Current state of Catalyst drivers?

[DanL]

you are naive if you think so.
be sure amd invest more "money" in Linux driver support.

Prove it. Or are you just talking out your @$$ again? (Note: that was a rhetorical question because you're constantly spouting bull$hit).

[Panix]

"Prove it" LOL if i Prove it Nvidia and AMD sue me and the GOV will put me into Jail. You are naive if you think anybody can prove this.

but yes open your eyes its more expensive to support open+closed source drivers instead of only the closed one.

Considering the reports of 'crappy AMD/ATI binary blob release sucks again' posts and the same sort of discussion in other linux distro forums seems to indicate either waste of funds or incompetence or indifference or maybe all three, if AMD spends more on Linux! It's been the same story in consecutive years!

OSS drivers is good in terms of ideals and values but there are still limitations and only basic functionality for newer cards, anyway. If people care about power management, I think it's still lagging behind in support. At least, that's last I read or my impression.

I think if I got an AMD/ATI card, it would be used and relatively cheap. I am not confident in the support.

Also, the fact they don't support BSD and can't get more support with WINE developers seems to indicate something at least.

[PsynoKhi0]

What is the current state of the binary blob on linux?

Better than the usual trolls make it sound.

I'm thinking of doing a 3x24" Eyefinity setup in the following months and my questions are: Is it stable? Tear-free? Bug-free?

Yes if you follow instructions, yes if you enable the aptly name "Without tearing" function, and what kind of software is certified 100% bug-free?

[Hamish Wilson]

I have no experience with Eyefinity but I do have some experience with the binary blob, and it is not nearly as bad as some would have made out. My greatest complaints are that it suffers from the innate problems that all blobs suffer from, namely the inconvenience of having to maintain it separately from your system packages and the fact that it is proprietary. The tearing bogey at least in my experience is overstated; my machine did have some desktop tearing, though only desktop tearing as video playback and games were not affected. The other three setups I have tried with varying cards had no such issues. The anti-tearing feature had no effect on my desktop though, but turning on Compiz did, though I would rather live with the tearing. Using a version of the Nvida blob with SuperGamer and my internal graphics also resulted in some tearing. Curiously enough, I had no tearing with Catalyst and SuperGamer.

The fact that when you killed the X server with CRTL-ALT-BACKSPACE you could no longer play 3D games again until a restart was also a little annoying on Catalyst, but hardly crippling. All of my desktop Catalyst experiences are with Fedora 14.

On my current setup I just use the R600 classic Mesa drivers with my Radeon HD 4670 with Fedora 13 and dual head configured in Zaphod mode. Power management is adequate for me (getting temperatures in the 40 degrees in Catalyst on SuperGamer and 50 degrees in R600g from Fedora 15 Live CD as 13 can not probe temperature) and it almost fully supports my gaming, which I engage in frequently. Once Fedora 16 is released I will install that on my 2 TB drive and use the R600 Gallium 3D drivers, which should support all of my gaming requirements. In general, the free drivers are easier to maintain for me and offer a much better desktop experience.

I am sorry if this information is not very helpful for you Derpinator, but it was more directed as a response to some of the others in the thread.

[Derpinator]

I am sorry if this information is not very helpful for you Derpinator, but it was more directed as a response to some of the others in the thread.

It was very helpful, thank you.

I guess I'll have to buy the damn card and see how it goes!

Regarding stability, my X server has crashed only once in the last 2 years of using Nvidia's binary driver. There are no leaks either, my workstation has been up for 4 months and everything is looking good. This is the kind of stability I'll want with my future eyefinity setup.

[frie2]

Fedora 15 + fglrx

All I can say is that my experience with the AMD driver hasn't been horrible. My biggest compliant is the bad 2D acceleration and the fact that things start slowing down when you are running multiple GPU accelerated applications.

I'm running two 5770s in Crossfire on two monitors.

Besides what the others have mentioned on the pros/cons, I don't have much to add.

[Blacksmith]

I have three systems here, two have AMD cards in them (a 4870 and a 5870,both cards using open source drivers) the third system has an Nvidia GTX 560 in it using the closed src drivers. I have not used FGLRX for some time but the only real problem I had with it was slow 2D. This on a Samsung 305T (2560x1600) using the 5870 was, lets say, pathetic. I find the open source driver just works, I just installed the packages and away it went on both systems (I use Debian, one has stable the other testing). The 2D performance is out standing being lightning fast. I do some 3D development work and while on the AMD cards this is not real fast it is certainly adequate. There being no real value in a FPS rate being higher than the monitor is capable of displaying,
Interestingly FGLRX did not pick up the Samsung monitor when I tried it, I ended up having to put it in the config. That would have been around a year ago.
These days the Samsung is on the NVidia. To be even handed I have no complaints with nvidia both 2D and 3D giving no problems.

Blacksmith

[shrey]

I can speak about Eyefinity on Linux. With the open drivers in 11.10 Ubuntu, I actually have all three displays working properly (with the Cayman 69xx), and I can rearrange them as I like with the Ubuntu display manager without rebooting each time with Unity 3d. However, the fan/power management with the OSS drivers sucks (really noisy), and there's no OpenGL 3.2+ support.

With the FGLRX drivers, I have quite the headache getting them working. First off, there's no support for Unity 3d with Eyefinity and catalyst. I have to use Unity2d or it will be a wonky experience (or just knock me back to log-in screen). If I disable compositing engine, and turn on the tear-free option, then I don't get any tearing like most other people claim to.

As for setting up Eyefinity with the CCC, it is a royal pain. Using either 11.8 from the repos, or 11.9 from AMD, CCC almost always crashes when I make a monitor change if I don't load it from the terminal with "sudo amdcccle" - WTF? If I launch it from the terminal, then it usually doesn't crash, but moving monitors around in the display config manager is a weird thing. Do not attempt to rearrange them as you would like to, as it will screw something up in your Xorg.conf. Here's how I can manipulate them: click on the down arrow on a monitor, and go to multi-display with multi-monitor with monitors: X & X(something like that), and just click it. When you do that, it will probably rearrange the ordering of the monitors it shows. Just click that over and over changing which monitor you do it from, until eventually you have it configured the way you want. -Geez.

And for some reason, when I try and make a XBMC go full screen, it doesn't use the eyefinity resolution, and instead just changes my config to clone across three screens. But I can just use the windowed version and drag it across multiple monitors (that sucks). Also, no options for bezel correction like in Windows.

Hi, XBMC dont have support for multi display, you can try XVBA API to get the eyefinity support. And as far as i know bezel is not supported for Linux, it is only designed for Windows OS.

[mtippett]

Hi, XBMC dont have support for multi display, you can try XVBA API to get the eyefinity support. And as far as i know bezel is not supported for Linux, it is only designed for Windows OS.

As implied by shrey, a lot of applications are naive about the way they deal with multiple displays (in any configuration). For example, flash only understands the first viewport in RANDR. I haven't tested xbmc, but you'll probably find quirks and issues. Even unity/compiz has a problem after starting up with a texture that is only 1920 pixels wide. This is unlikely to be a driver problem, but more a naive implementation.

My current setup is 2xDP+1xDVI Dell 24" 1920x1200 displays in a portrait/landscape/portrait configuration. I have it configured as one screen with a virtual resolution of 4960x1920. I then use xrandr via a script to set the up the displays directly as part of the login.

Regards,

Matthew

[Hamish Wilson]

As implied by shrey, a lot of applications are naive about the way they deal with multiple displays (in any configuration).

This is the reason why I use Zaphod Mode for my dual head setup. It is not without issues but it is the closest thing I can get to having the second screen stay out of the way when not in use. I do not have to worry about all of my games needing to be windowed, or notifications appearing on the wrong screen, or icons moving about. I had to have a specific hard-coded setup anyway as I am treating my DVI monitor as primary, so having a specific set xorg.conf is not that big a deal for me.

I am not suggesting this as a solution to devguy's problem, just commenting.