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

[adamk]

Mine's an X1650 Pro AGP and X dies after the install. Yet another AMD/ATI failure.

You downloaded and installed a driver that specifically wasn't designed for your video card. Sounds like a jackkerouac failure, to me.

Adam

[Kano]

As only Fire* ids are missing - I expect because of incomplete OpenGL functions (interesting post how to patch it) - the mentioned restriction to 2xxx series is an excuse for the the driver status, they only want that you use it with latest cards, but basically it is not mandatory. The wine problems can be solved with updated wine (get git), others usually not. But it definitely shows that the speed is better than before for some games - when the card is running. The "new codebase" can not be the whole driver, too many things have not changed, I think only the real OpenGL part was updated, not the rest - I would have called it updated OpenGL core.

[robotpoetry]

I got this working on Ubuntu Feisty with a Radeon 9600 by:
1. Turning off the ati driver in restricted drivers manager and rebooting.
2. Following these instructions (not using aticonfig): http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide
3. Turning on the ati driver in restricted drivers manager again.

As others have reported, there is a great boost in opengl performance!

However, there are some bugs. Nexuiz segfaults if you try to change the video settings from within the game (change the config file manually instead). Apart from that it works well and is clearly faster.

Neverball hanged after a short while.

Simple apps like fgl_glxgears and the GL screensavers in Gnome work well. Also, some minor visual corruption of the screen can be seen occasionally.

Xv works. I haven't tried TV-out or dual head as I don't use that.

Looking forward to the next driver release.

More importantly, I (like everyone else) am very happy with AMD's new policy of providing specs and helping with a free software driver!

[hobbes]

Please -- if you have one of these cards, and this issue - add your note (kernel/rel distribution and hardware type) to bug 780 on the ati unofficially bugzilla --

This page -->http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=780

If we get more entries there they will have to acknowledge the issue - and we can hope they get it fixed...

More entries -- more likely they chase it

<< edit -> FWIW I have yet to try out my X1650Pro AGP 512Mb on this driver - this I will do on saturday - RL and Work and whatnot being what it is.... I DO have this card working with DRI - - Just NO AGP speed being set card runs in base pci mode ... if X is locking up HARD for you with this card, Increase your agp gart mem size in bios as large as you can, preferably = Memory on card - this resolved the hardlocks for me ..... >>

i have just discovered that issue! I was unaware of that until late night today when i tried to play Quake 4 on my Ubuntu box and noticed the poor performance when better quality settings were applied.

I've also added one more entry to the AGP detected as PCIE bug report, let's hope they'll notice.

[ambro814]

As only Fire* ids are missing - I expect because of incomplete OpenGL functions

I must say OpenGL on my Thinkpad T60p (FireGL v5200) works quite well. I can now play GLTron at 'ultra-high' cycle detail without the game crashing and many games in Wine which previously didn't work now work, although some have performance problems. I tried IL-2, Flatout 2 and Guild Wars. IL-2 has some performance problems (previously it crashed while loading almost any level), however Flatout 2 is fully playable after I drop resolution to 1280x1024 (otherwise bad fps). Also Guild Wars works, but only if I add '-dx8 -noshaders', otherwise there is a ton of graphics glitches.

[Raven3x7]

I just installed the driver. Performance is greatly improved in games for my X1800XT although i havent done any specific benches. Nexuiz used to be hardly playable at 1280x1024 and now it runs smoothly at 1680x1050. After running a 3d app a weird white-green artifact appeared on the lower right corner of the screen though it doesnt appear in screenshots. Could this be the watermark issue some ppl had been experiencing previously?

[tsarig]

=== Ati's Agp Hell Corner ===

ATI are concerning all of their attention for their new cards (the HD series) rather than supporting their "older" ones.
they know their drivers suck and expect people to trash their older cards and buy the new ones.

I have a X1950 pro AGP card, which is quite new, and what a sad joke, my previous 9800 pro was outperforming my new beast.

Since I've got this card AGP is forced to X0 instead of X8 because it thinks it's a PCIE card because of the well known AGP to PCIE bridge chip linux issue.

What I want is that ATI WILL PAUSE MAKING DRIVERS and PAUSE THE SUPPORT for their HD cards, focus on the basic issues of the X1000 AGP series, and when all is "well", focus back on the HD's.

I hope that an ATI worker or executive is reading these lines, people PAID A LOT for these cards, they're good cards, please please please MAKE THEM WORK PROPERLY, we all had enough of this, for years. the X1000 series is not here from yesterday, it should be up and running great by now if you had more of your concern for your customers.

And don't tell me "linux is not supported, please install windows", your lastest cat 7.9 drivers for windows does not support my X1950 AGP, it's written in your release notes, "and it's a HD series driver only, please install cat 7.7".

And don't tell me "AGP is out dated, please buy a new PCIE based pc", your X1950 AGP series is less than a year old or so and still in production. and btw there is a new AGP versions of the HD series. will you let them down too?

Dear ATI, if you were a car dealer, you would let the car stand in your showrooms without spare parts and fuel.

And please stop playing around with people with promises like "yeah, the new 8.41 drivers are so great, preformance boost and etc" BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT WORKING.

My next card, for sure would be a green one.

BTW, Nvidia cards are always more expensive than yours,do you cut off the price because you know whom buy your cards will get frustrated??

Thank you for your time, hope this post will reach to ATI's windows some day..

[d2kx]

tsarig,

we had that.

AMD said "don't install it on R500 and under". You didn't hear. AMD said "8.41s focus is R600, 8.42 will focus on older cards". You didn't hear. You are talking about the driver not working. It works.

[Alistair]

i have just discovered that issue! I was unaware of that until late night today when i tried to play Quake 4 on my Ubuntu box and noticed the poor performance when better quality settings were applied.

I've also added one more entry to the AGP detected as PCIE bug report, let's hope they'll notice.

thanks Hobbes!

[Alistair]

ATI are concerning all of their attention for their new cards (the HD series) rather than supporting their "older" ones.
they know their drivers suck and expect people to trash their older cards and buy the new ones.

I have a X1950 pro AGP card, which is quite new, and what a sad joke, my previous 9800 pro was outperforming my new beast.

Sin

Please add your name to bug 780 on the ati unofficial bugzilla which documents the PCIE chips on AGP cards not enabling AGP modes.

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=780