Catalyst 10.1 and Xorg 7.5 / 1.7.x?

[Erikina]

IMO, power management is the only thing missing from the OSS drivers. If I operate my 4870 with the open drivers, it sits there and fries. You could cook hamburgers on it.

Ha! Same graphics card, same problem. And since the fglrx doesn't support my 3-month old xorg version yet -- it actually literal cooks itself to death. Luckily it's under warranty. Guess I'm giving them a business case to provide modern drivers (in a roundabout way ;D)

[SwedishPenguin]

Well, I guess I will return my HD4670 and get an Nvidia equivlent. If someone from AMD/ATI is reading this forum: you lost another sale, fess up and at the very least provide drivers for stable Xorg and kernel releases. How hard can it be? Does the API really change that much between releases? Nvidia can obviously keep up.

[Panix]

thats totally wrong!

How is it *totally* wrong?

This is from the 'Radeon' site:

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeon

R600/R700 class chips (Radeon HD 2300 – Radeon HD 4890):

* 2D: accelerated (EXA), stable
XVideo: accelerated and tear free, stable
3D: in development at mesa git (r600 driver) and Linux kernel. Mesa 7.7 release will have basic 3D support for r600/r700. Older instructions for usage at radeonhd:experimental_3D

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

"3D: in development": you know what that means, right?

Anyway, the point is, 3D is an ongoing progression and it sounds like power saving is a major problem, too. Many of the R600+ cards (the Evergreens do better) can get quite hot and have relatively high power consumption. If the driver fails to keep them cool and you need to buy an aftermarket fan but then you have to worry about whether you have software for that, it can be quite frustrating as you can see. When I am shopping for a card, those are important factors, at least for me. Performance and stability notwithstanding.

It is quite problematic if you have two choices of drivers but various problems associated with both. Then, if the card is older, you are looking at being restricted to only one choice (OSS). The newer cards have problems with fglrx and I have read that distros such as Fedora 12 and latest sidux don't even offer support for the latest fglrx driver as it can't even be used with latest X.org yet. So, you buy a new $200+ card and can't even use it and don' know when you can? That's a concern, huh?

[droidhacker]

"3D: in development": you know what that means, right?

It means that it WORKS and that they are now optimizing PERFORMANCE and finishing the implementation of features that may not be entirely completed, like OGL3.

It does NOT mean that the drivers are particularly broken or crashy. That would be "wip".

And FYI: there is not "NO" reduced power mode on those cards. There IS some mitigation of power consumption/heat -- enough to deal with the main problems of running a chip at full power all the time.

And again, back to the point you made about being in development... improvements to this are coming... FAST.

This driver works GREAT, and is getting EVEN BETTER.

And note: a LOT of things in this world are under development IN PERPETUITY! That means that they KEEP getting worked on until they are either no longer needed, or time itself ends. The LINUX KERNEL ITSELF is an example of this.

So don't get put off by a flag that says "in development". (Note: Actually, it says "mostly".)

[tuxdriver]

Linux as a desktop / multimedia OS is still a big joke, especially if you're one of the lucky users with an ATI card.

Here's the best recipe to survive the current Linux crisis:

1. Install Windows XP (all newer M$ OSes suck badly, including Win7), install the latest ATI Catalyst drivers for XP and stuff your OS with all kinds of Open Source apps and software.

Benefits:
You'll get fully working tear-free video acceleration, run the latest DirectX9 games and apps with blazing-fast performance, full OpenGL 3.2 support, OpenCL, 2D performance that's 100 times faster (in a non-composited environment) than the current *Open Source* ATI drivers for Linux, hassle-free high-quality audio with acceleration, working Flash 10.x with hardware acceleration, the fastest browsing experience (Opera 10.5 for Windows), Linux filesystem R/W support via Open Source drivers, use your favorite / old apps without relying on the extremely buggy WINE, play all protected audio/video formats, use less power, generate less heat and noise, use every feature your hardware supports and relieve yourself from the stress with the current state of Linux developments.

2. Then install your favorite Linux distro in a virtual machine (VirtualBox) for all your compiling/development needs.

3. Use Linux (preferably a Live Linux CD) only for online banking, as a server or for system recovery / troubleshooting.

4. Test the latest Linux distros and developments in the Linux world, contribute, buy games for Linux and most importantly - complain a lot Then go back to using Windows.

5. Wait a couple of years until everything in the Linux world stabilizes and then fully migrate to Linux.

[pingufunkybeat]

As I understand it, the OSS driver doesn't support 3D or deliver 3D features.

Dude, you're stuck in 2008.

The free drivers are not perfect yet, but they provide OpenGL 2.0 on everything up to the HD 4xxx family. Only the latest 5xxx cards are still not supported.

"3D: in development": you know what that means, right?

I've been running these drivers for half a year and I assure you that I know that that means.

That means that everything I need works, including many games. I'm not much of a gamer, and there are games that still don't run well, but there is definitely working 3D, and it's more stable for me than nVidia's blob has ever been.

Anyway, the point is, 3D is an ongoing progression and it sounds like power saving is a major problem, too.

3D is an ongoing progression in the sense that not everything from the OpenGL 3.x spec is implemented. Most of the GL2 spec (which is what the vast majority of everything running on Linux actually uses) works great.

Power saving is a major issue. There is a load-based implementation available as a patch, but it will take a while before it becomes mainstream.

But that's really the last thing that the free drivers are missing.

Please don't spread FUD.

[bridgman]

IMO, power management is the only thing missing from the OSS drivers. If I operate my 4870 with the open drivers, it sits there and fries. You could cook hamburgers on it.

Ha! Same graphics card, same problem. And since the fglrx doesn't support my 3-month old xorg version yet -- it actually literal cooks itself to death. Luckily it's under warranty. Guess I'm giving them a business case to provide modern drivers (in a roundabout way ;D)

Are you both using the ForceLowPowerMode option with the UMS drivers ? If not, sounds like you should be...

[monraaf]

Linux as a desktop / multimedia OS is still a big joke, especially if you're one of the lucky users with an ATI card.

Here's the best recipe to survive the current Linux crisis:

1. Install Windows XP

Please take your proselytization somewhere else "tuxdriver", you aren't contributing anything useful to this discussion.

[RealNC]

Are you both using the ForceLowPowerMode option with the UMS drivers ? If not, sounds like you should be...

It doesn't do anything else than downclocking (last time I checked). Voltages stay at default values. Since only voltages matter with temps, downclocking doesn't do anything helpful. Temps stay the same if the voltage doesn't go down, no matter how much you downclock the card.

[mirv]

It doesn't do anything else than downclocking (last time I checked). Voltages stay at default values. Since only voltages matter with temps, downclocking doesn't do anything helpful. Temps stay the same if the voltage doesn't go down, no matter how much you downclock the card.

Actually it's consumed power that matters to the temperatures. Downclocking will make a difference for that reason, though pwm fans might spin down and the temps remain the same that way.