Any news on ATI fglrx 8.42?

[Squizzle]

Indeed, I have firmly stood by AMD/ATi and built custom rigs with these brands for many years, not even because I thought they were better, but more because they have always been the underdogs, popular with gamers, and I have believed in them.

It's starting to look like as an end user you're better off throwing all that to the wind and getting yourself an Intel / Nvidia rig, at least you'll be able to use the damn thing.

I'm starting to feel quite sick that I'm going through all this lack of support for my laptop, I could just have easily ticked the Core 2 Duo / Nvdia option on the ordering page.

Hi ho, let's continue sitting and waiting. They're gonna need to pull something out of the hat sharpish before more people start getting disheartened, that's for sure.

[Karel]

I wait only because I have ATI card in my home computer and buying another AGP card is just stupid these days... However, I haven't recommended ATI card for years and my five servers are all Intel, AMD (=ATI now,remember, it took them a year) 'is not mature enough for business' if they can't support desktop...

[Svartalf]

I wait only because I have ATI card in my home computer and buying another AGP card is just stupid these days... However, I haven't recommended ATI card for years and my five servers are all Intel, AMD (=ATI now,remember, it took them a year) 'is not mature enough for business' if they can't support desktop...

Actually, it isn't quite stupid if you can't get the silly thing working right on your machine. They still sell AGP cards- if they don't get this sorted out fairly soon, it might behoove you to consider getting a 6xxx card in your machine before they all disappear and you're totally stuck and have to upgrade to a totally new motherboard whether you want to or not. Now, having said this, I am not advocating you yanking it just yet- but you're going to want to play that timing game here of deciding when is it prudent to either upgrade the card anyhow or the whole machine.

[Svartalf]

It's starting to look like as an end user you're better off throwing all that to the wind and getting yourself an Intel / Nvidia rig, at least you'll be able to use the damn thing.

Something to consider here: As a developer of drivers, custom Linux software (including GAME ports), I purchased my latest laptop based off of that thinking.

Now, while I've not given up on AMD/ATI totally, I can't keep waiting and waiting just for them to get it all going well. I needed to be able to develop cross-platform OpenGL stuff NOW, not in a couple of months from now (When I bought the laptop, there was no signs that even 8.41 was going to happen the way it did- as disappointing as it was for us all the same because it was so far and yet not not anywhere near far enough...). I suspect there are many in that boat at this point in time. I am waiting keenly to see what all they accomplish, but unless they get more technical data out and get something usable out soon, they're going to get left behind, I'm afraid.

[Karel]

Actually, it isn't quite stupid if you can't get the silly thing working right on your machine. They still sell AGP cards- if they don't get this sorted out fairly soon, it might behoove you to consider getting a 6xxx card in your machine before they all disappear and you're totally stuck and have to upgrade to a totally new motherboard whether you want to or not. Now, having said this, I am not advocating you yanking it just yet- but you're going to want to play that timing game here of deciding when is it prudent to either upgrade the card anyhow or the whole machine.

Well, fglrx works on my machine, except that sometimes I have to e.g. edit the "glue" in the module to compile against Debian kernel, which is not something I would consider standard for a commercial product.

It's not economically rational to buy AGP card, I don't mind my Radeon 9600XT, newer (mid-end AGP) cards have a bit more power and a lot higher consumption, which is something I try to avoid. Anyway, getting stuck with AGP card is not so bad, with Athlon XP 2000+ and 2GBs of RAM, I don't expect to upgrade for another two years and for most of my work, I won't even need that powerful machine

[Malikith]

Something to consider here: As a developer of drivers, custom Linux software (including GAME ports), I purchased my latest laptop based off of that thinking.

Now, while I've not given up on AMD/ATI totally, I can't keep waiting and waiting just for them to get it all going well. I needed to be able to develop cross-platform OpenGL stuff NOW, not in a couple of months from now (When I bought the laptop, there was no signs that even 8.41 was going to happen the way it did- as disappointing as it was for us all the same because it was so far and yet not not anywhere near far enough...). I suspect there are many in that boat at this point in time. I am waiting keenly to see what all they accomplish, but unless they get more technical data out and get something usable out soon, they're going to get left behind, I'm afraid.

Yeah, I hear ya, 8.41 was a disappointment. Maybe 8.42 will be everything 8.41 was supposed to be, if not and turns out to be a disaster, turning the back on ATI/AMD would probably be the best option.

Whats frustrating for me is that I just want to be able to use the card, even if its not 100% of its performance. But I don't want it to be 10-20% of its performance either. I mean, when I run a game like Xmoto, a very simple opengl 2d game, I have slowdowns in it. Due to my card being detected as a pci express card and running in pci mode plus on top of that, the not so great performance to begin with.

If ATI/AMD gets its act together, my next card will be a HD 2900 Pro. If not, most likely a 8800 GTS. I simply just want to be able to play games in Linux at respectable quality levels and performance, but that has yet to be seen yet.

I do understand that AGP is phased out, but not entirely. They brought the HD 2400/2600 series to AGP. So its not like ATI's AGP products are old. And my X1600XT is not old either. So its a bug that must be fixed.

The bug has been reported on their bugzilla here:

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

Alright I'm done venting hehe.

[pierluc]

greetings to everyone from istanbul and thanks michael for the invaluable info.. the passionate wait for fglrx8.42 made me discover phoronix.com and i am addicted to refreshing your site everyday since few weeks. questions:
1. what do you think about the envy tool to install ati drivers? any experiences? or would you rather recommend a manual install.
http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

2. shall 8.42 support rotation of an external screen in a dual head configuration?

Envy work very good. It's very more easy to install ATI driver with this tools. I have use it to install ATI 8.40.4 and it work very good.
This technic is the same thing than a manual install but it's automatic.

I think I have read on a web site of Ubuntu than X.org 7.3 (in Ubuntu 7.10) will support that. If Catalyst 8.42 support Xorg7.3, I think it will work.

[fatfatwolf]

I have been following this discussion with a lot of interest for a while now, because I'm in the boat with all those ATI guys who crossed over from Windows only to find that Linux has been treated like the retarded bastard step child by ATI.

I have a few things to get off my chest. ATI should be sued... selling hardware that claims to do something it doesn't is just wrong. And in my opinion fglrx just DOESN'T WORK it shouldn't matter whether you are using Linux or Windows you bought the hardware it should just work.

Second, this NDA thing is absolutely rediculous. Why not just give a damn date, pick a date that you are sure you will be able to deliver by, even if they end up delivering earlier it makes you look better instead of making all of us wait like idiots and check the website every 5 seconds to see if they came out. Plus then they wouldn't be late like they are now. Who cares whether we know what day the driver comes out? It doesn't give anyone any priceless information that is so top secret that it will be life or death for ATI.

Finally, I like my ATI cards, I have two. They cost me alot of money. They work about 50% (yes even in windows only 50% - the newest release for windows caused my entire system to halt). If these guys don't get their act together and deliver a working driver by Oct 31, I will be the first to sell both my ATI cards on e-bay.

Sorry if I seem like I'm being aggressive or mean or bashing, I'm not trying to do that, I'm just tired of this crap.

By releasing hardware specs for RV630 and M56 they have made a huge step forward. I would say, encourage this, wait for it and hold back the "sue" a little bit. I'll just hope they'll keep releasing the info so that developers could finish the radeonhd driver, which is already pretty good for 2D purposes (except that it won't dual-screen and vt-switching and keeps crashing the whole box by red-yellow-blue flashing screen when I shut down... lol). Meanwhile the fglrx driver is just a temporary solution for me, but my big hope would be radeonhd eventually.

[givemesugarr]

Micheal, is the new Catalyst 8.42 will support OpenGL3 ?

i've heard from my informers that 8.42 will support these new innovative features:
1. opengl 7. unfortunately opengl 7 is based on a totally new layer and it's totally not compatible with older opengl releases.
2. aiglx2+. unfortunately compiz and beryl have decided to move to another project called xxaiglx which is now incompatible with aiglx2 and its predecessors aiglx.
3. kernel sources 3.0.0. as all users know the kernel 3.0.0 has decided to remove dri and so the driver will run only in vesa mode.
4. the driver will have a new control center in which the users will be able to set up everyting except from this features:
a. enable 3d acceleration which will curently be disabled by default since xorg is not curently supporting opengl7
b. set up a screen resolution that is not 800x600@16bits.


obviously there will be no 2d support since it is nowadays deprecated.

[JackDanielz]

By releasing hardware specs for RV630 and M56 they have made a huge step forward. I would say, encourage this, wait for it and hold back the "sue" a little bit. I'll just hope they'll keep releasing the info so that developers could finish the radeonhd driver, which is already pretty good for 2D purposes (except that it won't dual-screen and vt-switching and keeps crashing the whole box by red-yellow-blue flashing screen when I shut down... lol). Meanwhile the fglrx driver is just a temporary solution for me, but my big hope would be radeonhd eventually.

I agree with you, I just feel that its time for ATI to put up or shut up. If they don't come through as promised in October I will be switching despite the annoyance and extra cost.