ATI R700 Series Gain ALSA HDMI Audio

[bridgman]

What I saw on the Windows forums was that the pre-hotfix drivers worked fine for some folks and badly for others. The change was definitely more than IDs.

[legume]

As far as DirectX issues, I'd like to see a list of apps. that trigger that error

All you need to do is run dxdiag and try the direct 3d tests, if you have the problem they will fail, if not you get to see the spinning cube.

As for games it didn't affect all of mine
working -

ETQW, HL1 (and other opengl games I guess)
BF2 was OK - didn't think that was GL

didn't work -

HL2
COD 4

[Swoopy]

I installed Catalyst 8-2 for Windows XP 32-bit with my HD 2600 XT AGP and have yet to experience any of the described problems with it. My mobo has a VIA K8T800Pro chipset and 4 GB of RAM.

I have been using the so-called "PCIe-only versions" with my HIS IceQ Turbo HD2600XT AGP 512 MB GDDR3 since release 7-11 (needed to force-install them each time) and apart from some display artifacts in Crysis with version 7-11, have not seen a single DirectX issue.
And I do try.

Of course it's possible that the last supported install, the 7-10 build that came with my card, left some files there that do not get overwritten by the PCIe installs, thus continuing to keep my card working.
I did do a couple of full clean-ups in between driver upgrades though, making that scenario increasingly unlikely.

As far as DirectX issues, I'd like to see a list of apps. that trigger that error (preferrably ones that provide a downloadable demo from a cost-perspective) so I can test whether I really don't have the documented issue.

Regardless of what the devs have said about 8-1 and this hotfix I am still convinced MY (so not "the") only real issue with the Catalyst 32-bit XP drivers is that the inf-file was missing the PCI-IDs of the AGP-based HD2xxx cards.
Interestingly, the "no compatible card found" error also didn't pop up with the Catalyst 8-2 driver, making me believe that it inherited the INF-file entries from the 8-1 hotfix.

A forced driver install solves that missing INF-file bit already in WinXP.
I've seen none of the mentioned "failed to init DirectX" errors pop up with any of the Catalyst drivers I tried in XP, but a sample of one doth not a statistical analysis make, others may have had real issues.

I benchmarked my system thoroughly using 3dMark 2006 with each new driver installation, am convinced any of the Catalyst XP 32-bit drivers work more or less okay with the HD2xxx AGP cards since release 7-10.

[bridgman]

Interesting. One of the posters here (fred ?) seemed to think that his HD2xxx AGP card worked great with Cat 8.2 under Windows. I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the Windows releases recently

[d2kx]

I am aware of the hotfix. The Catalyst 8.2 for Windows (080122), which has a more current codebase than the Catalyst 8.1 Hotfix (080116) does still have the same problems with AGP. But I am sure that the fix will be included in the Catalyst 8.3 release, at least for the Windows one.

[bridgman]

I believe the RV6xx IDs were added back in November. The same new version of ALSA that enabled 600 should also work for the RV6xx parts.

re: AGP, legume is correct. There was a few months of work that resulted in the hotfix for Windows in January, and now we are doing similar work for the Linux driver.

[legume]

Probably not a fglrx issue, because the Windows driver has huge AGP problems for some months, too, like DirectX applications not working at all etc. as far as I know. But I am not 100% sure about this one.

They released a hotfix mid Jan that sorted the Direct X issue

[d2kx]

Too bad that there products are behind Intel/NVidia :/

They're not.

AGP support

Probably not a fglrx issue, because the Windows driver has huge AGP problems for some months, too, like DirectX applications not working at all etc. as far as I know. But I am not 100% sure about this one.

[Swoopy]

Most of all I like (NOT!) the attention that the RV6xx cards aren't getting, such as similar ALSA support (none available afaik), or AGP support (woops, sorry, we 'forgot', be back with you in a few months or so ....)

Did anybody including their manufacturer just forgot the R6xx chipsets they released?
I realise they've got to put some backing behind the new cards being released but come on ATI/AMD, don't forget the stuff you churned out just 6 to 12 months ago!!!

-note to self: there is ALSA support for R600. RTFR!!-

[Noneus]

I really like what AMD is doing lately OpenSource wise. Too bad that there products are behind Intel/NVidia :/