Catalyst 14.3 Beta Linux Driver Fixes OpenGL Performance Issues

[dungeon]

There is absolutely no banding on any of my systems running the open source drivers: 6850, 4870, 7950, Richland APU, 4200M, and a mobile Kabini APU. I find it silly that you are still using such an old graphics card like a HD 2400 Pro when you could easily just buy a more modern budget graphics card for $30 and reduce energy consumption while also gaining modern graphics card features.

He is talking about this bug https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73911 many people have color banding with similar setup so it is very regular bug

[Guest]

There is absolutely no banding on any of my systems running the open source drivers: 6850, 4870, 7950, Richland APU, 4200M, and a mobile Kabini APU. I find it silly that you are still using such an old graphics card like a HD 2400 Pro when you could easily just buy a more modern budget graphics card for $30 and reduce energy consumption while also gaining modern graphics card features.

This is what I experience in a worst-case scenario (on my laptop):


The visible gradients on Steam and the circles on the wallpaper specifically. The camera is slightly softening how bad it really is though. My desktop has a similar experience, but not nearly as bad. Both computers don't have that kind of banding at all though when using fglrx.

As for the 2400; I only chose it since I needed some kind of GPU for a computer I use mainly for StepMania, and a bit of Steam IHS, and it was a $8 card. The Xpress 1150 that's integrated in the computer worked fine for either task, but I wanted Steam's Big Picture mode to work (on Windows anyway; needed a DX10-compliant card with a DVI port built-in).

[vein]

you are totally a troll, , what you receive from amd, for trolling the people about the fantastic performance of their cards on linux?

Actually, this is the first time anyone has ever called me a troll...i guess there is a first time for everything.

I don't receive anything from AMD. I just like their products. Since they work for me...

Actually, awhile ago I made 3 choices to make my life better. I chose not to use Windows, not to use anything from Intel and not to use anything from nvidia. And I have never been happier...

Life is good

[chithanh]

Neither OpenGL 4.x or OpenCL are a requirement, nor do they have much use in Linux yet. If you really needed OpenGL 4.x then you wouldn't be using Catalyst but an NVIDIA GPU which has full OpenGL 4.4 support and drivers that can actually use those specifications without all the glitches and lag of Catalyst.

I don't think that telling others what they require is a good way to support an argument.

For some people it is already important to accelerate certain operations with GPU compute (ImageMagick is one example), do things that run vastly better on GPUs (password cracking) or wanting to see OpenGL 4.0 tesselated graphics when playing games.

[ChrisXY]

To say that the open source drivers are "superior" is pure wishful thinking. In some aspects they work better but for gaming where GPU performance is the best metric for measuring superiority the FOSS driver is in no way "superior" to catalyst. In most cases it's significantly inferior.

Maybe it has gotten better, but it was really bad in a lot of games. Especially with wine. If you have it, try Dead Space 1 in wine on catalyst v.s. radeonsi. You'll be amazed.

And then there are these cases for catalyst where you are supposedly getting high FPS, but it's still stuttering badly...
I haven't tried any of the 14.x betas, but have you noticed that all three of them so far had this "Open Issue"?

[390964] : Stuttering and poor performance after playing an OpenGL game for a several minutes on Ubuntu

[mmstick]

I don't think that telling others what they require is a good way to support an argument.

For some people it is already important to accelerate certain operations with GPU compute (ImageMagick is one example), do things that run vastly better on GPUs (password cracking) or wanting to see OpenGL 4.0 tesselated graphics when playing games.

Your argument is invalid. Neither are required to render graphics or have any practical use yet -- especially OpenGL 4.x. As I said before, if you truly needed OpenGL 4.x you would buy a NVIDIA graphics card which actually supports OpenGL 4.4 and prior specifications without all the bugs and glitches of Catalyst which doesn't even support OpenGL 3.x that well.

ImageMagick runs perfectly fine with multicore processors using GNU parallel, and password cracking does not fall under the purview of graphics and gaming. Care to list all the games in Linux that support OpenGL 4.x? Now, care to tell me how many of those games actually run well with it? None, none at all. Even the open source drivers have better performance than Catalyst in Metro Last Light. Tessellation is not a requirement to play any games at all.

[xtachx]

Count me as another completely dissatisfied (ex)AMD user. I bought my RadeonHD 5700 card in 2011. I paid about $220 or so on it, since it was a new top of the line card back then. It has YET to see a working driver which isnt a piece of shit. I have dual monitors - so for a long time my only option was catalyst. It would break with every kernel update. EVERY one of them. Everyday I would actually live in fear and when I was wrigint important stuff on my machine I would disable updates for the fear of amd making my machine unusable.

Open source drivers till date has been really bad for games. I barely get 12-20 fps out of open source drivers. The fan sounds like a tank when the open source drivers run - and it cant switch performance modes due to a bug. Catalyst - dont get me started. If it ever compiles (which is lucky in itself), it will break everything else and 2D support for catalyst was terrible. Games used to be moderately ok to terrible. The performance of the linux driver was 50% of that of the windows driver.

I finally gave up and spent the best $220 ever on a GTX 660Ti OC. Wow - the card is QUIET! It is always at 30C (compared to 60C for ATI on catalyst and 90 C !!! on ATI-open source). The drivers are top-notch. Firefox scrolling is smooth as butter (I actually thought it was a firefox issue but then I realized it was ATI's shit 2D rendering), games were fast and guess what - I actaully have enabled all kernel updates and have not touced my Xorg.conf even once! Whenever the machine updates, the nvidia driver updates and lives in harmony with each other.

I have suffered the pains of using an ATI card for 5 years. No more. I strictly tell everyone who asks me about linux graphics to go with NVidia. Recompiling the kernel and fixing the ati driver is not my idea of fun. And this is my __OPINION__ (so dont ask why etc) that AMD as a company is run by monkeys who never read bug reports, never tests their softwarer and cant write a damn driver for the hardware they make!

[RecceDG]

I went the other way - nVidia for years, then finally switched to AMD - HD7870.

And I'm happy. Yes, the drivers started out a little shaky, but they've been steadily improving, they release new versions constantly, and now they are rock solid. Everything - including my dual-monitor setup with one monitor rotated in portrait mode - Just Works.

And this latest beta fixed a Portal 2 bug, so now Portal 2 plays perfectly.

Do I wish that performance matched Windows? Sure. But the performance is good enough, renders correctly, and the weirder parts of my setup are supported. So I'm happy.

What I REALLY REALLY wish though was that the trolls and haters stayed the hell out of these update threads. You don't like Catalyst? Fine. Nobody is forcing you to use them. But nobody CARES that you think they suck, and those of us who DO use them with no problems at all would rather be able to discuss things without the constant stream of hate. If you have nothing good to say, then stay silent.

[pandev92]

I went the other way - nVidia for years, then finally switched to AMD - HD7870.

And I'm happy. Yes, the drivers started out a little shaky, but they've been steadily improving, they release new versions constantly, and now they are rock solid. Everything - including my dual-monitor setup with one monitor rotated in portrait mode - Just Works.

And this latest beta fixed a Portal 2 bug, so now Portal 2 plays perfectly.

Do I wish that performance matched Windows? Sure. But the performance is good enough, renders correctly, and the weirder parts of my setup are supported. So I'm happy.

What I REALLY REALLY wish though was that the trolls and haters stayed the hell out of these update threads. You don't like Catalyst? Fine. Nobody is forcing you to use them. But nobody CARES that you think they suck, and those of us who DO use them with no problems at all would rather be able to discuss things without the constant stream of hate. If you have nothing good to say, then stay silent.

[RecceDG]

Oh, Son, that's *nothing* what I look like.

I'd send you a picture... but you know, it'd be faster if you just asked your Mom. She has *plenty* of pictures.

Mind you, she's in all of them... You've seen your mother naked before, right?

Oh what am I saying - *of course* you've seen your mother naked. Duh! I mean, we're *Eskimo brothers* right?