To the AMD people: Money wasted.

[Mr James]

@Mr James

It is more easy to use a 2nd or 3rd pc to test ati I do only short tests with my cards when a new driver is out to see whats broken now... Also i compare benchmarks, 10-12 really fixed the opengl performance on WIN - this was not the case with 10-11, only a 10-10 hotfix driver had the same performance.

xvba testing is not that funny, maybe they manage to fix l5.1 wich the new sdk, but it would be nice when the needed lib would be shipped too

Thats when you got a 2nd and 3rd pc to test

[mirv]

Thanks for your input.

1. I did not disrespect Mr Bridgman. I am grateful that he is around in the forums and from reading his posts in the past, see him as a nice and very helpful guy. Whenever I refer to him in my posts I am refering to AMD and it's support - as he is a representative of sorts. My "disrespectful" posting as you put it are not an attack on Mr Bridgman but a display of my anger with AMD's inability to provide me with a proper Linux driver.

2. No I do not own the thread but as the starter of it I requested that those who attacked me, by presuming from two posts that I am a noob among other assumptions based on nothing, to either post something constructive or get out - oh how unreasonable of me...

3. Yes I got VSync turned up all the way in catalyst.

4. Tearing exists composited desktop or not - Used OpenBox ONLY without xcompmgr and the like in Arch previously for the learning experience and to see what all the fuss was about (discovered that the 1337 way of doing things = more work to do the same thing, more often than not, just for the sake of it).

5. AMD advertises Linux support by the act of providing a driver.

6. As I said earlier, FOSS devs wanting to go their own way and not including AMD devs in the loop has nothing to do with AMD's responsibility to provide a working proprietary driver. Either provide a working driver of none at all - that way one could avoid this whole mess altogether and look elsewhere.

7. The world does not owe me a favor and I didn't ask for one. I asked that AMD provide me with a working driver - as I paid money for my card and AMD claims Linux support, it is my right as a consumer to demand it and yours also.

1. All AMD's fault, all AMD's fault, all AMD's fault, waaaaah. Sorry to say, but that's essentially what you did directly to Mr Bridgman, even though you're probably aware that he's mainly responsible for just the OSS side of AMD's graphics division. If you're going to be snooty, expect a snooty reply.

2. Won't waste my time anymore here.

3. - What program are you using by the way? Vsync works perfect for me with mplayer. Other programs use their own settings and sometimes ignore amdcccle.

4. I don't get tearing in 2D. Actually I don't hear of anyone getting tearing in 2D without composite. So dunno, take from that what you will.

5. They also state which distros they support. Arch is not amongst them. They provide drivers, but are not responsible for issues with GNOME/KDE/etc. Nowhere is it advertised "tear free support for all time in every conceivable application" - or did I miss something?

6. Works the other way too - FOSS issues are not the responsibility of AMD. Where do you draw the line? I'll also note that AMD's drivers work fine for me (closed source).

7. As I just noted, it works for me. Seeing none of your problems. Maybe instead of trying to point fingers, your time would be better spent figuring out what's actually going wrong.

[Mr James]

1. All AMD's fault, all AMD's fault, all AMD's fault, waaaaah. Sorry to say, but that's essentially what you did directly to Mr Bridgman, even though you're probably aware that he's mainly responsible for just the OSS side of AMD's graphics division. If you're going to be snooty, expect a snooty reply.

2. Won't waste my time anymore here.

3. - What program are you using by the way? Vsync works perfect for me with mplayer. Other programs use their own settings and sometimes ignore amdcccle.

4. I don't get tearing in 2D. Actually I don't hear of anyone getting tearing in 2D without composite. So dunno, take from that what you will.

5. They also state which distros they support. Arch is not amongst them. They provide drivers, but are not responsible for issues with GNOME/KDE/etc. Nowhere is it advertised "tear free support for all time in every conceivable application" - or did I miss something?

6. Works the other way too - FOSS issues are not the responsibility of AMD. Where do you draw the line? I'll also note that AMD's drivers work fine for me (closed source).

7. As I just noted, it works for me. Seeing none of your problems. Maybe instead of trying to point fingers, your time would be better spent figuring out what's actually going wrong.

You are right. My bad. I'm to blame. AMD support is absolute perfection and their drivers are perfect in every way - all of Linux is to blame, not AMD, especially since my nVidia card runs correctly. Sorry for wasting your time and others. I am obviously a troll and do not know what I am doing or saying.

Oh, by the way, regarding the posts on this board, especially the "Catalyst X.X just released" threads, looks like I am not the only one experiencing problems. But to you I guess I am the only one.

I wash my hands of this madness.

Thanks to you and to all that responded.

James.

[mugginz]

Firstly, let me say that no vendor provides a perfect driver for the Linux desktop, be that open or closed.

Having used nVidia cards with Linux since about 2002 I've been through many iterations of XFree86 and then Xorg and messed with Compiz since it was first available in all its initial buggy gloriousness throught the Xgl and AIGLX times.

I've watched and experienced the Linux desktop get to a state where it provided a stable composited desktop. Initially Compiz was only for experimenters, now it's robust and usable all the time (especially for nVidia blob using users.)

Then half way through this year I bought an AMD card and it was like going back 4 years or more in terms of issues and niggles.

In the time I bought the card to now, the Catalyst driver for Linux has improved greatly and for that I;m most grateful. This rate of improvement gives me hope that it will catch the nVidia blob and surpass it over time. Maybe as soon as quarter 2 of 2011.

Now again I re-iterate, no driver for the Linux platform is perfect. The nVidia blob is bloody good though. There are corner cases that may catch some, but as a general rule I've found it to be as mess free as you'd expect from a Windows desktop. But then there are those who suggest that the AMD blob is the equal or superior of the nVidia blob. That to me sounds plainly ridiculous. While you may find corner cases that catch out the nVidia blob, surely the AMD fanbois must surely be able to acknowledge that the Catalyst driver has many more catches and foibles.

I don't find it surprising at all that an AMD user would become extremely frustrated by the current state of things. While in the future the Catalyst driver in my view will become a thing of beauty, I think it's stretching things a bit to suggest we're there yet. The answer to the frustration experienced by some AMD users surely isn't to simply make statements along the lines of "you're doing it wrong", especially in response to someone with ample knowledge of how to drive the Linux platform. Further to that, if a fairly knowledgeable user isn't able to get a satisfactory experience with some effort, what chance does your garden variety user have?

Catalyst is improving at a great rate and very well may soon be production ready for the masses. Let's hope that isn't too far away.

[mugginz]

4. I don't get tearing in 2D. Actually I don't hear of anyone getting tearing in 2D without composite. So dunno, take from that what you will.

It's long past the time when a user could expect to use a composited desktop environment. While disabling compositing may alleviate the V-sync issue, when the competing vendor's product doesn't require this work around it weakens AMD's position as a first choice for graphics hardware.

[mirv]

I can give you a list of what I think is wrong with AMD's drivers if you'd like.
I read those same threads - and mostly people don't actually say what their problems is, they'll just say that it's crap. Let's look at some of the more valid complaints reasonably for a moment:

composite desktop synch - people would like this, sure. Hopefully AMD would give this more attention once other things are done. You can hardly call the entire driver crap because of this however, as much of the issues surrounding this come from the design of X too.

gpu video accel - just to note, nothing is officially supported by AMD here, it's all unofficial. So people asking it to be supported is a valid response I think, but that's about as far as you can go there.

opengl problems - when they appear, yep, call 'em out. Let's make sure it's the driver's fault first though. Playing a game designed for windows, to run under windows, and only for windows - how the bloody hell can that be the responsibility of AMD's linux driver team? What wine can afford is a good testing environment for OpenGL, and generally AMD will fix an OpenGL bug pretty quick.

[egon2003]

Mr James I agree completely, unfortunately for AMD i bought a Nvidia card just a few days ago. I would have bought a AMD card because of their lower powerdraw and that they develop open drivers, but why buy a card for 250$ when I cant use it properly?

AMD under Linux is just not an option today if you want to use your videocard properly.

[mugginz]

How about when stretching a window containing an OpenGL context across three screens and having your system lock up?

(native Linux binary)

[mirv]

It's long past the time when a user could expect to use a composited desktop environment. While disabling compositing may alleviate the V-sync issue, when the competing vendor's product doesn't require this work around it weakens AMD's position as a first choice for graphics hardware.

For a consumer desktop, yeah I have to agree that a full composited desktop would be nice to have supported, but I was just pointing out that AMD never advertised it.
Strangely enough, most people that I've personally seen sitting at a screen never use a composited desktop - I guess the crowd I hang with have different priorities there.
If a perfectly synch'd composited desktop is what is most important to people however, then I've nothing against that - but damn, your response there is the most reasoned I've heard (well, read) on that particular topic. Why can't more people give that kind of response?

[mugginz]

For a consumer desktop, yeah I have to agree that a full composited desktop would be nice to have supported, but I was just pointing out that AMD never advertised it.

I think that's pretty fair. I do believe brigeman has himself made noises along the lines of composited desktops are relatively experimental. Having said that, and while looking lovingly over there to my nVidia card I'm reminded that depending on requirements, Linux users need not go without compositing if they buy an alternative vendors products. I unfortunately have a use case which exposes one of Xorgs weaknesses. This means that for me, while far from perfect, AMD is a better choice than is nVidia. For those with two or fewer monitors, nVidia all the way for now.

Strangely enough, most people that I've personally seen sitting at a screen never use a composited desktop - I guess the crowd I hang with have different priorities there.

Wow, that seems strange to me. I'm tempted to say "How very WindowsXP of them" (kidding)

Given that Vista, Windows 7, OS X, and Linux (depending of graphics hardware) provides for compositing with its associated benefits, any platform not providing it as an option looks decidedly obsolete to me. It's not a deal breaker to me though, just sub-optimal.

If a perfectly synch'd composited desktop is what is most important to people however, then I've nothing against that - but damn, your response there is the most reasoned I've heard (well, read) on that particular topic. Why can't more people give that kind of response?

I'd say, personally I get the feeling that's what they're trying to say, be due to frustration may be letting emotion seep into the equation a little.