AMD Catalyst 11.12 Will Be Even Better

[Kano]

Sometimes all you need is a bios update. Since the last bios update (27th oct) for my s1155 board i can use suspend when booted via uefi 64 bit, before it never worked. That it works with oss drivers can be a lucky coincidence, fglrx requires a special state when it should work, it does for example not work when you unload kms + radeon and then switch over to fglrx, when you unload nouveau and switch to nvidia it works in about 90% of all cases. Btw. when it is not the latest chip you can use radeon.audio=1 override to enable hdmi sound for oss driver.

[xpressrazor]

I have been constantly typing such commands, with every release of catalyst driver ever since 11.04 hoping to get working and when it breaks.

$ sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb
$ sudo aticonfig --initial -f

$ sudo reboot -n

Backtrace:
[ 55.617] 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x26) [0x566f66]
[ 55.617] 1: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x16abca) [0x56abca]
[ 55.617] 2: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x7f22169e1000+0x10060) [0x7f22169f1060]
[ 55.617] 3: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so (xdl_xs110_atiddxFreeScreen+0x72) [0x7f22132d7b02]
[ 55.618] 4: /usr/bin/X (xf86DeleteScreen+0x7c) [0x47cd2c]
[ 55.618] 5: /usr/bin/X (InitOutput+0xbd2) [0x470e32]
[ 55.618] 6: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x22d9d) [0x422d9d]
[ 55.618] 7: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xed) [0x7f221591d30d]
[ 55.618] 8: /usr/bin/X (0x400000+0x2325d) [0x42325d]
[ 55.618] Segmentation fault at address 0x41
[ 55.618]
Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
[ 55.618]
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
at http://wiki.x.org
for help.

Its GPU Hang while booting.

$ sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh
$ sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev*
$ sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
$ sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
$ sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

I hope a day will come when sandy bridge (dual graphics) will happily let ati play on ubuntu, until then with every new release I will continue to break the system with above scripts. What does will be better imply? Will it work on sandy bridge computers?

[AnonymousCoward]

That's all nice, but how about an actually WORKING suspend mode? Suspend works nice with open source drivers, but open source drivers aren't good for anything 3D but compiz (and that one is a bit slow). How come that AMD's experts cannot make this function work for such a long time? It works on operating systems 10 years old (Windows XP)... If I want to use suspend on my radeon laptop, I need to use open source drivers. If I want to play a game, I need to use Catalyst. And every time I need to restart machine to get one or another. What's the point?

Unlike OpenGL, suspend is very operating system specific. Means AMD can't share code between Windows and Linux for this, means Linux is fucked.

So with AMD you have two choices:

fglrx: Great 3D performance, bad Linux integration.
radeon: Great Linux integration, mediocre OpenGL performance and missing features (UVD, HDMI audio)

This is the current AMD Linux situation and has been for a long time. I'd place my bet on the opensource driver to get better OpenGL performance and more features over fglrx to ever get good Linux integration.

[zzarko]

Suspend?

That's all nice, but how about an actually WORKING suspend mode? Suspend works nice with open source drivers, but open source drivers aren't good for anything 3D but compiz (and that one is a bit slow). How come that AMD's experts cannot make this function work for such a long time? It works on operating systems 10 years old (Windows XP)... If I want to use suspend on my radeon laptop, I need to use open source drivers. If I want to play a game, I need to use Catalyst. And every time I need to restart machine to get one or another. What's the point?

[yaourt-Syu]

Yes, I know, the open drivers are nice, but if you have a graphic card like mine (ati 5850) with fans, you have to select the "low_profile", and then all the unity and gnome-shell effects become "slideshows"....

Although, it does allow for finer control of power/fans speeds. I bound a script to a keyboard shortcut that takes care of that for me. Now I just press Ctrl + 1 for lower power, Ctrl + 2 for medium, Ctrl + 3 for default, and Ctrl + 4 for high.

cat ~/.bin/gpu_power

#!/bin/bash
case "$1" in
low) 
	gksu 'echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile' && 
	notify-send --hint=int:transient:1 -t 2000 "Low GPU Power" "`cat /proc/dri/0/name`"
	;;
mid) 
	gksu 'echo mid > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile' && 
	notify-send --hint=int:transient:1 -t 2000 "Medium GPU Power" "`cat /proc/dri/0/name`"
	;;
default) 
	gksu 'echo default > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile' && 
	notify-send --hint=int:transient:1 -t 2000 "Default GPU Power" "`cat /proc/dri/0/name`"
	;;
high) 
	gksu 'echo high > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile' && 
	notify-send --hint=int:transient:1 -t 2000 "High GPU Power" "`cat /proc/dri/0/name`"
	;;
esac

Then bind Ctrl + 1 to "gpu_power low" etc. Works well.

My HD 5770 works okay with the open driver. Not much worse than the catalyst proprietary one.

[GreatEmerald]

Interesting. If that means better GLSL shader support, then it will be awesome (right now, for example, you can't play Mass Effect on Wine with FGLRX, although you can play it with Radeon, albeit at a snail's pace, I'd imagine).

[Nille]

Every blacklist entry in software_rendering_list.json references the relevant bug reports.

The FOSS driver are blackistet for webgl and canvas too.

[chithanh]

I know its Off Topic but why are the OpenSource AMD Drivers blacklisted? I have searched at bugs.freedesktop.org but i didn't find and bug report that explain it.

Every blacklist entry in software_rendering_list.json references the relevant bug reports.

[e8hffff]

I know its Off Topic but why are the OpenSource AMD Drivers blacklisted? I have searched at bugs.freedesktop.org but i didn't find and bug report that explain it.

I think they are saying they blacklisted the official drivers due to past questions on compatibility and robustness, so it was the fglrx drivers, not the open source ones even though the open source versions may not be supported neither in Chrome hardware acceleration routines.

[e8hffff]

This type of news may sway my purchase in the future.