Any news on ATI fglrx 8.42?

[Karel]

Theoretically there would be a perfect driver hidden among the infinitely bad ones. Okay, actually there would be infinitely many perfect drivers, but we would never be able to find them because there are infinitely many drivers in general. Perhaps we need an infinite improbability drive to sort things out??

What if the monkeys are allowed to breed for several generations and the selection criteria is based on coding ability? How do genetic algorithms cope with infinity?

Hope these problems can keep us at bay until Monday.

No, they can't. Look, brain of a size of a planet, yet I can't use my ATI card at full speed. I feel so depressed. Let's hope, the first fifty million years of waiting will be the worst and from that time on, everything will haven been good

I'm not sure why the driver is delayed, there was already a Phoronix article ready and written (now hidden only in Digg cache, if it isn't a fake).

[Nicolas]

Just remembered something that could be improved in fglrx: PowerPlay support... My power consumption in Windows is WAY lower than Linux, and I think this is mostly ATI's fault.

[MagicTempest]

Where has it been said that the driver is delayed? Ati has a release schedule in which they release a driver roughly every month. Nowhere has there ever been a date stated on which the driver should be released. Therefore they're not late or delayed.

You might be able to say they're late when they don't release the driver before the last day of this month, but as far as I know the release schedule is not fixed so they could skip a month when necessary.

[Michael]

To address the concerns of users, the 8.42 driver will be released soon and contrary to rumors is not still in "heavy development" nor was it delayed because of "severe" issues. Any rumors about a leaked article by Phoronix is incorrect, but an outside party had illegally acquired content. As always, a Phoronix review of the new driver will appear on the day that the driver is being made available to the public.

[Uchikoma]

Just remembered something that could be improved in fglrx: PowerPlay support... My power consumption in Windows is WAY lower than Linux, and I think this is mostly ATI's fault.

Well hmm. There is PowerPlay support. To view you're current PowerPlay setting:

aticonfig --list-powerstate

To set your powerstate to something

aticonfig --set-powerstate=1

...replace 1 with the desired selection. For the list of selections refer to the above list-powerstate command.

In the off chance that you know this, then I dunno what card you have, but mine works perfectly good (and I can get upto 6 hours of battery life on my laptop)

...back to the (infinite) monkey problem. There are how many lines of code in a driver? Okay...so say...oh I dunno. Some tens of thousands of lines (because I really don't know numbers with regards to that). Now, given that there are just that many individual letters, what are the chances that a monkey will be able to batter out each correct individual letter making that perfect driver?

[givemesugarr]

Wow that would be nice if anyone really believed you fredo.

i really did believed fredo.....

Theoretically there would be a perfect driver hidden among the infinitely bad ones. Okay, actually there would be infinitely many perfect drivers, but we would never be able to find them because there are infinitely many drivers in general. Perhaps we need an infinite improbability drive to sort things out??

What if the monkeys are allowed to breed for several generations and the selection criteria is based on coding ability? How do genetic algorithms cope with infinity?

Hope these problems can keep us at bay until Monday.

the new ati driver will contain a very astonishing feature:
the answer to the fundamental question...

obviously, mankind is not fully prepared to receive that info, so ati is delaying the release date to better prepare mankind to this unique event.

and obviously, now that they finally got the answer to the fundamental question, they've forgotten the question, so they've decided to release specs to an outer group to provide mankind with the real fundamental question. :

[Nicolas]

Well hmm. There is PowerPlay support. To view you're current PowerPlay setting:

aticonfig --list-powerstate

To set your powerstate to something

aticonfig --set-powerstate=1

...replace 1 with the desired selection. For the list of selections refer to the above list-powerstate command.

In the off chance that you know this, then I dunno what card you have, but mine works perfectly good (and I can get upto 6 hours of battery life on my laptop)

...back to the (infinite) monkey problem. There are how many lines of code in a driver? Okay...so say...oh I dunno. Some tens of thousands of lines (because I really don't know numbers with regards to that). Now, given that there are just that many individual letters, what are the chances that a monkey will be able to batter out each correct individual letter making that perfect driver?

Yes, I know this, but if I'm not mistaken, fglrx's PowerPlay features are not as good as Windows. I believe Linux's implementation lowers clock speeds and voltages, while the Windows driver is also able to "shut down" some parts of the core.
And also, I don't want to have to change my card's speed manually. It should be done automatically.

I have a Mobility X700 128MB card on my notebook.

[givemesugarr]

And also, I don't want to have to change my card's speed manually. It should be done automatically.

I have a Mobility X700 128MB card on my notebook.

it would be nice if some developer could do a qt interface to the possible options.
maybe when i get a little time i will start doing some testing with qtdesigner, but first i'd need to know what settings can be done for fglrx.
actually i think that i use less than 2/3 of the entire configuration settings that i would be able to actually use.
in fact the ati control center for linux is still quite limited in this, but i would prefer to have better drivers than have the functions added to a control pannel.
anyway, michael, when you'd review the new driver i'd like to know if compiz-fusion would be able to run at decent speed with old xpress200m cards. i have that board and it's a horrible one. the opensource driver doesn't support it well and rendering is very experimental, aiglx works but compiz or beryl does not.
also i had to install the svn xorg-server to get the opensource driver to work with aiglx, so it would be nice to test the compatibility of the new driver with the new 1.4 server and new xorg 7.3. i don't espect this version to work but it would be a nice surprise if it would.

[kir?]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjEzOA

lol, 1000000 nvidia drivers will be released before the ati one.

[Uchikoma]

Yes, I know this, but if I'm not mistaken, fglrx's PowerPlay features are not as good as Windows. I believe Linux's implementation lowers clock speeds and voltages, while the Windows driver is also able to "shut down" some parts of the core.
And also, I don't want to have to change my card's speed manually. It should be done automatically.

I have a Mobility X700 128MB card on my notebook.

I just wrote a script that autochanges it to lowest setting on startup. I don't game too much yet, so it's suits my needs.

...as for battery life, I get roughly the equivalent battery life as Windows, so I don't see a difference.