fglrx impossible with asus r9 280x

[dstanescu]

Hi, i own 2x Asus r9 280x (r9280x-dc2-3gd5) which i'm trying to install the drivers on linux, for about 1 week (16-18h/day).

I tried everything i could think of with no success.

I tried Catalyst: 13.1, 13.4, 13.11-b9.4, 13.11-b9.95, 13.12, 14.1-b1.3, 14.2-b1.4 (the latest beta)

on almoast every linux distro: Ubuntu 11.04/11.10/12.04/12.10/13.04/13.10/14.04, Fedora 18/19/20, CentOs 6.3/6.4/6.5, RedHat 6.5, Debian 6.0/7, Suse 11, OpenSuse 13

and no success, only a lot of wasted time.

What happens watching xorg.log: sometimes fglrx crashes, sometimes it just hangs with no output, sometimes recognizes 1 card and with the other it hangs again and other times no errors nothing but xorg doesn't start, he hangs too.

I tried everything including some patches to fglrx found on google nothing. On each distro i tried each version of catalyst. The same system (hardware+software) works with another card for ex r9 290 but not with this 280x. On the same system i installed windows and saw the drivers works as expected (so no hardware issue, the only cause is fglrx) but on linux what is happening? The drivers aren't updated/fixed in both places? The open source drivers from Ubuntu for ex works (are not good for me, i need fglrx) but if i try to install the proprietary drivers from them again doesn't work. So fglrx it just doesn't want to work with this card!

If anybody can help me in some way with a solution pls, i'm desperate!

It's impossible for me to understand how a huge company like Amd which is nr 1 on gpu's and not only doesn't have working drivers for his chips.

How we (consumers) are supposed to use them? I spent a lot of money on this boards and i'm only staring at them. Big disappointment!

[fate]

I cannot help you but I have exactly the same problem with my R9 270X. I tried different distrib (Debian, Ubuntu, Archlinux) and different catalyst versions like you and it's impossible to use correctly this card (I tried on Windows 7 and it works perfectly). I hope the next beta version will fix this problem...

[xtachx]

It's impossible for me to understand how a huge company like Amd which is nr 1 on gpu's and not only doesn't have working drivers for his chips.

How we (consumers) are supposed to use them? I spent a lot of money on this boards and i'm only staring at them. Big disappointment!

I know i will be called a troll for saying this, but it is my personal experiance that if you want a working video card on linux, your options are Intel or NVidia. If you want to play games on your machine (modern 3D games), you have to sell your AMD card and buy an NVidia one. You spent a week to fix fglrx, I spent 5 years. Yes I was a sucker for buying an AMD card, (which still doesnt work btw), but finally I took the plunge and spent $250 on an NV card. You know what? I dont even know when the driver updates itself anymore - I never need to see the xorg.0.log file or fix xorg.conf. It "just works".

[dstanescu]

you are not a troll. this is total bullshit from amd, buy a product and can't use it, waste of money and time. when i bought my cards i checked the linux drivers page if it's supporting this model and they said 280x is supported. is so wrong to put a notice somewhere: don't use amd cards on linux cause you'll be sorry!

[Luke]

No AMD? Tell that to my HD6750

you are not a troll. this is total bullshit from amd, buy a product and can't use it, waste of money and time. when i bought my cards i checked the linux drivers page if it's supporting this model and they said 280x is supported. is so wrong to put a notice somewhere: don't use amd cards on linux cause you'll be sorry!

Newly released GPU (and some other) hardware is a known issue with Linux, never buy anything brand new without first doing a search engine check to see how it reacts to current Linux distros. Have you tried the Radeon (Mesa) driver? If it doesn't work well either, put the card on the shelf, don't sell it. Won't be long before either fglrx supports it, or the open source driver gets so close to fglrx performance that they only thing you will miss is fglrx bugs.

When I got my first Evergreen card (an HD5550) in 2011, it was so new that Ubuntu would not even support 3d on open driver, and fglrx made all kinds of artifacts on gnome-shell. The xorg-edgers PPA version of Mesa worked fine, and the card then easily outperformed the onboard HD4300 series graphics. Today the HD5550 is a bit slow (half of HD5570 performance for some reason) but used where that does not matter, and the HD5570 and HD7650 both run at near fglrx speeds on the open driver.

When buying GPUs from any vendor, either buy last year's card or check online to see how the card behaves with Linux. From what I am seeing, it looks like the R7's work well with the RadeonSI driver, but at least some of the big R9 cards don't yet work well on anything. This also fits Linux history, where big high-power GPU's naturally get the least attention as they are the least used in Linux, especially with open drivers.

[Luke]

Didn't see you were using two cards

Newly released GPU (and some other) hardware is a known issue with Linux, never buy anything brand new without first doing a search engine check to see how it reacts to current Linux distros. Have you tried the Radeon (Mesa) driver? If it doesn't work well either, put the card on the shelf, don't sell it. Won't be long before either fglrx supports it, or the open source driver gets so close to fglrx performance that they only thing you will miss is fglrx bugs.

When I got my first Evergreen card (an HD5550) in 2011, it was so new that Ubuntu would not even support 3d on open driver, and fglrx made all kinds of artifacts on gnome-shell. The xorg-edgers PPA version of Mesa worked fine, and the card then easily outperformed the onboard HD4300 series graphics. Today the HD5550 is a bit slow (half of HD5570 performance for some reason) but used where that does not matter, and the HD5570 and HD7650 both run at near fglrx speeds on the open driver.

When buying GPUs from any vendor, either buy last year's card or check online to see how the card behaves with Linux. From what I am seeing, it looks like the R7's work well with the RadeonSI driver, but at least some of the big R9 cards don't yet work well on anything. This also fits Linux history, where big high-power GPU's naturally get the least attention as they are the least used in Linux, especially with open drivers.

Crossfire-x in the open drivers is still a ways off but may eventually appear as a byproduct of all the hybrid on-chip/discrete graphics work from Nvidia and some of the Wayland work. I would certainly advise anyone looking at something as exotic as this to check many forums and see what experiences others have had before spending the money. Yes, I once ran the HD5570 and HD5550 in hybrid crossfire at the same time, but only because I was playing with fglrx and had them both on hand. I would not have spent money to do that on grounds of risk.

OpenGL Blender rendering was the intended use, some difference but not a lot.

[xtachx]

Newly released GPU (and some other) hardware is a known issue with Linux, never buy anything brand new without first doing a search engine check to see how it reacts to current Linux distros. Have you tried the Radeon (Mesa) driver? If it doesn't work well either, put the card on the shelf, don't sell it. Won't be long before either fglrx supports it, or the open source driver gets so close to fglrx performance that they only thing you will miss is fglrx bugs.

When I got my first Evergreen card (an HD5550) in 2011, it was so new that Ubuntu would not even support 3d on open driver, and fglrx made all kinds of artifacts on gnome-shell. The xorg-edgers PPA version of Mesa worked fine, and the card then easily outperformed the onboard HD4300 series graphics. Today the HD5550 is a bit slow (half of HD5570 performance for some reason) but used where that does not matter, and the HD5570 and HD7650 both run at near fglrx speeds on the open driver.

When buying GPUs from any vendor, either buy last year's card or check online to see how the card behaves with Linux. From what I am seeing, it looks like the R7's work well with the RadeonSI driver, but at least some of the big R9 cards don't yet work well on anything. This also fits Linux history, where big high-power GPU's naturally get the least attention as they are the least used in Linux, especially with open drivers.

And that timeframe would be? My old RadeonHD 5770 card STILL does not work with open source radeon. (ok it "works", but at half the speed of catalyst and gets 1.5X hotter at 85C). fglrx never worked as well as the windows driver. With NVidia, their linux driver is at par with windows, so why cant ATI do this? ATI/AMD simply does not care. The driver for my card didnt come in 5 years - it wont come anytime soon. Sure, 5 more years down the road it may work. Its ATI's job to maintain the drivers and not the opensource devs to do it. The opensource devs did a tremendous job as it is, but without ATI/AMD involvement, their hands are also tied.

IF you want him to keep his 290X on the shelf for 5 years then well, that isnt a solution. The solution is dump ATI until they realize that they are losing marketshare because of their lacklustre attitude.

[mmstick]

280X is just a Radeon HD 7970. I've been using my Radeon HD 7950 in Linux since March of last year. It's been running flawlessly with the open source drivers since November. First of all, you should either be using Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 13.10 + Oibaf PPA for the latest open source graphics drivers. Then, ditch the second card since SLI/Crossfire doesn't work on Linux.

[mmstick]

And that timeframe would be? My old RadeonHD 5770 card STILL does not work with open source radeon. (ok it "works", but at half the speed of catalyst and gets 1.5X hotter at 85C). fglrx never worked as well as the windows driver. With NVidia, their linux driver is at par with windows, so why cant ATI do this? ATI/AMD simply does not care. The driver for my card didnt come in 5 years - it wont come anytime soon. Sure, 5 more years down the road it may work. Its ATI's job to maintain the drivers and not the opensource devs to do it. The opensource devs did a tremendous job as it is, but without ATI/AMD involvement, their hands are also tied.

First of all, it's AMD, not ATI. Second of all, open source developers = AMD developers primarily. I have no idea what you are talking about when saying hands are tied. AMD released pretty much all of their documents and have full time developers working on it. Finally, my Radeon HD 4870, 6850, and 7950 all work fine with the open source drivers at lower heat than Catalyst in Windows -- yours should too.

[Luke]

You need to use Linux 3.13 or better for default power management

And that timeframe would be? My old RadeonHD 5770 card STILL does not work with open source radeon. (ok it "works", but at half the speed of catalyst and gets 1.5X hotter at 85C). fglrx never worked as well as the windows driver. With NVidia, their linux driver is at par with windows, so why cant ATI do this? ATI/AMD simply does not care. The driver for my card didnt come in 5 years - it wont come anytime soon. Sure, 5 more years down the road it may work. Its ATI's job to maintain the drivers and not the opensource devs to do it. The opensource devs did a tremendous job as it is, but without ATI/AMD involvement, their hands are also tied.

IF you want him to keep his 290X on the shelf for 5 years then well, that isnt a solution. The solution is dump ATI until they realize that they are losing marketshare because of their lacklustre attitude.

What version of Linux and of Mesa are you using? I got that kind of performance about a year and a half ago-and had Evergreen cards working in Summer 2011 with open drivers then in xorg-edgers.

That card is almost the same as my HD6750 except for an older BIOS and having all, not just some, of its cores enabled. You need to use Linux 3.13 or better for power management by default to control heat and electricity use, or with Linux 3.11/3.12 set the boot parameter radeon.dpm=1 . Next, dump default Mesa, you can keep the 13.10 version of Xorg, it's the good one right now.
The Oibaf PPA has moved onto Mesa 10.2, wich is buggy and disabled hyper-z by default as a result, You can try it, switch to the just or about to be released Mesa 10.1 if enabling hyper-z locks up your games. DO NOT use Ubuntu Trusty's new xserver 1.15, it's not ready until a severe performance regression is fixed, as I am sure it will be before release.

Be sure to install libtxc-dxtn0, I don't know if Ubuntu yet installs it yet by default, It is an open-source,patent workaround version of the patent-busting but otherwise FOSS libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 library. Use one or the other, they enable 3d texture compression.


With all of this, expect to run at 80% of fglrx in many loads, even beat it in a few according to recent Phoronix benchmark tests.