How to get Catalyst 14.4 working on Ubuntu 14.04

[majod]

Hi,

I posted to AMD forum but was told here may get better responses since the official AMD support forum is dead...
There's currently bunch of articles on Phoronix about 14.4 performance in Ubuntu 14.04...but HOW??? I can't gem them working at all!

So, I'm using ATI 7850, installed Ubuntu (gnome) 14.04. At first I tried fglrx from "Additional drivers", which sucked. So I reverted back to Xorg drivers, which are awesome. Now that the new versionf of Catalyst is available, I convinced myself to give it a try again. So I downloaded the driver from the AMD website, installed, rebooted, and it sucked again. Surprise!

So my issues are:

• The top 1/3 of the screen was tearing when moving windows, scrolling, etc. Tried all the settings possible with Tear Free and VSYNC. Currently I have two options: Either I use Tear-free, which removes my top screen tearing BUT the whole desktop is totally laggy and slow. Like moving windows around, resizing, showing Gnome Activities, etc...Or when I disable Tear Free, everything is fast and snappy, just like with the Xorg drivers, but the top of the screen is tearing like hell. This is my personal biggest issue, because the desktop experience is absolutely terrible with fglrx. With open source radeon drivers the desktop is extremely fast and snappy...with fglrx just terrible.
• I can't get HW acceleration working in SMplayer with fglrx. With open source drivers, I just select VDPAU and works like a charm. Can't get it working with fglrx on any settings.
• Docky has a weird glitch when set to 3D mode, like it extends the dock panel more as it should, without textures applied. I can't provide screenshots since I'm back to open source drivers and I'm tired of constantly reinstalling them.

So there are my problems. I really would like to use Catalyst drivers, as I play some games and I noticed the performance is much better with Catalyst (tried Portal2, Dota2) and also with Catalyst, my GPU fan speed adjusts dynamically with load. With RadeonSI drivers, the GPU reclocks itself, but fan speeds are constant, which is really annoying when the card is idle.

Any help appreciated!

[leonmaxx]

The top 1/3 of the screen was tearing...

You have to enable Tear Free desktop feature:

• Start AMD Catalyst Control Center: sudo amdcccle
• Go to Display Options -> Tear Free, set "Enable Tear Free desktop..."
• Go to 3D -> More settings, set "Wait for vertical refresh" to "Off, unless application specifies"

This settings gives You the best performance without tearing. (Also You can disable "Sync to vblank" in Compiz settings, as this will be done by the driver now)

I can't get HW acceleration working in SMplayer with fglrx. With open source drivers, I just select VDPAU and works like a charm. Can't get it working with fglrx on any settings.

Install XVBA driver: sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver

Docky has a weird glitch when set to 3D mode, like it extends the dock panel more as it should, without textures applied. I can't provide screenshots since I'm back to open source drivers and I'm tired of constantly reinstalling them.

I'm not sure what "Docky" is, but if You mean Unity side panel it works for me without problems.

P.S. Sorry for my bad English, but I hope You get the point.

[majod]

Hi, first of all, thank you for the reply! It's been few weeks back and I thought no one will reply.

You have to enable Tear Free desktop feature:

• Start AMD Catalyst Control Center: sudo amdcccle
• Go to Display Options -> Tear Free, set "Enable Tear Free desktop..."
• Go to 3D -> More settings, set "Wait for vertical refresh" to "Off, unless application specifies"

This settings gives You the best performance without tearing. (Also You can disable "Sync to vblank" in Compiz settings, as this will be done by the driver now)

This does not work. As I posted before, I either have terrible performance - moving/resizing windows is laggy, slow and has delays, or I have more-less fast desktop, but with tearing on top of the screen.

Install XVBA driver: sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver

Thank you, now I know how to get it working with fglrx

I'm not sure what "Docky" is, but if You mean Unity side panel it works for me without problems.

I'm using Ubuntu Gnome so I don't have Unity and Docky is this http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?t...the_Docky_wiki

But still, thank you for the reply

[leonmaxx]

This does not work. As I posted before, I either have terrible performance - moving/resizing windows is laggy, slow and has delays, or I have more-less fast desktop, but with tearing on top of the screen.

Can You try to use Compiz as desktop compositor instead of Gnome's metacity?
I'm sure it'll work better with Catalyst, and should solve tearing problems.

[vein]

I have had mixed experiences with this driver. I currently have 2 computers:

First one is a A10-7850k with ubuntu 14.04 and gnome classic. This one works perfectly. I have no problems at all and pretty good performance in games.

The second one is a 1,5 year one machine with a 7950 and ubuntu 12.04.4 and here I got great performance overall but when I start a game like DOTA2, the screen goes black. I still hear the music and the computer I working but I cant see anything. So, I have reverted this machine to 13.12 again.

[idanny]

Hi,

I posted to AMD forum but was told here may get better responses since the official AMD support forum is dead...
There's currently bunch of articles on Phoronix about 14.4 performance in Ubuntu 14.04...but HOW??? I can't gem them working at all!

So, I'm using ATI 7850, installed Ubuntu (gnome) 14.04. At first I tried fglrx from "Additional drivers", which sucked. So I reverted back to Xorg drivers, which are awesome. Now that the new versionf of Catalyst is available, I convinced myself to give it a try again. So I downloaded the driver from the AMD website, installed, rebooted, and it sucked again. Surprise!

So my issues are:

• The top 1/3 of the screen was tearing when moving windows, scrolling, etc. Tried all the settings possible with Tear Free and VSYNC. Currently I have two options: Either I use Tear-free, which removes my top screen tearing BUT the whole desktop is totally laggy and slow. Like moving windows around, resizing, showing Gnome Activities, etc...Or when I disable Tear Free, everything is fast and snappy, just like with the Xorg drivers, but the top of the screen is tearing like hell. This is my personal biggest issue, because the desktop experience is absolutely terrible with fglrx. With open source radeon drivers the desktop is extremely fast and snappy...with fglrx just terrible.
• I can't get HW acceleration working in SMplayer with fglrx. With open source drivers, I just select VDPAU and works like a charm. Can't get it working with fglrx on any settings.
• Docky has a weird glitch when set to 3D mode, like it extends the dock panel more as it should, without textures applied. I can't provide screenshots since I'm back to open source drivers and I'm tired of constantly reinstalling them.

So there are my problems. I really would like to use Catalyst drivers, as I play some games and I noticed the performance is much better with Catalyst (tried Portal2, Dota2) and also with Catalyst, my GPU fan speed adjusts dynamically with load. With RadeonSI drivers, the GPU reclocks itself, but fan speeds are constant, which is really annoying when the card is idle.

Any help appreciated!

I am having the exact same problem! I've bought myself an 280X from MSI which is an amazing card (under Windows). In Linux (Ubuntu Gnome, Linux Mint, Ubuntu 14.04, Xubuntu, KDE) i am experiencing a lot of screen tearing. Watching video's is a no-go and moving windows on the desktop is very, very laggy! So i can either use the default driver, which doesn't work with 3d-games, or i can play games with the 14.6 Catalyst driver and i then have to except the terrible performance in 2d-mode.

I eventually had to switch back to Windws because of this issue. The fan is constantly running at full speed when using the default driver.

I've tried many things from reinstalling the driver, updating Xorg, upgrading the kernel, but no luck so far. (Stupid me, why did i bought myself an ATI graphics card in the first place. )

[kurremkarmerruk]

Hi,

I posted to AMD forum but was told here may get better responses since the official AMD support forum is dead...
There's currently bunch of articles on Phoronix about 14.4 performance in Ubuntu 14.04...but HOW??? I can't gem them working at all!

So, I'm using ATI 7850, installed Ubuntu (gnome) 14.04. At first I tried fglrx from "Additional drivers", which sucked. So I reverted back to Xorg drivers, which are awesome. Now that the new versionf of Catalyst is available, I convinced myself to give it a try again. So I downloaded the driver from the AMD website, installed, rebooted, and it sucked again. Surprise!

So my issues are:

• The top 1/3 of the screen was tearing when moving windows, scrolling, etc. Tried all the settings possible with Tear Free and VSYNC. Currently I have two options: Either I use Tear-free, which removes my top screen tearing BUT the whole desktop is totally laggy and slow. Like moving windows around, resizing, showing Gnome Activities, etc...Or when I disable Tear Free, everything is fast and snappy, just like with the Xorg drivers, but the top of the screen is tearing like hell. This is my personal biggest issue, because the desktop experience is absolutely terrible with fglrx. With open source radeon drivers the desktop is extremely fast and snappy...with fglrx just terrible.
• I can't get HW acceleration working in SMplayer with fglrx. With open source drivers, I just select VDPAU and works like a charm. Can't get it working with fglrx on any settings.
• Docky has a weird glitch when set to 3D mode, like it extends the dock panel more as it should, without textures applied. I can't provide screenshots since I'm back to open source drivers and I'm tired of constantly reinstalling them.

So there are my problems. I really would like to use Catalyst drivers, as I play some games and I noticed the performance is much better with Catalyst (tried Portal2, Dota2) and also with Catalyst, my GPU fan speed adjusts dynamically with load. With RadeonSI drivers, the GPU reclocks itself, but fan speeds are constant, which is really annoying when the card is idle.

Any help appreciated!

There is solution with new driver. For test install openbox and mpv. Then log in to openbox and play movie with mpv. Press 'f' for full screen. No tearing
Basically every DE without compositing should work. On kde you can disable desktop effects by pressing alt+ shift +f12. On pure ubuntu unity should use direct rendering when running full screen app but it's buggy as hell so you must restart unity often (alt+f2 and unity --replace).

And for hw decoding:
1. Install vaapi
2. mpv -vo=opengl-hq -hwdec=vaapi /path/to/movie/

With new smplayer you can use mpv instead of mplayer. You can find details on webupd8.

[TeddyPace]

it seems working, bravo..