Open-Source AMD Fusion Graphics Still Mixed

While AMD was very fast to provide open-source Fusion graphics driver support under Linux (along with official support in their proprietary Catalyst driver), the support has not ended up working out too well for us. It has regressed since the November push. As mentioned in March, the E-350 Fusion Linux support took a dive in terms of its graphics support with some outstanding bugs. Since then, the support has improved and is now largely usable, but there are still some big issues.

Back in March there was a Fusion fix late into the Linux 2.6.38 kernel cycle, but we still experienced some lock-ups when using this latest DRM and the latest Mesa code. The Catalyst driver though was -- and continues -- to work great for this interesting AMD APU. The Linux compute performance for the AMD Fusion E-350 is also great. It's been over a month since last updating the code or even using the system, so before leaving for Germany I fired that system back up and pulled the latest open-source for the Linux 2.6.39 kernel, Mesa 7.11-devel, libdrm, and the xf86-video-ati 6.14.99 DDX.

Like before, booting the Ubuntu 10.10 system with updated graphics components had worked fine. Kernel mode-setting was working without any faults and Compiz had no problems on the desktop. However, when firing up a few tests is where we ran into issues. Some games -- such as OpenArena and Warsow -- would work fine, while other popular tests such as Nexuiz and World of Padman had failed. There were also some games buggier than normal with the R600 Gallium3D driver, such as VDrift.