Catalyst 14.3 Beta Linux Driver Fixes OpenGL Performance Issues

[AnonymousCoward]

What placebo effect ?!?

Besides LESS FPS , when i press a mouse or keyboard button the response was and still is clearly slower to the point is noticeable as opposite to SLACKWARE where it fells instantaneous.
It was and continues to be so bad that i almost couldn't kill anyone in online matches no matter the settings.

Is VSync on and is compositing enabled? And if the latter, is the unredirect fullscreen windows (or equivalent option) enabled? It could be that compositing with vsync is enabled which will introduce input lag and lower FPS for all OpenGL applications (if it's using the double buffered vsync version, and Catalyst probably is).

[cutterjohn]

They're probably getting paid to write FUD

Joking aside (hopefully), I do wonder this as well... I personally can't stand NVIDIA, and yet, you won't find me in NVIDIA's driver section dissing their stuff.

WRONG! I was stuck with a 4850 mobility in a notebook for years and their crapalyst drivers for BOTH Windows AND Linux were a steaming pile! THAT prompted me to build my new desktop w/nvidia and then 2 haswell notebooks w/nvidia gpus.

Since then I've also built an fx-9590(got it for the price of an 8350) + R9 280X, and a kaveri (w/ and w/o R9 270, 260, 250). All I can say from these is that (a) under windows ATI FINALLY figured out how to unload then reload their vid driver under windows(instead of a black screen and a guessing game) and (b) that o.w. they're still a steaming pile, perhaps even worse! Last AMD/ATI products until they manage to extract their collective thumb(s).

Oh, and the OSS drivers: lulz useless.

[lano1106]

I don't understand what gives Nvidia fanboys the right to come in here and complain about AMD when they haven't been using AMD to see how much it has improved. You don't see me commenting about the performance of Nvidia GPUs or drivers: that's because I haven't used them personally in recent times to know a damn thing about that. Also, what good does it do to write about it here? How's that going to help anything if you have problems?

Hi,

you size me wrong. I'm not a NVIDIA fanboy. I would qualify myself as an unsatisfied AMD customer.

I bought 2 7970 for over a 1000$ a year ago.

1. I have a hard time to get a good fps. It widly vary between 20 to 50 fps.
2. Crossfire either does not work or when it does (1 catalyst release out of 3) nothing beside Unigine demos supports it.
3. Very few ressources works on catalyst. They fix about 3 bugs per month and introduce about as much new bugs.
14.2 was very bad. Video player was core dumping the X server on the first image displayed. How could they let something trivial like this slip?
With 14.2 opencl cannot sees more than 1 device.
4. The high end card (290x) released last year is close to be unusable with catalyst and open source drivers.

To me, 14.2 is one of the worse driver release. I wasn't complaining too much before but after 13.2, AMD is very close to lose me for good.

[MWisBest]

WRONG! I was stuck with a 4850 mobility in a notebook for years and their crapalyst drivers for BOTH Windows AND Linux were a steaming pile! THAT prompted me to build my new desktop w/nvidia and then 2 haswell notebooks w/nvidia gpus.

Since then I've also built an fx-9590(got it for the price of an 8350) + R9 280X, and a kaveri (w/ and w/o R9 270, 260, 250). All I can say from these is that (a) under windows ATI FINALLY figured out how to unload then reload their vid driver under windows(instead of a black screen and a guessing game) and (b) that o.w. they're still a steaming pile, perhaps even worse! Last AMD/ATI products until they manage to extract their collective thumb(s).

Oh, and the OSS drivers: lulz useless.

All you can say is that the drivers are bad but you can't say how they are.

I have been using ATi since my little X300 SE, one of the first PCI Express GPUs. Windows and Linux both were just fine.

Fast-forward... a lot... and I get a 6620G+6750M laptop. That thing is nearly 3 years old, and it still flies and handles anything I throw at it. Again not a single issue with the drivers that lasted more than 1 catalyst release on Windows, and the OSS drivers are blazing fast now on Linux (Portal 2 is playable on that laptop, and works just fine for desktop 7850 users as well, so where you're getting problems from is beyond me) so I haven't used fglrx since about 13.4. If you check some of the benchmarks Michael has done here on Phoronix you'll see that the OSS driver is even beating fglrx on lots of stuff.

I also have a 7660G laptop, same experience with drivers and performance, absolutely fine.


I don't believe a word you have to say. If you had any sort of details or actually spoke English, maybe I would.

[MWisBest]

Hi,

you size me wrong. I'm not a NVIDIA fanboy. I would qualify myself as an unsatisfied AMD customer.

I bought 2 7970 for over a 1000$ a year ago.

1. I have a hard time to get a good fps. It widly vary between 20 to 50 fps.
2. Crossfire either does not work or when it does (1 catalyst release out of 3) nothing beside Unigine demos supports it.
3. Very few ressources works on catalyst. They fix about 3 bugs per month and introduce about as much new bugs.
14.2 was very bad. Video player was core dumping the X server on the first image displayed. How could they let something trivial like this slip?
With 14.2 opencl cannot sees more than 1 device.
4. The high end card (290x) released last year is close to be unusable with catalyst and open source drivers.

To me, 14.2 is one of the worse driver release. I wasn't complaining too much before but after 13.2, AMD is very close to lose me for good.

13.2 was a beta driver. Try again.

Owait, I see you just edited this to say 14.2, 13.2 is what's in my e-mail. But yet again, 14.2 is a beta driver. You simply cannot complain about something not working on a beta driver.

BTW, at $1,000 you overpaid by roughly $150 to $200.

Oh also, the 290X worked out-of-the-box on fglrx and OSS (at least one of the two) if I'm not mistaken...

[lano1106]

13.2 was a beta driver. Try again.

Owait, I see you just edited this to say 14.2, 13.2 is what's in my e-mail. But yet again, 14.2 is a beta driver. You simply cannot complain about something not working on a beta driver.

BTW, at $1,000 you overpaid by roughly $150 to $200.

Oh also, the 290X worked out-of-the-box on fglrx and OSS (at least one of the two) if I'm not mistaken...

Do they release other release type than beta? I have never noticed official ones....

1000$ was a year ago. I now that prices have drop a lot now.

BTW, you're suspiciously positive about AMD. I'm going to think that you are paid to cheer up the product

[pandev92]

13.2 was a beta driver. Try again.

Owait, I see you just edited this to say 14.2, 13.2 is what's in my e-mail. But yet again, 14.2 is a beta driver. You simply cannot complain about something not working on a beta driver.

BTW, at $1,000 you overpaid by roughly $150 to $200.

Oh also, the 290X worked out-of-the-box on fglrx and OSS (at least one of the two) if I'm not mistaken...

On linux the latest 13.12 driver was a sh..., slow framerates on xv, lag after 1 or 2 hours of playing games, and problems with kwin in my experiencie, simplee. If amd can't do more than fix 3 bugs on one month, please drope support for linux.

[vein]

On linux the latest 13.12 driver was a sh..., slow framerates on xv, lag after 1 or 2 hours of playing games, and problems with kwin in my experiencie, simplee. If amd can't do more than fix 3 bugs on one month, please drope support for linux.

I have been using 13.12 on 3 different computer (2 stationary and one laptop) with sabayon and ubuntu...and i do not regognize any of the stuff you write eventhough i have been playing DOTA2 and Metro last light a lot on all three machines. Everything works just fine and not problems at all. Got really great performance too.
And absolutely no problems with kwin... Stop spreading FUD please...

[Kano]

For me it seems you need fully overpowered cards when you want to play source engine games on Linux. It is impossible for slower cards to use the same settings as you need to have constantly over 100 fps to think it is smooth. Even OSS drivers feel much better, fglrx does not improve with multicore rendering compared to nvidia. As i dont have got something faster than a HD 5670 the fglrx driver is more or less impossible to use for L4D2.

[pandev92]

I have been using 13.12 on 3 different computer (2 stationary and one laptop) with sabayon and ubuntu...and i do not regognize any of the stuff you write eventhough i have been playing DOTA2 and Metro last light a lot on all three machines. Everything works just fine and not problems at all. Got really great performance too.
And absolutely no problems with kwin... Stop spreading FUD please...

I use this driver in 3 computers, an apu amd a8 5600 k, a radeon 6800 k, and a radeon 5670, and they have this problem, please stop advertising amd.

I use ubuntu with unity.