their prices a lot, I think they're actually cheaper $/performance-wise at the moment from what I could attempt tp piece together. Of course, benchmarks even with games are so biased it's tough to compare fairly, which is what they want. If you can buy out a game studio to optimize their game to run on your video cards, "doing well" in the market comes down to bribery, not engineering. Not done for everything obviously, that'd be impossible, but for some games it has been done.