AMD Catalyst 14.4 Brings Full OpenGL 4.4 Support To Linux

[przemoli]

Nah the drivers just aren't ready yet. AMD uses an internal crossfire bridge on their dual cards.

Yes for 2in1 GPUs one really need those proprietary interconnects.

But for 2 GPUs in one PC, pcie is enough for AFP algorithm. Just nobody have interest in it. (AMD wont gain much, as multi-gpu solutions are served by Catalyst, while Mesa devs usually have less GPUs :P )

[Morpheus]

I'm puzzled by the requirements at the end of release notes :

The following packages must be installed in order for the AMD Catalyst? Linux graphics driver to install and work optimally:

gimp-help-en
gimp-help-common
XFree86-Mesa-libGL
libstdc++
(...)

Why gimp packages ?

Also, it is completely junk to see enterprise-grade distros supported and yet still having so many bugs, even for "old" software setups. I have not seen it yet, but what avout openCL support ?

[Soul_keeper]

I just tested these drivers out and it seems opencl performance has gone down.

In fact every release since 13.12 (dec 6th) seems to go down in opencl performance (sgminer/cgminer).
My limited testing on my radeon 7870 sees around 10% reduced hashrate with 14.4b (plus some HW errors)
the Jan 8th version was around 3% slower than 13.12 and the various betas since are similar
oddly the .bin files keep getting smaller however.

I'm just going to keep sticking with 13.12, I get the best hashrate and there aren't any gaming/desktop bugs that I notice.

[DanL]

I hope they add VDPAU video acceleration soon. It's mind-boggling how VDPAU support is already available for the free drivers but Catalyst is still stuck with xvba...

I'd rather they use the dev manpower to improve the open-source 3D so fewer people have to run Catalyst. After all, they're complaining about "engineering costs" to do release notes and you want an NIH video API (VDPAU)? Good luck with that...

XvBA wasn't so bad when the VA-API backend was being actively developed, but I think the dev gave up on it because XvBA was simply too buggy (and Intel hired him to work directly on libva anyway).

[molecule-eye]

Will it install on kernel 3.14?

[molecule-eye]

How do you set overscan? I've got black bars around the screen but the option in ccc appears to have been removed.

This is worrying as I always have to set overscan after installing Catalyst on my Trinity APU. Did you figure it out?

[stiiixy]

I'm actually curious as to what Michaels was inferring with this comment:

'The R9 295X also costs $1500 USD, so it's out of the hands of most Linux gamers.'

I'm pretty sure $1500 for a ANY video card is out the reach of MOST PC users.

[molecule-eye]

I'm actually curious as to what Michaels was inferring with this comment:

'The R9 295X also costs $1500 USD, so it's out of the hands of most Linux gamers.'

I'm pretty sure $1500 for a ANY video card is out the reach of MOST PC users.

He's implying that Linux gamers are cheap bastards. Seriously though, you can see his point. What linux gamer would spend that much money on a graphics card since virtually no linux titles need that much horsepower? Are there any games that do? Metro Last Light at 4k res? Who would buy such a card to play one game?

[stiiixy]

He's implying that Linux gamers are cheap bastards. Seriously though, you can see his point. What linux gamer would spend that much money on a graphics card since virtually no linux titles need that much horsepower? Are there any games that do? Metro Last Light at 4k res? Who would buy such a card to play one game?

I thought exactly what you said in all seriousness. Just go and read HOW he said it. Technically, he inferred that the $1500 price tag is out of our hands (as linux user's), because we can't possibly afford it. Your joke is more qualified than you think if you look at it like that. But this part about making out as if we're tightwads before valuing our OS/GNU/OSS freedoms.

Normally I would not care, but it made me stop for a minute and think on it more than I would normally care to admit to myself. Hopefully he didn't mean it the way it came out, because I might get offended =D And more importantly, hopefully soon enough 295X's and Co will be justifiable anyway for some in the coming year as AAAAAA titles start emerging.

[AnonymousCoward]

Finally driver with which you can seriously play L4D2.