AMD 8.42.3 Driver Released -- The Baby Is Born!

[fettouhi]

I tried the X11 rendering in MPlayer. WAY too slow, but no flicker. It was almost impossible for the player to sync the video - it was that bad.

Well in my case x11 runs very well hence my suggestion .

Regards

Andr?

[bit7]

I just removed ati 8.42.3 drivers and turn back to 8.40.4.
With the new driver bigdesktop (dual head) is working with compiz and aiglx, but still buggy and crash on second desktop (monitor). Video is broken with Xv. Flickering when playing games and google earth. Bad framrates too.

The performance with 8.40.4 is fast on ATI Mobility X1800 without XGL. With XGL compiz fusion don't work on gutsy.

I got compiz fusion working with the latest fglrx 8.37 drivers from repository, that is very stable.

My conclusion for now: Better no compiz fusion and desktop effects. So no fun with the new ati driver

[JackDanielz]

Well in my case x11 runs very well hence my suggestion .

Regards

Andr?

how do i do that for mplayer because as far as I kno I can only do it from the command line.

mplayer -vo x11

that doesnt work because I have to chose a file and I want it to be x11 for everything.

[Phlogiston]

Anyone could fix the slow scrolling issue?

[Uchikoma]

So I guess the biggest issues here are:

- Uber-flickery video with Xv AND Compiz enabled.
- Uber-flickery games with Xv AND Compiz enabled.
- Less smooth scrolling (ex. Firefox)

Now, here's the other question: I take it you don't experience any flickering with Compiz off, but still using Xv?

[kir?]

I have ugly menu borders on kde windows. See here:

http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=menuborders1fr2.jpg

Anyone knows how to fix that? I disabled the kde menu effects, but that didn't help.

I removed them using emerald.

[JackDanielz]

how do i do that for mplayer because as far as I kno I can only do it from the command line.

mplayer -vo x11

that doesnt work because I have to chose a file and I want it to be x11 for everything.

Nevermind, I got it, I tried x11 on mplayer and it still flickers, I even disabled Xv in xorg.conf, no help.

Any other ideas?

[ivanovic]

Okay, I managed to solve my problems with UT2k4:

After switching back to kernel 2.6.22.9, still the same problems.
Switching back to xorg-server 1.3 did not help either.
Since UT2k4 did even manage to halt the whole system I did look which other things might case the problem and found it:
x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.7.195 was causing the problems. I did now downgrade my gentoo x86 system to x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.6.193 and everything seems to work.

So to summon things up:

On my system (gentoo unstable, x86, radeon 9800pro agp, core2duo 6400, 1GB ddr1 ram) the new 8.42.3 driver does work nicely. I can run Neverball at 1600x1200 without problems and UT2k4 is playable at 1920x1200 all things maxed out (sometimes frames drop below 25fps, but that is really seldom).
The driver does work with a 2.6.23.1 kernel using the "normal" gentoo patches. xorg server 1.4 does work as expected, too. xv overlay does work as expected with tvtime and watching videos does not cause any problems. So basically everything I can test does work as expected, for me it is a really good driver release.
The only thing I did not test (since I don't have a real use for it) is aiglx/compiz support.

[jeffjoker]

Hello again,

Finally home. I have installed using the script.
Installation successful but could not load the desktop effects.
I have a laptop with a ATI 9600 onboard.
The fglrxinfo return ATI openGL 2.0
The co,posite option is enabled in the xorg.conf !

Please help debugging

[Leathal]

Just rolled back to 8.40 because 8.42 was 20 steps backwards for me.

Compiz is far more choppy under AIGLX than it ever was under XGL. Nice work there.

Firefox is close to unusable with the horrible 2d performance and none of the usability features of Compiz (fake expose, etc) are useful when Firefox is open due to said choppiness.

World of Warcraft is completely broken in 8.42, both with Compiz enabled and without. I did notice an increase in FPS, but perhaps that was because the new driver doesn't render any player models. Apparently the same thing is happening with many other OpenGL games.

Seriously ATI? This was what we've been waiting for from you for months? 8.42 was your big chance to redeem yourselves in the eyes of the community, and all you had to do was play catchup with nVidia. Instead, you delivered a horribly buggy POS driver with actually decreased functionality from previous versions.

This whole charade of "next month it'll be a lot better, we promise! *wink* *wink*" has finally come to an end.

Sure, I'm going to keep coming back to Phoronix at the end of every month to check out the newest driver, but this was your last chance to convince me that you deserve my continued patronage. My next computer will definitely not have an ATI card and I'll be recommending to others that they stay far far away from ATI.