Other Linux Things I Learned From AMD At GDC 2014

[Vim_User]

Who cares about potatoes that can't even do 1080p?

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_Resolutions_and_Framerates

Isn't it funny to see a list of games running in 1080p on hardware that you claim is not 1080p capable?

Anyways, the question that I have asked in a different thread already remains: If they don't even have the manpower for proper release notes, how will they manage the switch from the fglrx kernel module to the radeon kernel module?

[AnonymousCoward]

Even now with their new strategy? because they would have to maintain only the user-space in the legacy driver, and then the problems with newer kernels would not be something to worry about anymore, as I read in the preceding amd article:

problem is that they must refractor catalyst driver to work with kernel DRM. which is unlikely done for old GPU.

[d2kx]

Well, I don't really care that much about the release notes. With the new schedule, they are introducing a new driver branch roughly about every 3 months, and the really important new features are usually mentioned. The following drivers of the same branch (e.g. Cat. 14.2, 14.3) are only some bugfixes that us geeks will try anyway to see if our problem, if any, got fixed, and normal users don't update the drivers until the next round of distribution updates.

[UraniumDeer]

I'd actually really like to know, how many AMD technologies, still lacks support in the Radeon driver. With the smaller and smaller difference in performance between Radeon and Catalyst, wouldn't the time be better spent if AMD helped out with MESA OpenGL support, and tweaking of the Radeon driver, and just completely dropped Catalyst?
I'm thinking that once MESA catches up with the latest OpenGL-version, then it'll most likely adapt new versions pretty fast, whereas AMD almost is a year behind on OpenGL support on Catalyst. All AMD has to do at that time, is to ensure support on new technology. The community will likely be a huge help, regarding the rest.

[_ONH_]

problem is that they must refractor catalyst driver to work with kernel DRM. which is unlikely done for old GPU.

Why should they do that, the radeon driver is not anymor miles away from feature completion on old GPUs. There is no need to port the legacy driver to the new kernel drm sheme, since when it would be done the radeon driver also would be featurecomplet.

[Azrael5]

A this point only solution is open source becomes better than owner drivers. Linux systems have to dismiss obsolete grpahical server xorg replacing it with modern solutions as wayland and mir.

reliability and hardware acceleration both audio and video are the key. Then enthusiasts will use linux to play games movies and other ludic activity spreading linux systems.

[DanL]

I also asked various AMD representatives about the release notes for Catalyst Linux releases that are non existent or terribly incomplete. The common theme of the response was "the cost of the engineering time"

At this point, I imagined Michael sneezing a few times and telling the drones/representatives that he's allergic to bullshit.

and then posing the question whether Linux users would like to see more bugs and features worked on rather than proper release notes.

Both. These things are not mutually exclusive to a good team of developers...

[jokergermany.de.vu]

- AMD Catalyst Linux Legacy driver releases aren't to be maintained for new Linux kernel and X.Org Server releases, due mainly to engineering costs.

- Just to reiterate from my previous article, AMD has no plans to drop Catalyst in favor of the open-source driver. As I wrote, "Catalyst is important to many users for its OpenGL compliance and driver certifications. AMD invests a lot into quality assurance and seeing that Catalyst fulfills their large commercial customer's needs, which aren't met by the existing open-source driver. There's also many more highly tuned OpenGL optimizations within Catalyst that likely won't materialize within the open-source driver without a lot of hard to justify, painstaking work."

Bad for me and my 4670M.

Hmm, should my next graphic card a nvidia?
I hate nvidia for her shit like physx, but this is an ass kick =(

[DanL]

Bad for me and my 4670M. Hmm, should my next graphic card a nvidia?

Well, if you use nvidia in a laptop, you have to deal with Optimus/hybrid graphics.
Do you not use the open-source radeon driver? If you like using binary/blob drivers, maybe you are more of an nvidia fan than you realize

[bridgman]

Bad for me and my 4670M.

Hmm, should my next graphic card a nvidia?
I hate nvidia for her shit like physx, but this is an ass kick =(

Given the way that open source gfx performance is catching up with Catalyst on your hardware (arguably better already for 2D and video), is the logic here that you would be punishing us for supporting you with open source drivers rather than closed source ?