Suggestions about how to make a Radeon HD 7790 work decently?

[mmstick]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with FGLRX! All you need to do is configure it properly to work right.
I have a Sapphire Radeon HD 7790 and I'm running FGLRX on Fedora 20 with it working like a charm, KDE compositing is on,
I'm able to play games maxed out like Team Fortress 2, Left4Dead2, DOTA 2, and Trine 2. First thing you're doing wrong is installing
the crappy drivers from the repositories! Install the binary drivers!
If you're on Ubuntu here are the steps to installing the driver.
1. To be able to get into the desktop, you have to first go to terminal (CTRL+ALT+F1), type in your user and password (Make sure you're ROOT or sudo).
2. Install FGLRX from perositories: apt-get install fglrx
3. After that type: amdconfig --initial && reboot
4. Now you can access your desktop, so now you download the 13.11BETA driver from amd.com and unzip it, mine was placed in the Downloads folder so that's how I'll demonstrate it. And make sure to delete the zip file.
5. Open terminal, and again make sure you're rooted or sudoed and type the following commands:
$ cd Downloads
$ chmod 770 amd*
$ ./amd*
6. Follow the instructions, decline reboot, and again type in the terminal: amdconfig --initial && reboot
7. Once rebooted, you'll have everything working. Hope this works, cheers! (Oh and in case you wanna add some dependencies so it won't do any problems when the kernel updates, you might wanna install gcc make git git-core linux-headers-generic dkms build-essential before you install the actual driver.

That's really overly complicated. All I have ever needed to do on any of my machines in Ubuntu is just:

1) Download the latest Catalyst from AMD's Website
2) sudo sh amd*.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/saucy
3) sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb
4) sudo apt-get install -f
5) sudo amdconfig --initial
6) sudo reboot

Works every time.

[gradinaruvasile]

If you are using fglrx proprietery you can just forget about this one as nothing supports this XvBA. Everyone went with VDPAU which catalyst proprietery does not support.

Well there is
-one player that supports xvba natively - the xbmc player's one non-official branch. Which isnt supported anymore (because radeon/VDPAU proved to be easier to work with), but may be some builds available. This does not even need this xvba-va-driver connector since it uses xvba directly.
-vlc can use xvba via libva. This needs this xvba-va-driver which connects the xvba decoding into the libva's xvba backend allowing hardware decoding. Problem here is that the hardware decoding isnt used directly and only a subset of its features is working with higher CPU usage than with a native implementation. Also the decoding sometimes produces artifacts and causes crashes. This happens exactly the same way with the nvidia vdpau libva backend.

[ChrisXY]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with FGLRX! All you need to do is configure it properly to work right.

Actually there are many things wrong with fglrx. For a few examples you can browse http://ati.cchtml.com/ And yes, I have filed a few of those.

[xtachx]

Actually there are many things wrong with fglrx. For a few examples you can browse http://ati.cchtml.com/ And yes, I have filed a few of those.

And no one replied (or even read) any of them (I mean the entries on ati.cchtml.com). THAT is the biggest problem with FGLRX

[bridgman]

And no one replied (or even read) any of them (I mean the entries on ati.cchtml.com). THAT is the biggest problem with FGLRX

With respect, that's simply not true. I don't know an easy way to search for entries where AMD developers have responded (I guess I could troll through all my emails looking for update notifications), but I picked a recently active ticket at random and found that Jammy had been working on it :

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=711

AFAIK most of the tickets get read, but the devs only respond if they have questions or solutions/workarounds.

[LN17]

Fact:

- Jammy commented two months ago. (Jammy 2013-10-24 05:25:14 CDT )
- one from 100 ones was commented

[bridgman]

Fact:

- Jammy commented two months ago. (Jammy 2013-10-24 05:25:14 CDT )
- one from 100 ones was commented

First one doesn't surprise me -- I picked a recently modified ticket at random, wasn't looking for recent comments by AMD developers.

Second point doesn't sound right, but if you're stating it as fact then I guess you must have solid information. Presumably that would include :

- complete list of AMD developer names
- a good way to search for them (typing name into search box only gets you tickets where their name appears as a string in the comment, not when they commented)
- total # tickets in the system
- total # tickets with AMD developer comments

If you have all that (or other similarly good info) then I have to accept your statement of fact. My impression was that a higher proportion of tickets had AMD developer comments though.

[deanjo]

AFAIK most of the tickets get read, but the devs only respond if they have questions or solutions/workarounds.

Just even a quick acknowledgement of the issue can do wonders on how development is perceived. Reporting a bug to be left hanging without any feedback what so ever is extremely frustrating for the bug reporter.

[dannydamsky]

That's really overly complicated. All I have ever needed to do on any of my machines in Ubuntu is just:

1) Download the latest Catalyst from AMD's Website
2) sudo sh amd*.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/saucy
3) sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb
4) sudo apt-get install -f
5) sudo amdconfig --initial
6) sudo reboot

Works every time.

NOT ANYMORE On Ubuntu 13.10, if you're using Unity or GNOME, your X server won't run at startup with the 7790, so you'll have to CTRL+ALT+F1 and from there install via APT the repository
FGLRX driver, then reboot, log into unity, while you're logged in, remove FGLRX, and then repeat those same steps as in fedora only with a bit different dependencies OH and you'll have to --force install the driver
Ubuntu sucks mate! At least with Fedora there's stability after installing the driver.

[mmstick]

NOT ANYMORE On Ubuntu 13.10, if you're using Unity or GNOME, your X server won't run at startup with the 7790, so you'll have to CTRL+ALT+F1 and from there install via APT the repository
FGLRX driver, then reboot, log into unity, while you're logged in, remove FGLRX, and then repeat those same steps as in fedora only with a bit different dependencies OH and you'll have to --force install the driver
Ubuntu sucks mate! At least with Fedora there's stability after installing the driver.

Living in denial eh? How is installing for a 7790 any different than installing for an array of 7950s and 6850s? It works the same today as it did forever before...