AMD Will Release New Catalyst Linux Driver Update This Month

[Kano]

Ok, which card do you use with fglrx and what do you do with it? Do you use xvba? Did you try vaapi via xvba-va-wrapper or the new wrapper? Did you try to start a game while using xrender kde fx? Do you know why all binary amd drivers activate overscan when the hdmi output has audio support (windows as well)?

I can not comment on your Nvidia cards, my Kepler based cards work fine and other Kanotix users do not seem to have got huge problems as well. Intel onboard however is even better for basic usage (why should I add a HD 5670 permanently if the performance is nothing like near my 650 Ti - i use it to do my usual tests after a driver update). I usually disable composite fx for Nvidia for best video playback, not needed for Intel.

[dungeon]

@smitty3268

As i mentioned here:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?115666-AMD-Will-Release-New-Catalyst-Linux-Driver-Update-This-Month&p=478076#post478076

I can not comment on your Nvidia cards, my Kepler based cards work fine and other Kanotix users do not seem to have got huge problems as well. Intel onboard however is even better for basic usage (why should I add a HD 5670 permanently if the performance is nothing like near my 650 Ti - i use it to do my usual tests after a driver update). I usually disable composite fx for Nvidia for best video playback, not needed for Intel.

There we go now it was not only highend, but now AMD midrange cards are awfull too... nVidia is always better for him

Any intel is better then AMD low end... is probably next rant

[drSeehas]

... Do you know why all binary amd drivers activate overscan when the hdmi output has audio support (windows as well)? ...

This was fixed, at least on Windows (14.501.1003.1001).

[Kano]

@dungeon

I usually test: gl2benchmark, xbmc (or Kodi), mpv, Killing Floor, L4d2, sometimes CS:GO (if FS is available), Serious Sam 3, that should be enough to see if there was a change. Btw. KF has rendering bugs with Nvidia/nouveau but not with fglrx/radeon/Intel. Btw. if you want to see a funny screen (was fixed) with CF:

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/00000.jpg

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/00001.jpg

Rendering was fixed, speed did not improve.

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/amd-hd-5670-cf.jpg

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/ss3/06_Pyramids_0001_fglrx_cf_off.jpg

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/ss3/06_Pyramids_0001_fglrx_cf_on.jpg

[dungeon]

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/ss3/06_Pyramids_0001_fglrx_cf_off.jpg

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/tmp/ss3...glrx_cf_on.jpg

If that is HD 5670 (year 2010.) vs GTX 650 Ti (year 2012.) numbers looks correct to me because there are raw hardware difference there in the first place . That nV card is somewhat 2.5 times faster on average so it is probably not something driver can fix

Compare their specs from wikipedia and/or by average results from passmark, etc...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+5670

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+650+Ti

~1k vs ~2.5k

12 fps vs 34 fps

Likely not a driver problem .

[Kano]

No, thats not nvidia vs fglrx, that was just CF on and off. With CF on SS3 loses speed - on Windows it gains speed for the DX renderer - OpenGL is the same effect.

[dungeon]

No, thats not nvidia vs fglrx, that was just CF on and off. With CF on SS3 loses speed - on Windows it gains speed for the DX renderer - OpenGL is the same effect.

Ah, you want to say CF does not work for SS3 or something

You can continue now how CF does not work with radeon

[oleid]

At home, I use an AMD 5770, however currently with OSS drivers. I used to use fglrx, which was also fine, however video acceleration never worked. Yet, I don't need it, thus I didn't care. When I started toying with wayland, I switched to radeon and I was surprised how great it worked, thus I never switched back.
At the moment, I'm testing radeonsi using an an radeon 290. It works fine, too, however video acceleration is a bit buggy and video is wrong in civilization beyond earth. The later works fine with fglrx, though. As does opencl. But what does all this have to do with my claim, that fglrx got better in the last years?

The problems I describe with nvidia don't occur when just running for a few hours. We don't switch our workstations off, as people run simulations via ssh&screen. thus, an uptime of 60 days is not uncommon. We have about 80 machines with basically all cards, that are supported by nvidia 340, which is AFAIR 9000 and later. The older cards where replaced when upgrading the driver. Our experience is, that later driver versions are not as stable as older ones, especially when not using the latest cards. There are x server crashes or graphical glitches after a few weeks, which we didn't experience before. Yet, we had to upgrade the driver due to later CUDA version being dependant on it.

I can't comment on fglrx in this situation, as we only use nvidia cards, as the workstations use a shared nfs rootfs.
At home, I frequently suspend my machine to memory and wake it up the next day. This works for weeks without any problems. For me, the radeon driver at my personal workstation at home works as well as the Intel driver in my laptop.

[Kano]

Nope, but compared to Nvidia where I tested multigpu the games can run much slower. multigpu with a GTX 295 was basically useless (but it was able to kill one PSU using Win+FurMark). I think only Doom 3 was faster using the __GL_DOOM3=1 override (or dhewm3).

[Kano]

Btw. you can use vaapi with fgrlx 14.12, check:

$ readlink /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so
../libXvBAW.so.1.0

$ vainfo 
libva: VA-API version 0.32.0
Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0".
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.32 (libva 1.0.15)
vainfo: Driver version: AMD MMD 1.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileH264Baseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD

$ mpv -vo vaapi --hwdec vaapi movie

The problem is, it does only work up to xbmc and not kodi.