"Ask ATI" dev thread

[CNCFarraday]

@Qaridarium and Xavier

You DO know that games are proprietary closed source software, right? If you are sick of closed source and only use open source software, why buy uber-cards at all? I mean, what free, open source games are there that need anything more powerful than am integrated intel 950 crap?

You are a bunch of hypocrites. You are sick of closed source, but you buy expensive video hardware, and bitch about its open source/closed source drivers... to play closed source games. Or games don't count as as software?

Are you too cheap to buy the shittiest, cheapest windows license and use it only as a "console os" or are you too scared to download a pirated windows from torrents?

Up until a few years ago, when we attended some crap M$ development seminars and go a free XP version that I still use, I used XP downloaded from torrents. Why? Because I only boot in it 2 hours per weekned at most to play a few games. It has nothing except drivers and the games themselves and it is utterly useless at anything else. I've been using linux for more than 10 years now and, except a handful of online games that i play from time to time there is NOTHING that I can't do on it.

Taking this religious crusade against closed source software is stupid, as you just stated you play closed source games. Maybe you need to re-examine you dogmas and your own morality.


"on 1 pc i use ubuntu 9.10 the stable fglrx do not support this the opensource one works!"

What pc? What configuration? What video card? What motherboard? WHat everything?

I have 4 machines at home: two with integrated radeon 3200, one with a 3870 and one with a 4850 and had one at work with a radeon 4830 and ALL WORK FINE with fglrx.

Maybe you have shitty components, you bought a hua-ximg-me cheapo radeon, soldered together on a boat in the indian ocean, maybe your PSU is crap and it feeds currents with too much jitter to the video card.

I know what to choose that it works on linux, and it is made by a known vendor, with quality components. I always test my components after I buy them. I always search and read forums and articles for compatibility issues on linux for various components.

Wake up people! In order to use linux you need hardware. And most PC hardware manufacturers don't give a flying fuck about linux (ATi included). So you are on your own and yuu depend on other people who test these components and reverse engineer API/ABI, firmware and software from the windows world.

If you want to play games so badly, USE WINDOWS. Period.

"the newest 9.10 alpfa of the fglrx supports ubuntu 9.10 but there is lot of work do to. "

I have Ubuntu 8.10 here with AMD64 .26 kernel and Catalyst 9.8 works just fine. Also WTF does the Ubuntu version have to do with it? The kernel is the same, provided that is the same version. Download the fglrx blob from ATi, install it and it works fine.

"realy all features in the opensource driver are better..."

Really, like what? I work on fluid simulations software and the open source drivers are crap at this moment. Basic 3D features of the GPU have poor support and (ahem) *advanced* features have no support.

"Radeon=EXA/GEM/TTM fast fast superfast.......
FGLRX=only XAA SLOW SLOW SLOWWWWWWW"

LOLOLOFASSTOMGPONIES! On what? What kernel? What hardware? What software? What GPU/OpenGL features the software uses?
We DEPEND on the blobs from Nvidia and ATi for our software to work... and it does. The open source driver is really good for watching 1080p Desperate Housewives and browsing. If you bought your video card just for that, i have bad news for you: you've got ripped.

"the FGLRX will DIE very very fast." Right... DIE DIE DIE! How old are you?


Also, reading some more posts:

"tesslation is in direktX 11 at the first time." Ehm, what? What does DX have to do with Linux? What free-open-source games that you or the other guys here play or know about ( i don't know of any ) use GPU accelerated tesselation and it is a core feature ?

I am very curious because we DO have GPU accelerated tesselation, we made it with GLSL. Apparently you are bitching that SOMEONE ELSE didn't do it for you for free so you can download an open source driver and just call TesselateLoLol() and get a paychek, like they do on XBox development...

[mibo]

and the idle power consuming the hd 5000 will be much better than the 4870...

Is it as low as on my HD3850?
I just did not buy a 48xx/4770 card because the idle power consumption was way to high.

Cheers,
mibo

[mirv]

I'm just going to put some points in here:

AMD care an awful lot about linux. They used linux-based systems for their cpu design.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/AMD_on_AMD.pdf

Hardware level tessellation support (or something similar - truform) has been available since the r200 days. ATI_pn_triangles, if memory serves. Of course, GLSL can be used for more generic applications these days.

I've discovered that most peoples' beefs with the binary blobs are due to some bug with running in wine, or compiz - not with actually playing a game. The fundamental 3D (opengl) support is quite good.

I would say it's good to have some fanatics on open source. They do help push things forward (RMS, for example) - but I'll ignore a fanatic if they don't contribute anything (going back to RMS, he wants more sharing, not just making for free).

I still praise AMD for opening up the documentation to allow for proper open source drivers to be developed (and helping that development). Whatever their reasons (delegating open source for older cards does alleviate some of the support costs for them) it's still good for the linux community.

The binary blobs will almost always have higher performance and more features. The workstation crowd will require it. Get used to it.

[CNCFarraday]

I'm just going to put some points in here:

AMD care an awful lot about linux. They used linux-based systems for their cpu design.

It is best we don't mix AMD and ATi, even though now they are one company.

Before the merger, ATi had horrible linux support and, truth be told, AMD didn't have anything to "support" except kernel optimizations for it's CPUs architecture.

Now they are making their own graphics cards and chipsets so there's more to offer support to.

The problem is AMD inherited the atmosphere created by ATi's linux support and people expect that, somehow they'll make drivers or open up everything for everything, including the pre-2xxx radeon cards that were made/designed before the merger.

The new cards work fine. I have 3 different models, and most of my coworkers use AMD+ATi hardware and it also works with the fglrx blobs. From my experience (and I've seen and worked on MANY workstations/desktops), everything from 38*0 upwards works fine and dandy on AMD64 kernel >= .24 with fglrx.

As a point, I always buy and/or recommend gigabyte mobos and gigabyte or sapphire video cards. I never had a problem with either, all work out of the box with linux, just that I always do a *manual* install/upgrade of the fglrx, in the sense that I don't rely on the blobs in the repository of the distro.

For example, installing Debian 5 AMD64 kernel on this machine:

Gigabyte AMD790FX/SB600 AM2+
AMD Athlon X2 6000+
4 x 2GB DDR2 1066 Corsair
Sapphire Radeon 3870 512MB

Everything worked out of the box, except some video tearing issues and 3D that required a "manual" installation of the latest fglrx blob. After that everything works fine.

[mirv]

It is best we don't mix AMD and ATi, even though now they are one company.

Good point, I should have made that clearer.
And oh the fun of making those first fglrx drivers work (I had an r8500 that was "designed by ati", not "built by ati" so the chipid was never right). On the plus side, the open source r200 drivers were blisteringly fast and good enough to play UT very nicely with.

[NeoBrain]

Radeon=EXA/GEM/TTM fast fast superfast.......
FGLRX=only XAA SLOW SLOW SLOWWWWWWW

in my history the opensource driver also be more stable rockstable superstable.....

You don't expect anyone to take you seriously, do you?

[CNCFarraday]

why? windows games works perfekt in wine on an fgrlx 9.9...

"TA-Spring,Sauerbraten,nexuiz, generall WINE"

Do you play these games because you've been locked in cave for the last 15 years or just because they are foss?

TA-Spring is an engine, not a game, and most of the games based on that engine are piss-poor rts clones of games I played almost a decade ago.

Similary, Sauerbraten and Nexuiz are piss poor Ut/Q[23] clones. I already played UT and Q2 ages ago. Maybe you should take a look at more interesting, challenging and more well designed non-foss games and see what's been going on in the "proprietary" world for the last 15 years.

If you play them because they are foss, and foss is the only god and foss created adam and eve, then you, and those like you are like a reverse-EA. EA only cares about graphics, they pump shit after shit based on looks and effects, without any concern to gameplay. You and foss fanatics, apparently are stubborn to play 10-15 years old gaemplay games just because they are foss, without any consideration to gameplay (or graphics for that fact).

Point me to some CREATIVE, INTELLIGENT foss game, not a piss-poor copy of a 10 yo game that I played for years on my K6-2.

"thats realy importand for you why? hd4350,tyan-thunter-3600b-dual-socketF-opteron 2216 3 harddrives overall 2,3TB.. "

You game on a dual-socket server workstation... Right...

"why? windows games works perfekt in wine on an fgrlx 9.9..."

Really? Again, what does work "perfekt"? Deus-Ex? Quake3? The only reason I keep windows on a hdd is to play from time to time some games, like: TF2, CIV4, SupCom, L4D, SC. None work on wine. SC "works", but you need a 3Ghz dual core to have the same smooth gameplay you have on 1Ghz k7... And it doesn;t even use 3D features of any GPU...

Wine doesn't "work perfekt" for 99.9% of the games out there. Keeping an XP hdd just for games is the logical solution.

"looking porn at youporn in flash works well on the radeon driver :-)"

Riiight... youporn on a 2-socket server... Apart from this, maybe you can give me some insights as what does Flash have to do with the radeon driver? Flash is piss-poor and slow on its own and more so, doesn't use ANY GPU features, not even the Mac/Windows versions who, supposedly are more carefully developed than the linux one.

"KDE4.3 works faster on fglrx i have some litle timehangs on some funktions. FGLRX will fix this in version 9.11!!!!!!!!"

I'm sorry, for a second there you had me believed ATi develops KDE... Maybe KDE's raster libraries are piss-poor. Put away the vista-like eyecandy and use gnome. I have NO problems with gnome.

[soeiro]

Anyone has installed 9.8 on Debian kernel 2.6.30?

If there is anyone who has successfully installed ATI proprietary drivers (9.5, 9.7 or 9.8) on Debian testing (squeeze) with stock 2.6.30 kernel?

If you have, please take a look at http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18681 and maybe provide some hints?

Thanks,

S.

[mirv]

We're happy little vegemites, as bright as bright can be....
(aka - people, relax)

Latest games generally require the OS they were designed on. Wine is a fantastic project, but does not (and really can not) compete with a native windows installation. It does allow some older games to be played easily, which is generally great for entertainment. I also played Still Life (with some tweaking of *.dll files) under wine, where it wouldn't work under vista. So let's not bash wine. Or any open source games - these people do stuff in their free time, so if you don't like it, fine, but just don't bash it.
Being said, let's also keep in mind that applications use the binary drivers, not vice-versa. I don't think ATi should have to fix bugs for KDE. And they won't. They will stabalise their drivers, fix bugs in xorg interactions, etc, but they will not fix KDE. In this regard, the primary work from ATI will be making it work according to a given interface first, and then making it not fall over if people don't abide by that interface second.

Open source does not automagically make something great. Proprietary does not make something bad. Writing drivers is bloody difficult. Vegemite is awesome.

[CNCFarraday]

I have nothing against wine. In fact we rely on wine to local-test some windows version of the clients.

What I was ranting about is this mentality that binary blobs are evil and foss is awesome. Games are binary blobs and are light years way better from every point of view from foss games which are puppeded up here and there on the sole attribute that they are foss. Any rational comparison of gameplay and features between TA-Spring and Supreme Commander which I can buy for as low as 18E will make the glorious foss copy-cat look like a comparison between DOS 6.22 and Ubuntu 9...

Second, the overall mentality is that foss is always good and, therefore, when something breaks while using Compiz or Wine on ATi's evil binary blob it's ATi's fault. FOSS is so awesome it can't be their fault... ATi should fix it in a new release... What a load of crap!

Also I don't bash any foss games. Is that the guy's mentality is that there are foss games and we should all be happy, as if they are of equal quality and/or complexity. One of the main reasons Linux takes flak with the "illiterate crowd" is that it can't run games.
The solution isn't a hacked os api emulator, since it will always offer inferior quality to running games on the platform they were design and built to run, but to have game developers publish games natively on linux. Apparently people want a windows environment without paying for windows. If you move to Linux just to run x,y,z games in wine, photoshop in wine, ie7 in wine and so on, you'd better stay on windows.