AMD Publishes AMDGPU UVD Firmware For Southern Islands

[L_A_G]

I doesn't suggest anything about dropped support. Don't make things up, please.
I said "Sane customers still take vendor commitment to prolonged hardware support and promises fulfillment into account during shopping for new hardware." and this is what I mean. Because, you now, it's insane to keep buying from vendor who never delivered feature complete driver for it's past gen hardware. It's just stupid thing to do, plain and simple.

Umm... You claim that you're not talking about dropping support, yet you quote yourself talking about not supporting hardware like they should. Do you not see this?

But, pay attention here, I been talking about feature completeness. Specifically feature completeness. AMD already have poor track record in laptops market, and make own laptop parts look even worse by forcing customers to choice between gaming (DXVK) and hardware video decoding is not brightest idea. Regardless of your opinion on the matter, customers is free to decide it's wrong way of treating them and next time they will trow cash at other vendor. Thankfully, AMD fixed this now.

You're talking "feature completeness" with an API that came out a year after the last GCN2 hardware was discontinued and an application that uses it which came out two years after that. This is exactly why I compared your demands for full AMDGPU support on long since discontinued hardware is like demanding that carmakers retrofit parts made for newer models onto older models for free. You got what what you paid for back then and you haven't lost anything, but you're demanding a whole bunch more for free.

Car analogies is always false.

Umm... That's not how making an argument works. You can't just make sweeping statements like that with nothing to back it up except your own opinion. If that was true I could just say that fans of William Gibson are idiots and always wrong, so I win the argument and walk away.

[rox77]

I just compiled drm-next (from Alex) and UVD works with verde (HD7770)! but system fail to resume if UVD was used while suspend.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

your argument that suggests they've dropped support for these older parts

I doesn't suggest anything about dropped support. Don't make things up, please.
I said "Sane customers still take vendor commitment to prolonged hardware support and promises fulfillment into account during shopping for new hardware." and this is what I mean. Because, you now, it's insane to keep buying from vendor who never delivered feature complete driver for it's past gen hardware. It's just stupid thing to do, plain and simple.

Feelings that they haven't supported these stem mostly from people like you who think they should support everything on the latest and greatest codebases

On Windows they improve performance of old parts over time, and customers like it, as you can see.
On Linux they do the same. So whatever they should support everything on latest and greatest is not the question - they already doing so anyway on both platforms.

But, pay attention here, I been talking about feature completeness. Specifically feature completeness. AMD already have poor track record in laptops market, and make own laptop parts look even worse by forcing customers to choice between gaming (DXVK) and hardware video decoding is not brightest idea. Regardless of your opinion on the matter, customers is free to decide it's wrong way of treating them and next time they will trow cash at other vendor. Thankfully, AMD fixed this now.

Ah, and you also missing the fact that some AMD GPUs (such as R9 390) was never stable on radeon kernel driver in first place, and using previously feature incomplete amdgpu on such GPU is still requirement by this day.

What you're doing is like expecting that when a car company

Car analogies is always false.

[qarium]

I didn't think we had sold any 610's, but looks like it was used in the Dell Vostro 3590 last year, so my statement of "haven't sold any for a while" is still correct but the "while" is a few months shorter than I had previously thought.
It actually performed closer to a 620 (Lexa) than I expected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q69GypzjQwE

why not can we just agree to minimum support from release to EOL 10 years....
means a HD7970 is from 2011 means you should support it to 2022...
and by support i do not mean keep old stuff until it dies... instead i mean active development like AMDGPU kernel part for GCN1.0

right now a HD7970 is at 60€ in 2022 it will be at maybe 20€ means a loss of 20€ should be ok.

[bridgman]

If AMD doesn't sell that anymore, then why do they keep creating new marketing names for these products? E.g. Radeon 610 which is a 28 nm Southern Islands (GFX6 / first generation GCN) part, launched in Q3 2019.

I didn't think we had sold any 610's, but looks like it was used in the Dell Vostro 3590 last year, so my statement of "haven't sold any for a while" is still correct but the "while" is a few months shorter than I had previously thought.

It actually performed closer to a 620 (Lexa) than I expected:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q69GypzjQwE

[Old Grouch]

any person can just buy a new HDMI monitor.

Any person can, but

1) Perhaps I don't want to send perfectly good working (VGA) equipment to the landfill pile.

2) When I travel around doing presentations, I don't get to choose what projectors people have available. There are plenty of places that have projectors that don't have HDMI input. So if my laptop is sleeping or hibernating, I need to do a reboot and enable the Radeon driver, or carry an HDMI to VGA dongle. (Host provided convertors tend to go missing from conference rooms)

So yes, I tend to carry around a hardware dongle now when I didn't have to in the past. So once again, a software improvement has meant a deterioration in the usability for me. It is a minor point, but someone upthread asked if there were anything else that the AMDGPU DC lacked, and I made the point. It is not the end of the world. It is not a priority for AMD, which is understandable, but it is a niggle.

It probably helps that I don't play video games, and I don't have all the fancy desktop effects turned on, so fancy graphics do not float my boat, but I am aware they are important for others. When I started out, fancy graphics for me were what I could produce on an ICL PERQ 2, a VAXstation, and a DEC VT125. Producing animated 3D wireframe models was 'interesting'.

[chithanh]

You may be looking at the question from different perspectives. As far as I know AMD has not sold any hardware older than Polaris for quite a while now, but products from any vendor can stay in the supply chain and be sold as new for a decade or more.

If AMD doesn't sell that anymore, then why do they keep creating new marketing names for these products? E.g. Radeon 610 which is a 28 nm Southern Islands (GFX6 / first generation GCN) part, launched in Q3 2019.

[qarium]

Assessing relative importance is a mug's game. For some people, what you say (underlined) is true, for others it my not be: I would suggest that not forcing people to choose one or the other would be a better option, if possible. If I use the Radeon driver, VGA output works. If I use the AMDGPU DC driver, it doesn't. So VGA can be made to work. It is then somewhat irritating that 'improvement' in the driver means deterioration in the functionality I obtain. For people who need Vulkan and ACO the new code is great, which is wonderful for them, but it would be nice not to have to spend money and carry around a hardware dongle to solve a software induced problem. Or I just use the Radeon driver. Shrug.
I appreciate that when one has limited resources, one has to choose how they are used, so the development team probably can't cater for all the odd old use cases, but it is still a shame. I am still grateful for all the good stuff I get 'for free'.

well... talking about what should be default does not delete the old radeon kernel part... for now yet..
so what is your point? the vulkan people have to manually change driver but the VGA output people do not need to manually do it.
you can not fix the vulkan problem by hardware dingle...

only the VGA output have 2 different ways to solve this: buy hardware dongle from HDMI->vga OR manually set the radeon driver.

this really sounds for me that go with AMDGPU and the Vulkan driver is much better option.

if you have problem with VGA output? just buy HDMI->VGA this really sounds for as the best solution even better than setting the defaults manually.

also another viewpoint VGA is in fact obsolete and any new monitor you buy will have HDMI

but Vulkan is not obsolet instead vulkan IS THE FUTURE....

this means drop VGA and go with vulkan AMDGPU is the very best way.

any person can just buy a new HDMI monitor.

[Old Grouch]

yes but they really really really should make AMDGPU kernel part the default for GCN1.0 and 1.1
because vulkan support and ACO support is way more important than some people who need to buy HDMI to VGA converter.

and i think you happyly buy a "HDMI to VGA converter" if you can use the much better AMDGPU driver. the need of ""HDMI to VGA converter"" should not stop making it the default.

Assessing relative importance is a mug's game. For some people, what you say (underlined) is true, for others it my not be: I would suggest that not forcing people to choose one or the other would be a better option, if possible. If I use the Radeon driver, VGA output works. If I use the AMDGPU DC driver, it doesn't. So VGA can be made to work. It is then somewhat irritating that 'improvement' in the driver means deterioration in the functionality I obtain. For people who need Vulkan and ACO the new code is great, which is wonderful for them, but it would be nice not to have to spend money and carry around a hardware dongle to solve a software induced problem. Or I just use the Radeon driver. Shrug.
I appreciate that when one has limited resources, one has to choose how they are used, so the development team probably can't cater for all the odd old use cases, but it is still a shame. I am still grateful for all the good stuff I get 'for free'.

[qarium]

I realize full well that AMD doesn't consider end users to be their customers,

well i think they just speak different language than you. you speak technician they speak businessism.

for them everything what is after the time of the sale from the chips to the card maker is not the technical department office anymore for them it is PR and any support after this chip-sell-to-cards builder is no longer the sales department anymore.

instead it is only the PR department of the brand "AMD" and they now only do it because it is "really good PR" what means it is cheaper than Television Ads or Radio Ads.

i think Ubuntu and Fedora told AMD that they want for Ubuntu20.10 and fedora33 to switch to the AMDGPU kernel driver for GCN1.0/1.1 and this would had resultet in massive bad PR of angy people who get bad experience with AMD hardware because of stoping the bad PR the PR department spend money on developers to fix the video playback firmware and make it ready for AMDGPU.

and for future you just need to speak in their language

they have "technical department" they do future development of new hardware
they have sales department they sell current chips to the card makers
and they have PR department they are the only one who care about support and old hardware support...

if you speak to bridgman or others you always have to speak like this: it would be good PR for the AMD brand if AMD spends a little PR-Advertisement money on developers for outdated hardware...-

and answer will always be the same: if big media like phoronix.com or in germany PCGH or C't heise or other international IT tech press can make a big story out of it then yes the PR they earn is good and pay for the developers.

if they can not make big story out of it they maybe will not do it.

and if vulkan works on GCN1.0/1.1 in linux and a HD7970 run faster than a GTX1050 in Doom Eternal

then this results in good PR and some linux users with even older hardware will go on ebay and maybe buy any highend HD7970 or 280X or 390X i checked it they cost like 60€ and a GTX1050 is like 130€ means some people will be happy. maybe some young people without much money buy it on ebay and make good experience and then later if they earn more money they still buy AMD.