AMD Is Still Moving Towards A Unified Open-Source Driver

[Ancurio]

I seriously hope this means crossfire support. I just installed catalyst for the first time in about year yesterday and crossfire currently only works on the Heaven benchmark, and even at that it performs horribly. Crossfire is the only reason I switched to catalyst in the first place, and the lack of crossfire is the one thing preventing me from playing some games at 60+FPS at high(er) detail settings.

I recall a Mesa developer mentioning that crossfire support has already been possible with open source drivers for a long time, just that nobody has stepped up to do the hard work (coding). But AFAIK there are no proprietary / unknown bits that inherently prevent an open source implementation.

[schmidtbag]

I recall a Mesa developer mentioning that crossfire support has already been possible with open source drivers for a long time, just that nobody has stepped up to do the hard work (coding). But AFAIK there are no proprietary / unknown bits that inherently prevent an open source implementation.

Well sure, of course crossfire was possible for a long time. Crossfire is actually quite simple - with AFR, you're just rendering frames on alternating GPUs. Theoretically you could use any GPU combination (assuming all GPUs are compatible with the rendering, and assuming a hardware bridge isn't required). If you were to mix and match GPUs you'd just get very undesirable results, which is probably why you currently can't do that. But if there becomes a Mesa extension allowing you to do AFR regardless of brand, linux will gain some HUGE interest in the gaming industry. Think about it - you could do multi-GPU setups involving intel graphics and put those IGPs to good use without involving something like Enduro/Optimus.

[haagch]

But what about multiple GPUs with different OpenGL version support and OpenGL extension support? You'd always be restricted to the lowest common features...

[schmidtbag]

But what about multiple GPUs with different OpenGL version support and OpenGL extension support? You'd always be restricted to the lowest common features...

That's why I said "assuming all GPUs are compatible with the rendering, and assuming a hardware bridge isn't required". I'm not saying mix and matching GPUs and brands is recommended, but if you know what you're doing it'd be a great way to get extra performance without abandoning any hardware.

[Filiprino]

This might bring CrossFire to Mesa... Imagine "CrossFire" with totally different GPUs using Mesa, it would totally rock.

Well, you should implement a sort of pcie protocol on all drivers if you want to mix gpus from different manufacturers. But yes, that would be possible with a 100% free software stack.

[smitty3268]

But this one is interesting to me so i must , firstly you say OSS driver is enough for me now you say use nvidia first . What you have against fglrx?

"Do not answer i already know" what kind of bullshit is that

Nothing. I'm not trying to convince you of a thing, i'm just telling you what people in the real world do.

[Adarion]

One more step in the direction to abandon fglrx when time is right. For now, for the people who still need fglrx, it should facilitate things. One day I hope the free driver will be so strong and mature that it can take over completely. Then put developers to the free driver and keep fglrx maintained for some time in case of problems and finally put it to rest. I just set up my first Kabini box (AM1) and using a very recent free driver stack. So far it seems to work fine but haven't tested much besides X / KDE though.

[schmidtbag]

One more step in the direction to abandon fglrx when time is right. For now, for the people who still need fglrx, it should facilitate things. One day I hope the free driver will be so strong and mature that it can take over completely. Then put developers to the free driver and keep fglrx maintained for some time in case of problems and finally put it to rest. I just set up my first Kabini box (AM1) and using a very recent free driver stack. So far it seems to work fine but haven't tested much besides X / KDE though.

For your build, the open source drivers are perfectly fine and I'm sure your user experience is almost as good as its going to get. Most games that your GPU can handle don't use the features the open source drivers don't have. In terms of performance, catalyst for you will probably run slower.

[dungeon]

For your build, the open source drivers are perfectly fine and I'm sure your user experience is almost as good as its going to get. Most games that your GPU can handle don't use the features the open source drivers don't have. In terms of performance, catalyst for you will probably run slower.

That if we talk about 6 months old Catalyst and today radeon drivers . I have AM1 Kabini too and both drivers goes faster by this time. So overall Catalyst today still faster for games, both are very usable so it is just matter of user preferance . Yes i know there is stutter and lag in some games with Catalyst (some 2D slowness bugs too) and fps rate is generaly higher, but there are also bugs/missrendering with radeon which Catalyst does not have, etc

I use radeon, but i also does not see something wrong with fglrx i just checked it from time to time - it is great to have two high quality drivers

[pjezek]

tesselation

I am proud of Marek Olsak's quick steps in getting radeon driver far more efficient as ever before. Tesselation is the right point to be optimized for radeon.