AMD's Hawaii Open-Source Support Still Remains Broken

[mazumoto]

Do you envision people buying Hawaii cards to use them with the open source drivers ?

yes. I did.
Why ? Cause I want gaming performance on windows when I want to play and a hassle free experience on linux when I do development or surfing. And I hope for at least mediocre 3D support on linux, so that for casual games I don't even need to reboot anymore.

The situation now ? Windows has performance, but it bluescreens now and then (and only beta-drivers for 4 months or more ? seriously, amd ?). And Linux is more-or-less unusable since 2D accel needs 3D accel and that is utterly broken.
I definitely will consider if buying or recommending AMD stuff really is beneficial in the future, even nouveau seems to get new hardware working faster (yes, I know they're not as stable).

You know, I don't need top-notch perdormance on linux from day one. But I cannot tolerate 7 months of utter brokenness. The worst thing is that you AMD employees openly state you don't care and it's not high priority. I once recommended AMD GPUs to all my friends and everyone who asked (at least 4 purchases of mostly high-end cards resulted from that) - but now I don't care any longer.

[bridgman]

The worst thing is that you AMD employees openly state you don't care.

Sorry, I don't remember seeing anyone say anything remotely like that.

[mmstick]

Do you envision people buying Hawaii cards to use them with the open source drivers ?

I would. I use the open source drivers with my 7950 and R9 270X machines, as well as my 6850 and 4870 machines. With a bit of improvement, Catalyst will be a thing of the past.

[mmstick]

yes. I did.
Why ? Cause I want gaming performance on windows when I want to play and a hassle free experience on linux when I do development or surfing. And I hope for at least mediocre 3D support on linux, so that for casual games I don't even need to reboot anymore.

The situation now ? Windows has performance, but it bluescreens now and then (and only beta-drivers for 4 months or more ? seriously, amd ?). And Linux is more-or-less unusable since 2D accel needs 3D accel and that is utterly broken.
I definitely will consider if buying or recommending AMD stuff really is beneficial in the future, even nouveau seems to get new hardware working faster (yes, I know they're not as stable).

You know, I don't need top-notch perdormance on linux from day one. But I cannot tolerate 7 months of utter brokenness. The worst thing is that you AMD employees openly state you don't care and it's not high priority. I once recommended AMD GPUs to all my friends and everyone who asked (at least 4 purchases of mostly high-end cards resulted from that) - but now I don't care any longer.

Those bluescreens are probably caused by additional components that Catalyst installs. Uninstalling AMD's Accelerated Video Transcoding stops graphical corruption and the red screen of death on Windows 8. That said, Catalyst is quite a mess both on Windows and Linux. It either needs all the bad code rewritten from scratch, or for them to replace Catalyst with the open source Gallium3D drivers on Windows.

[mazumoto]

Sorry, I don't remember seeing anyone say anything remotely like that.

Maybe I phrased it not very well or to harshly (sorry if that's the case), but how else should I interpret stuff like this ? I think low priority and not caring are quite similar at least. And obviously "low priority" is sill the case after months on the market.

We have access to the hardware, the problem is hawaii support is not a priority at the moment. We don't have any business cases right now where accelerated open source hawaii is a priority.

Do you envision people buying Hawaii cards to use them with the open source drivers ?

PS: I'd be happy to help with nailing down the issues, but I'd need clear instructions on what to test/do. I already tried getting accel to work with versions from when it was first committed (according to agd5f it worked back then), but I wasn't successful.



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Off-topic:

Those bluescreens are probably caused by additional components that Catalyst installs. Uninstalling AMD's Accelerated Video Transcoding stops graphical corruption and the red screen of death on Windows 8. That said, Catalyst is quite a mess both on Windows and Linux. It either needs all the bad code rewritten from scratch, or for them to replace Catalyst with the open source Gallium3D drivers on Windows.

Thanks for the info, mmstick, I'll probably try that. And yes ... I'd be quite interested in seeing if radeon gallium3d really would be working on windows (should be possible at least, as far as I understand it).

[bridgman]

Maybe I phrased it not very well or to harshly (sorry if that's the case), but how else should I interpret stuff like this ? I think low priority and not caring are quite similar at least. And obviously "low priority" is sill the case after months on the market.

I don't agree, in a number of ways.

1. Being *told* that something is low priority by the business unit that funds a lot of the open source development (who, incidentally, don't sell any Hawaii-based parts) is one thing, and not caring *yourself* is a very different thing. You seem to be shooting the messenger here -- I realize it's a time-honoured tradition but that doesn't make it a Good Thing.

2. You seem to be assuming that fixing the problems would be easy, and concluding that since the problems are not fixed then nobody must have worked on it and "nobody cares". Try thinking instead that time *has* been spent on it (enough to bring it up to the same level as the other GCN parts based on experiences with previous generations) but for some reason it's *still* not working, then try working up a new set of conclusions from that.

Remember there seem to be at least two separate issues here -- the intermittent hangs which drove the initial decision to disable acceleration by default, and some more recent breakage in the code which Michel is working with a customer to fix.

[bridgman]

Stupid edit limit, I'm not typing all that in again

[bridgman]

I will retype one point -- I don't agree that having priorities translates to "not caring" either. If you have to go to work and therefore can't spend as much time with family and kids as you would like, does that mean you don't care about them ?

[dungeon]

Stupid edit limit, I'm not typing all that in again

. yes it is stupid, unnatural timed rubbish

[mazumoto]

I don't agree, in a number of ways.

1. Being *told* that something is low priority by the business unit that funds a lot of the open source development (who, incidentally, don't sell any Hawaii-based parts) is one thing, and not caring *yourself* is a very different thing. You seem to be shooting the messenger here -- I realize it's a time-honoured tradition but that doesn't make it a Good Thing.

2. You seem to be assuming that fixing the problems would be easy, and concluding that since the problems are not fixed then nobody must have worked on it and "nobody cares". Try thinking instead that time *has* been spent on it (enough to bring it up to the same level as the other GCN parts based on experiences with previous generations) but for some reason it's *still* not working, then try working up a new set of conclusions from that.

Remember there seem to be at least two separate issues here -- the intermittent hangs which drove the initial decision to disable acceleration by default, and some more recent breakage in the code which Michel is working with a customer to fix.

3. I will retype one point -- I don't agree that having priorities translates to "not caring" either. If you have to go to work and therefore can't spend as much time with family and kids as you would like, does that mean you don't care about them ?

1. Well, as I said, I should have phrased it differently ... AMD as a company doesn't care nearly enough about the open source driver in my opinion. Sorry that I gave the impression that I meant "the developers", priorities aren't set by them of course.

2. No, I suspected it's not an easy problem, and I know that some work happened / happens. It all comes down to priorities again, I guess.

3. That means I should spend less time at work, for sure ;-) But yeah, I get your point.

By the way, thanks for taking the time to anser even such frustrated posts as mine - you're certainly proving a thick hide in such matters for years now :-)