AMD 8.41.7 Display Driver Released -- The Holy Crap Edition!

[Thetargos]

the [human] resources are scarce?????


I have paid for this notebook and this card video ATI

Yes, the Linux team is rather small, from what I gather. Not much bigger than what it was back in 2004.

Edit

Not to mention that you paid for a Laptop that was preloaded with Windows

[Tillin9]

Well... My conclusion is that this is a total train wreck. Back to 8.40 for me.

Pros: fgl_glxgears now rotates the gears on the squares (was it supposed to do that before?)

Cons: FSAA is disabled! From the frontpage posts I thought this was a R600 issue, but it seems FSAA is disabled on ALL cards! This prevents me from doing any real comparison, and I think any speedup I'm getting is a result of FSAA being turned off. There is no 3D tab in the control panel either. There are still small beige artifacts with nearly all 3D applications though without FSAA I can't even test my major gripe of gaps between textures when FSAA is enabled.

Finally, certain ChipID overrides to get additional features out of some cards are now disabled.

I'll admit AMD does seem to be trying hard with those specs. and an open source driver. However, 8.41 is not what it was hyped to be. Let's hope AMD puts back everything that was disabled when 8.42 is released.

[billybore]

Yes, the Linux team is rather small, from what I gather. Not much bigger than what it was back in 2004.

Edit

Not to mention that you paid for a Laptop that was preloaded with Windows

Yes, but I specify to my dealer that I want to use it for Linux (isn't a game for me using lin, but a work), ok i paid for Win laptop but it isn't onest

[Thetargos]

Well... My conclusion is that this is a total train wreck. Back to 8.40 for me.

Pros: fgl_glxgears now rotates the gears on the squares (was it supposed to do that before?)

Yes, a feature of fragment programs for render to texture or otherwise called "render targets".

Cons: FSAA is disabled! From the frontpage posts I thought this was a R600 issue, but it seems FSAA is disabled on ALL cards! This prevents me from doing any real comparison, and I think any speedup I'm getting is a result of FSAA being turned off. There is no 3D tab in the control panel either. There are still small beige artifacts with nearly all 3D applications though without FSAA I can't even test my major gripe of gaps between textures when FSAA is enabled.

Finally, certain ChipID overrides to get additional features out of some cards are now disabled.

I'll admit AMD does seem to be trying hard with those specs. and an open source driver. However, 8.41 is not what it was hyped to be. Let's hope AMD puts back everything that was disabled when 8.42 is released.

IIRC, it didn't matter much when I had my 9500 if I had FSAA on or not, the performance was comparable. And if you want to do comparisons with Windows, for instance, you can disable AA there just to check. Texture tiling problems with FSAA enabled seems to be a common problem on some apps, and would be interesting to see if the new code base fixes them.

I certainly hold high hopes for these new drivers and hopefully 8.42 (which should be already in Beta if the Beta cycle still goes for 2 months for each release).

[Kano]

Finally, certain ChipID overrides to get additional features out of some cards are now disabled.

Could you be more specific? Fire* ids of course will not work as the PCIIDs are missing in fglrx_drv.so.

[Thetargos]

Yes, but I specify to my dealer that I want to use it for Linux (isn't a game for me using lin, but a work), ok i paid for Win laptop but it isn't onest

An honest answer from any dealer would be that for Linux (and I do not mean to bash ATI-AMD here) you are best off with either Intel or nVidia graphics. That may seem like bad publicity for AMD-ATI, but unless you are willing to fiddle with the limited support, and have a hard time getting things to work and you acknowledge that, by all means, go ahead. That was the reason I held so long for my ATI card, back when I still had one. For stability I recommend OSS supported hardware (S3, SiS and Intel), you may not have the greatest and latest 3D experience, but at least you'll be able to use the computer. Heck even older Mach64 based laptops with mobility Rages are a good option if you don't mind lack of 3D... If you need 3D, there are pretty much no other options than nVidia, for the time being.

[Xipeos]

So... I finally got to test this new driver with my X850 XT PE.

* it didn't fix my amdcccle problem (didn't expect it to..) or the TexturedVideo one
* I can now play Nexuiz with VBOs and Offset mapping
* google earth is working again
* DRI seems to work with composite, but I still get corrupted graphics in some programs (ex: xnview) (EDIT: meh, it's in the release notes)
* I gained ~200 fps in a simple SDL/OpenGL program I made that draws some GL_QUADS
* The installer doesn't work with xorg-server 1.4 (X.org 7.3), but I didn't test any further (it's in the release notes too)

I also wanted to do a benchmark with X2 - The Threat, but it doesn't work with the new driver (problems with libGL).

I'll do some more tests later (wine/cedega, some benchmarks with native games), but so far I'm disappointed with this new driver..

EDIT (again): I just read this thread from the beginning.

As has been stated a number of times now, the fglrx 8.41 release is designed specifically for the R600 series. If you try this new driver with a R600 graphics cards, those common bugs shouldn't be there. In the coming releases AMD will fix these bugs for the previous generations. AMD is trying to make it very clear that this release is ONLY intended for R600 owners.

I'll wait for the next release then. It's not like I have a choice anyway...

[pigah]

I had to link by hand /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 to /usr/lib/ligGL.so.1.2 but other than that, it works great on a mobility x1300.

I tried Sauerbraten which was unplayable before. Now it is smooth. Maybe I'll get Quake4 finally.

[Tillin9]

Could you be more specific? Fire* ids of course will not work as the PCIIDs are missing in fglrx_drv.so.

The Radeon 9500 to 9700 Pro softmod by adding ChipID 0x4E44 to xorg.conf. It was able to boost my fps considerably on my 9500s with this trick. Not that this is something I don't suspect AMD to support, but those extra 4 pipelines are there and in my cards work, I like using them. Plus nearly every version of the Windows driver has a copy with this hack.

[twistedself]

buildpk doesn't work for Mandriva/2007

I am having issues installing as well. I have been using the buildpkg for at least the last 4 releases and they have worked fine.

I am using Mandriva 2007. I used the --buildpkg Mandriva/2007 command to create packages. It starts fine and then spits out lots of rpmbuild stuff and ends with:

RPM build errors:
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libGL.so
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libGL.so.1
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libGL.so.1.2.8.41.7
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libfglrx_dm.so.1.0
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libfglrx_gamma.so.1.0
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libfglrx_pp.so.1.0
File listed twice: /usr/lib/ati/libfglrx_tvout.so.1.0
File listed twice: /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so
File listed twice: /usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so
File listed twice: /etc/ati/control
File listed twice: /etc/ati/signature
Installed (but unpackaged) file(s) found:
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/fglrx_dri.so
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.E13719

Any ideas?

I saw the previous comment about removing the dummy fglrx_dri.so... but it doesn't explain the other errors. I tried to poke at the ati.spec but I didn't get anywhere.

Thanks.