AMD Catalyst 12.6 For Linux Disappoints

[V10lator]

when? I'm using ATI/AMD cards and drivers since 2003 and their stuff always worked (aside from that one card that decided it would be a wise decision to stop spinning the fan)

I've never had problems with ati drivers under windows, I've got a 6950 working great on my gaming desktop. I remember when I ran vista I switched to an ati x1950 because nvidia's drivers were giving me so much problems.

WinNT is way older. Here's a german post from 1999 showing issues with ATi GPUs + realtek network chips: http://forum.chip.de/windows-alte-ve...html#post22341
let me try to translate it for you:

Michael Beylich wrote:
> I can't install the ATI Rage 128 at my NT-Machine. Are there some tricks? I can try what I want, the machine won't go above 60 Hz at 800x600.

Hi !
Do you have a network card installed -- maybe with a realtek chip?
There are many problems...
If you got such a card write to me:

[email removed]

I think you'll find more issues if you search in the real NT days, so before Windows 2000.

But @Altix ATi != AMD. All in all it seems like the driver(s) improved since AMD bought ATi.

[xgt001]

no issues here

That driver is a good example of a very bad fglrx driver. Compared to 12-6 beta there was 0 difference:

a) same pci ids
b) no kernel 3.4+ support
c) crashes with debian xserver 1.12

So what on earth was fixed? Definitely nothing that i test...

on the arch linux side I am running Kernel 3.4.3 kernel with xserver 1.12 with zero issues

[bwat47]

[QUOTE=Altix;271994
BTW, ATi have had crap drivers under WinNT kernels for years too, what their excuse there too? (rhetorical, I don't actually care - I just want a product that works for ~1.5 year before it goes in the bin and I get the next shinny one, particularly GPU's)[/QUOTE]

I've never had problems with ati drivers under windows, I've got a 6950 working great on my gaming desktop. I remember when I ran vista I switched to an ati x1950 because nvidia's drivers were giving me so much problems.

On the linux sides I've definitely had bugginess with catalyst. The OSS drivers were quite stable for me, but performance isn't quite there yet (but its decent for basic usage/compositing) and power management is a joke, which is the main issue with them right now IMO. If the OSS ati drivers had decent power management, I would have gladly kept using linux with ati, but I was forced to get a new laptop with intel graphics to get halfway decent battery life and temps. I will be sticking with intel for the foreseeable future, they seem to be the only ones that PROPERLY support linux with good official oss drivers (atom excluded).

[Soul_keeper]

no kernel 3.4.x support

I just wanted to confirm there is _no_ 3.4.x support
I had to patch two files to make it work.

[Kano]

That driver is a good example of a very bad fglrx driver. Compared to 12-6 beta there was 0 difference:

a) same pci ids
b) no kernel 3.4+ support
c) crashes with debian xserver 1.12

So what on earth was fixed? Definitely nothing that i test...

[Marix]

I wonder whether they improved the OpenCL compiler for the 7970. To sad I removed it from my system yesterday and will have to wait till Monday with testing.

[geearf]

....

Do you have a picture of the "GNU/Linux Ready" sticker on your graphic card's box?
I would be really interested in seeing it.

[RealNC]

"AMD Responds To Torvalds' Harsh Words About NVidia By Releasing Catalyst 12.6" :-P

[TobiSGD]

my notebooks (15.4" display, without display about 2.5 cm thick) has also a Radeon HD 3200 and it doesn't overheat, when I use the free Radeon driver under Fedora 17. The CPU reaches temperatures around 72? C (on a plastic desk and about 25 ?C outside temperature) but I think this is normal for a Athlon II CPU.

For dedicated notebook graphic card power saving is probably a bigger issue, but with a IGP card, with a normal sized notebook it works pretty fine with the free Radeon driver too. At least for me.

And if you enter "echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile" it will probably help with power saving a bit. Maybe it's 2 or 3? degree cooler then. Just add it to the startup script of you distro. Under Fedora it is /etc/rc.d/rc.local

It is definitely not normal to have 15-20? C higher temperatures. Tried the power saving settings, but that didn't help. Reported this bug, but no solution yet. The radeon driver is simply not usable for me at this time, this is why I am angry about the dropped support. Now waiting for the legacy blob so that I can upgrade to Slackware -current again.

[nightmarex]

Going to test this see if it fixes some D3 crashes /prays ..... Okay to all the previous posts ..... WTF?!?! On both sides....

Intel - well their open source is nice, not as good performance as Windows from the results I have seen and not forget all the dirty crap
they did to sink AMD early on. Oh , I maybe wrong but didn't Intel create secure boot? *read on wiki it had to do with Itanium's originally.

I own serveral nvidia cards, the latest being a GT520, I experienced random mishaps and had a FX melt under linux so don't go claiming their the bee's knees or nothing. I will concede their binary blob is more polished (even in windows AMD has had a bad driver history). I like nvidia like I like intel.... Great performance effed up price (mostly).

AMD - What can I say. bang for buck, sometimes less then professional results. We all know it however I will usually throw my money in the AMD pile especially for older laptops I don't plan to game on since the OS driver is fscking great for such things (with older kernels as well YMMV) .

Who's nicer to Linux? LOL ... seriously? Back stabbing Intel? Binary only NVIDIA? Craptastic AMD? Nope I vote for beer.