ATI dropping support for <R600 - wtf!?

[Saist]

That's not what we are saying. See below.

That is also what most people were asking for until recently. We provided documentation AND co-funded the initial driver development with Novell AND hired in-house developers and testers to work on the open source drivers. Other than giving everyone a pony, what are we missing ?

What you are missing is human nature. There are people within the Open Source communities that have looked for any reason to be anti... something. They don't care what. AMD makes a good target because it's a decent size company that's seen as profitable. Some people just want to attack that.

The concept is on full display here with people who have never filed bug reports or gotten involved on any level of development stating they have unfixable bugs, and things are broken, etc, etc, etc.

Then there are those that declare that their perfectly functional card on a perfectly functional system is now broken and unusable. It doesn't matter that they are using the system, right now, to do everything they presumably want to do, since they are using it. All that matters is that support for their product won't be the same in the future.

Then there are those that proclaim their card is / was broken since a period of time ago. When confronted with people saying "it worked me on such and such a system" and when confronted with offers to try and, you know, solve the problem, those people simply don't want to listen.

Then there are those that are die-hard distro-backer's or bashers. I'll be the first in line to say I'm biased against Ubuntu, or any Gnome based distro. One of the main points of Linux though is it's flexibility. If one distribution does not work for you, try another one. Distributions are not created equally. Some have different x-servers, different kernels, different module pre-loads, and differt etc, etc, etc. Some people simply don't want to change or adjust, and the idea of going to another distribution that might have a work around or solution is just unimaginable.

***

Now, I personally tend to agree with the state of X.org Radeon right now being able to take over for Fglrx. Lets be honest, if I am a serious gamer, I would already be budgeting to upgrade my x1800 XT and x1900 systems. Well. Okay. I am a serious gamer and I am budgeting to replace those cards. I know that the Shader Model 2 graphics cards are going to have a hard time with the Unreal Engine 3 and ID Tech 5 graphics. If I want to play games on those platforms, I AM going to need something newer, driver support not-withstanding.

So, lets junk the performance 3D argument. It simply doesn't hold any weight.

Outside of performance 3D, the X.org ATi driver is actually better in 2D display. That's important when 1920*1200 LCD monitors are getting to be affordable.

Then there's the tear-free video support...

and basic support for 3D operations. I CAN use stuff like Compiz Fusion on X.org ATi on R100-R500 hardware. Granted, I really don't think I'd enjoy the experience on a Radeon 7500, but the option is there.

So, as an everyday user, X.org ATi is simply good enough for the average consumer, and lets say it, the type that buys from Dell.

I've also seen an expressed interest from the actual Developers, you know, the guys WRITING the code, in having bug reports filed and proper procedures followed through for those who are having problems with their display.


***

I'm also going to leave one parting shot here that might just open some people's eyes as to how committed AMD is to Linux and Open-Source.

R300-R500 is ALSO getting dropped from Windows Catalyst. Currently Windows users have no alternative drivers. At all.

This also means that upcoming Windows 7 users... won't be able to use the R300-R500 GPU's ... at all. There might be a basic driver provided by Microsoft, but they won't be getting updates. There will be no driver path.

Chew on that.

[DarkFoss]

Will owners of hd 2600 through hd 3850 AGP be cut off as well in both Linux and Windows ?

[Svartalf]

That is also what most people were asking for until recently. We provided documentation AND co-funded the initial driver development with Novell AND hired in-house developers and testers to work on the open source drivers. Other than giving everyone a pony, what are we missing ?

The in-house part wasn't always made clear John. Not everybody was on that same page with you and your employer (even though I was... ).

I'm not WHOLLY sure that AMD got it's money's worth with the Novell portion of that deal, but all in all, I'm tickled with what you've done to the point of putting Radeons back into my machines and buying new ones (Which, unfortunately seem to have issues with fglrx and things like user switching...).

I suspect a somewhat larger investment into the overall Linux support picture would make people happier- but it's a tough sell to AMD upper management. I know, I didn't get very far myself with that one when I had the chance.

[Saist]

Will owners of hd 2600 through hd 3850 AGP be cut off as well in both Linux and Windows ?

um. no support for R600+ chips are being dropped. So no.

[Stormking]

I don't really get why people complain about this move. You can't maintain those things forever

It's not about maintaining things forever. It's about ATI promising the driver to get better but never delivering. It's about their final admittance that there will never be a working driver for my hardware.

If there had been a fully functional driver for the last years and now support gets dropped, I would completely understand that. But there hasn't. Something was always broken and now all hopes that *someday* things might just work has vanished into thin air.

[Saist]

It's not about maintaining things forever. It's about ATI promising the driver to get better but never delivering. It's about their final admittance that there will never be a working driver for my hardware.

If there had been a fully functional driver for the last years and now support gets dropped, I would completely understand that. But there hasn't. Something was always broken and now all hopes that *someday* things might just work has vanished into thin air.

deary. I've already called you out for trolling. Knock it off.

[cutterjohn]

All I can say is: WOW! WTF?!

I just bought an MSI GT725 notebook specifically because I wanted to try an ATI card again, but seeing the proprietary X11 [EDIT] AND WIndows(!)[/EDIT] driver dumping parts so fast makes me feel even more queasy than I already do looking at the overall lack of adequate ATI X11 support.

On the good side for me, I'm at the latest and greatest mobile radeon part (4850) so I'm good for a bit. (But I get the feeling that I'd better start looking for a good deal on an 9800M GT MXM part before long at this rate of dropping support...)

It's kind of funny how nVidia supports GPUs way way way back to what the 5XXX series now? Not to mention their proprietary X11 drivers work peachily. I just can't see myself with another ATI card again given their rapid dropping of support v. their only real competitor, and you'd think that ATI would be bending over backwards to at least appear to be giving better support given their lower customer base, but I guess this just goes to show how much ATI/AMD are hurting.

Can't really comment directly on the ATI X11 proprietary driver ATM as I'm making a last ditch effort to get graphical install going for 64b Ubuntu 8.10 before falling back to expert text mode... (I'm not expecting much given various threads here though...)

[EDIT2]
IIRC last Steam survey that I saw was like 75% nVidia 25% Other including ATI, but rpesumably mostly ATI...

But this rapid dropping of support even if their arch MAY be slightly better than nVidia's is enough to send me right back to nVidia for my desktop GPU upgrade now, where I HAD been considering a 4850 or 4870. Actually with this announcement I'm REALLY wishing that I had gone for the ATI GPU in the desktop and gotten the MSI Gt627 as my notebook(9800M GS) as it's ALOT cheaper and easier to swap a desktop GPU than a notebook GPU even if it is an MXM part...)

Apparently AMD/ATI don't understand seemingly little things like support are in reality MUCH more important than a slightly better/"cooler" piece of sand...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me thrice, shame on me. Tell your PR/marketing department that they're doing an OUTSTANDING job for nVidia...
[/EDIT2]

[Stormking]

deary. I've already called you out for trolling. Knock it off.

Well, if you think that dismissing serious criticism as trolling is the right choice - go on, live in your fantasy world where a perfect working fglrx has actually been coded by unicorns ...

[DirtyHairy]

That's not what we are saying. See below.

Bridgman: neither did I say I was aiming at you with that comment, which I wasn't

That is also what most people were asking for until recently. We provided documentation AND co-funded the initial driver development with Novell AND hired in-house developers and testers to work on the open source drivers. Other than giving everyone a pony, what are we missing ?

I'll try to express my criticism once more: from my perspective, I was sold card/driver combi that worked between 50%-80% of the advertised feature set with the continuous promise of things getting better. Now support is being dropped completely, with the alternate open source driver being aroung 50%-80% finished and it being unclear (at least to me) what ATI is going to ensure that I will be able to use that thing in the future. I don't actually doubt that the support in the open source driver will improve in the near future, but I consider this to be a task for the actual hardware manufacturer and not for the community or other companies.

I would not complain if I was passing from a 100% working closed soure driver to a 100% working open source one, or a 50% working one with ATI actively working on delivering the remaining 50%, or if linux support never had been advertised.

So, that's once again my two cents on this, others may of course disagree, and compared to other companies ATI has gotten quite linux friendly, but at least for me, this is still not what I would call "good support". People may agree or disagree with this, but I wouldn't consider it "trolling", "whining" or anything of that sort. Oh, and by the way, I don't file a bug report for every issue I encounter in open source software (as preparing a proper bug report is a time consuming task), but I do it often enough, and also try to fix bugs when I find time, so I wouldn't consider myself "people who have never filed bug reports or gotten involved on any level of development stating they have unfixable bugs, and things are broken, etc, etc, etc.". End of statement from me

[BlackStar]

On the good side for me, I'm at the latest and greatest mobile radeon part (4850) so I'm good for a bit. (But I get the feeling that I'd better start looking for a good deal on an 9800M GT MXM part before long at this rate of dropping support...)

Just to put things into perspective, Ati has fully supported R300 chips for 7 years. That's a quite a bit better than nvidia's support for 5xx0 chips.

R500 owners are the ones that are hurt most by this move (total support for only 3-4 years), but at least there are working open-source drivers, which - get this - work *better* than fglrx for anything but 3d games. The real shaft goes to Windows users that wanted to upgrade to Windows 7.

In any case, your R770 will be supported for at least 3-4 years, possibly more. By the time this support ends, the open drivers will be mature and fast.

You may find this move alarming, but the truth is that you won't be affected by it at all.