AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support

[acer]

Would be nice if you can report back the CPU temperatures you get in comparison to Catalyst or earlier versions of radeon.

Right now using cpu fullpower governor it's running @ ~80?, I think the full fan power comes on a bit higher around 83? I hit that with the previous kernels and it would lower the temp to 77-78? and be on constant until I switched to dynamic gov.

Also running glxgears it gives constant ~50 fps small and there is no change when going fullscreen on the external monitor, last time I ran it it gave like several hundred fps small and would chug along fullscreen.

oh, and I use an external monitor like 95% of the time, 15 -18 hours a day with full power gov. ~8 hours a day 5 days a week for the last two years.

My previous nvidia card didn't get nearly as much use but gave up, console spotty an I can only use svga and if I connect an ext. mon. it locks up.

[uid313]

Fraud

@enrico.tagliavini

Thats called marketing, if a vendor needs a new card for an oem and there is no new hardware ready then they just rebrand an old one. The same issue is with my nvidia 405 card, usually you would say 4xx is fermi based, but no, that one is a rebranded nv 210 (405 is a pure oem card).

No, its called fraud.

[enrico.tagliavini]

I think it's the other way round. The fglrx people are late with xorg 1.12 support because Ubuntu doesn't yet use that version.
Anyway, we're getting the same problems as with the R200-R500 series in 2009. I have never bought AMD hardware - and now I have an even better reason to stick to nvidia.

If this is true this is just an excuse. AMD devs are not forced in any way to use only ubuntu to do development. Just to remind: NVIDIA support the lastest Xorg, usually before the stable release (at least with a beta driver, QA is not quick and this is good) and more over they support a lot more OS than AMD. Intel supports Windows and Linux as AMD and their driver just works with every version of Xorg, being it even the most bleeding edge git branch. Indeed it does, it is an open source driver. The radeon driver does the same, with the difference the intel driver has a more high support level.

In other words AMD is in the middle between NVIDIA and Intel, with the sum of doing two half working or half supported driver, i.e. the worst situation for all users. I will be very very happy if AMD will follow the intel way in the future and put more effort on the radeon driver (btw, the radeon team already does wonders being it so small), but it will be usable even with NVIDIA way, it is not the best, but still works.

[enrico.tagliavini]

@enrico.tagliavini

Thats called marketing, if a vendor needs a new card for an oem and there is no new hardware ready then they just rebrand an old one. The same issue is with my nvidia 405 card, usually you would say 4xx is fermi based, but no, that one is a rebranded nv 210 (405 is a pure oem card). Its of course very bad that support was dropped for dx10 cards that early but maybe amd reconsiders it and drops it after xserver 1.12, with would be at least enough for debian wheezy.

That's correct, the name has nothing to do with the chip inside (at least it is no strict). I knew it was an r700 based card, but I tried. It would be very nice for AMD to do just another release with xorg-server 1.12 support, but I don't even try to hope it, I'm sick of be frustrated by AMD.

[AlbertP]

(even without xorg-server-1.12 support in place! Now I unerstand why ubuntu didn't updated to 1.12)

I think it's the other way round. The fglrx people are late with xorg 1.12 support because Ubuntu doesn't yet use that version.
Anyway, we're getting the same problems as with the R200-R500 series in 2009. I have never bought AMD hardware - and now I have an even better reason to stick to nvidia.

[TobiSGD]

I just upgraded from 3.3.7 to 3.5.0-rc1, it looks like it's quite a game changer, takes the sting out of this amd move, yet to test the powersave feature though.

Would be nice if you can report back the CPU temperatures you get in comparison to Catalyst or earlier versions of radeon.

[acer]

I just upgraded from 3.3.7 to 3.5.0-rc1, it looks like it's quite a game changer, takes the sting out of this amd move, yet to test the powersave feature though.

[Kano]

@enrico.tagliavini

Thats called marketing, if a vendor needs a new card for an oem and there is no new hardware ready then they just rebrand an old one. The same issue is with my nvidia 405 card, usually you would say 4xx is fermi based, but no, that one is a rebranded nv 210 (405 is a pure oem card). Its of course very bad that support was dropped for dx10 cards that early but maybe amd reconsiders it and drops it after xserver 1.12, with would be at least enough for debian wheezy.

[Blacksmith]

Thanks bridgeman for the detailed information it is most appreciated, On the strength of the current develpment I recently purchased Gigabyte Radeon HD7870 to be use at a later date when develpment comes along a bit more as by then it is likey the cards will no longer be availible (thats from past experience).

[enrico.tagliavini]

I just tried 12,6_beta on my radeon HD 545v (Mobility Radeon HD 5xxx Series according to wikipedia). It doesn't work. when loading fglrx.ko it says "no such device" so support has been dropped also for some hd 5xxx card (this is 45XX based anyway).

I bought this laptop 1 years and 2 months ago, brand new. Congrats AMD, you will see another 0 $ from me, stay sure. This is not what a serious company should do.

NVIDIA: welcome back in the game (but I will buy intel only exept for my game PC).

Ok stop the rage now.
I'm sad for this.... really. There was a time I was a strong fan of AMD support for linux. I'm no more, not really because of fglrx, but more becouse of AMD really doesn't put a fair effort in radeon. And when I see this crazy drop of support (even without xorg-server-1.12 support in place! Now I unerstand why ubuntu didn't updated to 1.12) from the official driver...... well I can understand AMD gives a damn about linux and think only about windows. If NVIDIA can add support to old drivers (and BTW 3xx still support ge force 6xxx..... that's old guys!), I think AMD should put a little more effort to it too. I'm not asking for new features, but at least new kernel and Xorg support is a must.

Farewell AMD