Catalyst 13.11 Beta Brings New GPU Support To Linux

AMD released their first beta of the Catalyst 13.11 Linux graphics driver today. Details are scarce as to the changes in this new Catalyst Linux Beta, but it brings support for AMD's just-released hardware.

Today's the day for the launch of the Radeon R9 290X that was announced in September from Hawaii. There's also the Radeon R7 240, R7 250, R7 260X and R9 270X that also debut with the top-end R9 290X. The Radeon Rx 200 Series is codenamed the "Volcanic Islands" and are still fabbed at a 28nm process. The R90 290X "Hawaii XT" has six billion transisitors and its core is clocked at 800MHz with a 1GHz Turbo while the memory is running at 1250MHz and the card carries a price of $699 USD.

While there's many Windows-based reviews of the new Volcanic Islands GPUs, sadly there isn't any Linux benchmarks... Going on two years now or so, AMD hasn't felt like sending out review samples to Phoronix. While they have sent out plenty of GPUs in the past and Phoronix is the undisputed leader in hardware reviews and no one has written as much Linux hardware reviews and open-source driver news as myself (including breaking almost every AMD Linux news story in the better part of the past decade), lately AMD hasn't felt like sending out hardware to Phoronix for whatever reason.

As a result, there's no Linux Volcanic Islands coverage today. The only chance of it happening soon is if I were to buy retail some GPUs, which is unlikely unless there's enough interest through Phoronix Premium subscriptions or PayPal contributions.

Anyhow, aside from the AMD Catalyst 13.11 Linux Beta 1 bringing the new Volcanic Islands support, other changes for this driver update aren't public at the moment. Those wanting to download this latest AMD Linux binary driver can find a download link in this forum thread.

Update: There's now a public change-log available and aside from the new hardware enablement it's basically the same as Catalyst 13.10 for Linux.