AMD 8.41.7 Display Driver Released -- The Holy Crap Edition!

[spielc]

Yep, x1600Pro 512mb. Unfortunately I don't have a GeForce to fall back on... so I'll just wait it out. I'm having enough fun in Linux aside from that to keep me from going back into Windows unless it's an "emergency".

For all the bitching I've done, I really do appreciate the direction AMD/ATI is going... I'm just a little put out after high expectations for the current driver release.

Same here... I just remarked that i have the same problem as you do (the agp/pci-e and 512 mb issue) so i just stick with 8.40-driver till the 8.42-driver is released with hopefully the fixes included that we need to get a painless linux-experience!

[Michael]

So you did mention that this release is primarily for the r600-series but you said that there were MINOR problems and NOTHING severe on the older cards when you tested the driver. From what i've read in this forums there are BIG problems with this drivers on the older generation cards. Again i do understand that you can't test every single card with an ATI-chip but still when you read the review you get the impression that it the new driver WILL work on older cards and you WILL get the promised huge performance boost. That's why alot of ppl (including myself i have to admit) got so excited about it and that's why we are so disappointed now after we had to remark that it's not as it was promised it would be.

As the only real deal i need the vid-card for in linux (at the moment... in the future it would be cool to have desktop-effects with aiglx/compiz-fusion too...) is watching movies (for playing games i still use good old windows) and i read that xv is still broken (on some cards and i'm one of the lucky ppl who seems to own such a card...) i probably won't try this release (maybe i get bored and tell myself that i can use some kind of adventure and still try it out who knows... )

Once again i do understand that you can't test everything but from a reviewer i do expect some kind of unbiased/objective view of things when he or she reviews something (still i do understand that this is almost impossible as everybody has some kind of personal opinion which affects things... when i would write a ati-linux-driver review it would possibly be alot more skeptical as yours are because of the experiences i made with linux and ati-cards...)

There was close to a dozen ATI graphics cards tested with this 8.41 release here internally and I stand by my statement that I had only ever run into minor issues with the 8.41 release driver (back in late July / early August time frame there were known compatibility problems with some Intel motherboard chipsets and a couple other known issues, but those were all corrected by 8.41.5~8.41.6 era). On my main system that I do my daily work from, which I use about ~80 hours a week, had never once had a stability problem or anything wrong with it aside from some corruption on the watermark and mouse. To be honest, I was shocked by some of the problems you guys are having. Those on the ATI beta list also didn't seem to report many problems.

Heck, for those of you with a nasty bug and are committed to seeing the problem resolved, send me a private message with your name, email address, and a brief description of your problem(s) and I can see about getting you on AMD's beta list so you will be able to report your problems directly to AMD and try out the actual beta drivers.

[sundown]

Where did you get it? I'm currently hunting for a laptop without an OS or preferrably with Linux preloaded. I looked at
Empreror Linux, but bringing one of those babies down here is as costly as a MacBook... Pro (quite pricey), and that for a Toucan T61 model, but with customs and other taxes, plus shipping and handling it is virtually twice the price.

from http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/
For instance http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant...duct_Code=S96S
But in this particular case we're talking about Nvidia now.

[jackkerouac]

There was close to a dozen ATI graphics cards tested with this 8.41 release here internally and I stand by my statement that I had only ever run into minor issues with the 8.41 release driver (back in late July / early August time frame there were known compatibility problems with some Intel motherboard chipsets and a couple other known issues, but those were all corrected by 8.41.5~8.41.6 era). On my main system that I do my daily work from, which I use about ~80 hours a week, had never once had a stability problem or anything wrong with it aside from some corruption on the watermark and mouse. To be honest, I was shocked by some of the problems you guys are having. Those on the ATI beta list also didn't seem to report many problems.

Dude, you hyped up expectations too much and you got burned. That's just the way it is. You should have been more objective and you weren't. You took a credibility hit and that sucks, but maybe it teaches you a lesson not to be so excited by future AMD/ATI driver releases so your readers don't wind up getting so pissed off when the driver doesn't meet the lofty expectations you've set.

Sorry, but that's the way I see it. Yes, AMD/ATI is going in the right direction. Yes, they are opening their drivers, which is great. But this driver doesn't work for me (x1650 Pro), so to me, this driver sucks. It just doesn't live up to the massive hype you gave it. The "Holy Crap Edition"? Maybe as in "Holy Crap, I got screwed by AMD/ATI again!"

[Silent Storm]

Dude, you hyped up expectations too much and you got burned. That's just the way it is. You should have been more objective and you weren't. You took a credibility hit and that sucks, but maybe it teaches you a lesson not to be so excited by future AMD/ATI driver releases so your readers don't wind up getting so pissed off when the driver doesn't meet the lofty expectations you've set.

Sorry, but that's the way I see it. Yes, AMD/ATI is going in the right direction. Yes, they are opening their drivers, which is great. But this driver doesn't work for me (x1650 Pro), so to me, this driver sucks. It just doesn't live up to the massive hype you gave it. The "Holy Crap Edition"? Maybe as in "Holy Crap, I got screwed by AMD/ATI again!"

I'll back michael here because I've a parallel experience when compared to Micahel's. I'm using a X1650XT (1950Pro sibling) and I'm having a good experience with these drivers too. Yes. drivers may have bugs but they didn't hit neither him nor me during the development of this driver. So instead of shouting blindly please try to be a bit cooler, OK?

Edit: Grammar corrections.

[adamk]

Dude, you hyped up expectations too much and you got burned. That's just the way it is. You should have been more objective and you weren't. You took a credibility hit and that sucks, but maybe it teaches you a lesson not to be so excited by future AMD/ATI driver releases so your readers don't wind up getting so pissed off when the driver doesn't meet the lofty expectations you've set.

It certainly met the expectations I had, based on Michael's review. Sorry you've had such a bad time with 8.41, but clearly not everyone is having these problems, so it's not hard to believe that Michael didn't see them either.

Adam

[Malikith]

Dude, you hyped up expectations too much and you got burned. That's just the way it is. You should have been more objective and you weren't. You took a credibility hit and that sucks, but maybe it teaches you a lesson not to be so excited by future AMD/ATI driver releases so your readers don't wind up getting so pissed off when the driver doesn't meet the lofty expectations you've set."

Hey, think of it like this, if you tested the driver, and had no issues with it, or just a few minor ones for the things you do and the things you test, you would be pretty happy with it right? So you would say good things, its natural. So when all the other people with different cards such as AGP x1k cards like myself try it, its a different story.

Sorry, but that's the way I see it. Yes, AMD/ATI is going in the right direction. Yes, they are opening their drivers, which is great. But this driver doesn't work for me (x1650 Pro), so to me, this driver sucks. It just doesn't live up to the massive hype you gave it."

Yes ATI is going in the right direction, I have some confidence in their next driver. Am I frustrated? Sure I am, but I know that in time, this stuff will be a laugh in the past once this all gets fixed.

The "Holy Crap Edition"? Maybe as in "Holy Crap, I got screwed by AMD/ATI again!"

I think with this version of the fglrx drivers, there are two names for it, theres one for the people who had success and the one that well, didn't exactly work out. You sir, win the failure name. Congratulations. I don't know who came up with the holy crap edition name in the first place, but that rocks.

[fexx]

Debian installation issue, performance and screen corruption

OK,

I've managed to get it running somehow in some situations (Debian/Sid, Mobility X600):

1. The driver doesn't seem to work *without* the fglrx module loaded as opposed to previous drivers
2. On Debian/Sid the link /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 is missing. Do 'cd /usr/lib/; ln -s libGL.so.1.2 libGL.so.1'

Suspend behaviour:

1. s2disk works fine
2. s2ram does work on some kernels

Performance:

Q3A: Framerate drops from 170 to 156 fps (mydemo)
Doom 3: Framerate increases from 30 to 45 fps (standard demo)

Major issue:

Whenever I start anything from KDE's kicker panel the lower right corner gets corrupted (colored stripes) and the cursor drags similar colored stripes behind.

Conclusion:

Performance *has not been* and *is not* the major issue of fglrx drivers, it's unreliability!

Updating the driver has always been some kind of gambling: Will it work at all? Which new issues will arise? Moreover, using an ATI card you get used to being afraid of updating your kernel or xorg version as well because the result is unpredictable (well, usually X is broken afterwards...) In other words, fglrx drivers have caused me way too much trouble, worries and uncertainty. Nothing has changed in this aspect.

What have we learned from the new driver?

1. ATI cards can perform much better the they do with fglrx-drivers < 8.41.7. Well, we knew that before...
2. ATI people *are* able to write better performing drivers on Linux systems. That's really good news.
3. Some hypes are hypes ;-)

If only they had released this as a preview, or public beta. Our expectations would not have been so high...

Regards,

fexx



think I'm going back...

[Trek1701]

Hi fexx,

I'm running Debian Etch with ATI Radeon 9550 AGP from PowerColor and 8.41.7 installed without any issues. About the performance, I haven't noticed any difference.

Here are some basic steps I follow when installing a new ATI driver on Debian and some other commands:

Intall linux-headers:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Remove older ATI driver:
sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Intall new ATI driver:
chmod +x ati-driver-installer-8.41.7-x86.x86_64.run
sudo sh ati-driver-installer-8.41.7-x86.x86_64.run

Edit Xorg manually if needed:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Edit Catalist manually if needed::
sudo gedit /etc/ati/amdpcsdb

Check if Radeon driver is enable:
lsmod | grep radeon

Check if fglrx driver is enable:
lsmod | grep fglrx

Rebuilding your kernel module dependency:
sudo depmod -a

Disable Radeon driver if enable:
sudo modprobe -r radeon

Enable fglrx driver if disable:
sudo modprobe fglrx

Test 3D hardware acceleration on terminal:
fgl_glxgears

Trek1701

[Kano]

I would never use the standard installer for Debian/Ubuntu. If you want to install it manually, remove all packages with fglrx in the name first, then create a package for Ubuntu, even for Etch, Debian/Edgy works for Xorg 7.1+ which Etch uses. Newer targets are not needed, these just do the same.