RadeonHD 1.2.4 Driver Released

[bridgman]

What do you tell somebody with a shiny new laptop and ATI card that locks up with fglrx when trying to watch DVB-T via kaffeine?

I manage the open source graphics project so you can guess what I would be thinking

Seriously, I don't have a good off-the-top-of-my-head answer for a DVB-T issue. The DVB/T standard isn't used in any of the countries where we do Linux PC driver development, so we would need to find a way to repro the problem with a different source. If the laptop owner can repro the problem without requiring DVB-T that would sure help.

There is a lot of work being done on the fglrx video stack now (the focus previously was primarily on the 3D stack) so this is one area where I expect to see ongoing improvement.

[Kano]

Well DVB-T is an example. I guess the xserver just locks because xv is tried to be used. Could not verify this yet, but Xorg 7.1.1 + xv seems be pretty unstable.

[DanL]

What is the state of RS780 (HD3200 exactly) in radeonhd?

Instead of ranting about a non-existent conspiracy theory, let me try and provide a real answer to your question.
The state of RS780 in radeonhd is very similar to the open-source radeon driver. They provide basic mode-setting and mesa software acceleration. If you want any kind of hardware video acceleration, you'll have to use Catalyst.

[korpenkraxar]

Just to make it a bit easier on potential customers, which series of cards use the RV710 and RV730? Is there a simple table available somewhere that helps one translate between chips and cards?

Well, too bad you AMD/ATI guys did not make it in terms of delivering spectacular video improvements for fglrx to compete with Nvidia or publishing the docs or a more competent open source driver for new cards in time for the holidays.

I just bought myself a new low-end graphics card for my HTPC based on the latest driver announcements and as much as I had hoped it to be an ATI card this time around, it wasn't. A case of ideology caving in for pragmatism and spouse approval.

But you know what, I still remain hopeful that 2009 will change much of that and that we by 2010 vaguely will remember the olden days when ATI cards were problematic in Linux and other *nixes. Nvidia should better have a secret open source project going already or there might be trouble on the horizon for them now as graphics innovation on Linux finally seems to get going and targets will probably move quite a bit for some time.

So bridgman & Co, keep the hard open source work going and see you again next year! Happy holidays!

[deanjo]

hmm.. Novell.. which driver will be there in OpenSUSE 11.1?

If radeonhd, it's bad, because my card (R500 family) has more features when used with radeon.

RadeonHD would be the default, but there are packages for radeon as well.

[bridgman]

Just to make it a bit easier on potential customers, which series of cards use the RV710 and RV730? Is there a simple table available somewhere that helps one translate between chips and cards?

RV710 is HD43xx and HD45xx, RV730 is HD46xx, RV770 is HD48xx.

Well, too bad you AMD/ATI guys did not make it in terms of delivering spectacular video improvements for fglrx to compete with Nvidia or publishing the docs or a more competent open source driver for new cards in time for the holidays.

I don't know about you, but we still have a lot of work to do before the holidays

So bridgman & Co, keep the hard open source work going and see you again next year! Happy holidays!

Thanks !

[bulletxt]

"I don't know about you, but we still have a lot of work to do before the holidays "

you are somehow able to make me continue dreaming...just be sure to make it become true

[korpenkraxar]

I don't know about you, but we still have a lot of work to do before the holidays

Me? I just sit here reloading the phoronix page in my browser all day ;-)

No I am actually on paternal leave (we have quite a bit of that here in Sweden) struggling to keep up with our 1.5 year-old so yeah I'm pretty busy too...

... and only check the page a few times a day these days

PS. With the risk of going slightly off-topic, I dare anyone here to grok the Swedish parental leave rights as specified over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

[Dieter]

> I don't have a good off-the-top-of-my-head answer for a DVB-T issue.
> The DVB/T standard isn't used in any of the countries where we do
> Linux PC driver development

You don't need to worry about DVB-T/COFDM vs. ATSC/8VSB. Those
are RF standards, the tuner/demodulator deals with that, not the
GPU. There are FLOSS drivers for some (not all) tuner/demod
cards for both ATSC and DVB-T. The HDHomeRun tuner/demod doesn't
need a special device driver (or a slot) just Ethernet. Whether
you use a card or the HDHR, you get a transport stream out.

Worry about mpeg transport streams. Step one: get Xv and XvMC working
in the FLOSS drivers. (working *correctly*, no tearing, purple, etc.
problems) That will take care of mpeg2. Step two: pick a API and
get mpeg4, H.264, etc. working in the FLOSS drivers.

Keep in mind that the transport stream might be corrupted by bad
reception. Crashing, hanging, etc. is not the correct response.

[bugmenot]

Instead of ranting about a non-existent conspiracy theory, let me try and provide a real answer to your question.
The state of RS780 in radeonhd is very similar to the open-source radeon driver. They provide basic mode-setting and mesa software acceleration. If you want any kind of hardware video acceleration, you'll have to use Catalyst.

Thank you, kind man.