Catalyst 15.7 For Linux Is Turning Out To Be A Rather Nice Driver Update

[matszpk]

I checked. Actually better performance in OpenGL. Unigine Valley on 15.5 (1920x1080 4xAA, Ultra, Radeon HD7850 1GB, core=1050, mem=1245): 861, catalyst 15.7: 987 (this same setup). Good job, AMD.

[dungeon]

Is catalyst/fglrx still filled with "small" but annoying bugs? I remember not being able to suspend to RAM, some particular programs crashing repeatedly, not being able to set brightness, ... Have they fixed those bugs? I also remember that the bug fixing was kinda random: one release had the bug, the next one didn't, the next one had it again...

From release notes:

Resolved Issues:

• [421317] Segmentation fault observed while launching some OpenGL games in RHEL7.1
• [419365] Error message observed during installation through rpm package in RHEL 6.5, 7.0
• [419162] System hangs while running Dying Light
• [421858] clinfo could not recognize up to four GPU devices

Known Issues:

• [419960]: Vari-Bright on some configurations is not decreasing brightness as expected

[oleid]

Is catalyst/fglrx still filled with "small" but annoying bugs? I remember not being able to suspend to RAM.

I haven't used catalyst for a long time. Today's news made me install it on my gentoo with kernel 4.1 (c.f. https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551458 for an ebuild). GNOME 3.16 works as smooth as the radeon driver, even GDM and suspend to RAM works. Nice release!

[entropy]

Cool, 15.7 just hit Arch. That was quick!

Let's see.

[oleid]

Sadly, Civ Beyond Earth is still broken on my 5770 GPU, but differently. Bad terrain flickering this time (which makes it unplayable).

[eydee]

Sadly, Civ Beyond Earth is still broken on my 5770 GPU, but differently. Bad terrain flickering this time (which makes it unplayable).

Do you have Bioshock Infinite? If you do, could you check if character skinning works this time?

[dungeon]

Skinning works fine on CI here (althorough checked in Torchlight 2), there only it seems VLIW hardware has that issue... skinning is also borked with radeonsi driver just for your information, etc...

Not that i am using fglrx most of the time (radeon mostly), but i am really impressed by this new Catalyst, it is never better and in every area

[Kano]

It is nice that AMD works on GCN hardware, but the latest AMD gfx cards i have got are HD 5670 (3 of em). Does AMD expect that somebody buys a card just to test new features - they should better drop support if they don't fix issues anymore.

[dungeon]

They will drop it... not sure what is an issue with that skinning it only works right on CI (SI maybe?) and with fglrx. On radeon driver (or with older hardware with fglrx) it is also more or less broken.

But yeah hardware skinning it is not something essential just a bit of performance feature, maybe up to +10% more performance for those models and in some games where it is enabled... well if it works right

edit: and yeah, if anyone does not know feature is also broken on intel drivers, swrast, llvm-pipe or whatever

[eydee]

It is nice that AMD works on GCN hardware, but the latest AMD gfx cards i have got are HD 5670 (3 of em). Does AMD expect that somebody buys a card just to test new features - they should better drop support if they don't fix issues anymore.

This. As long as these cards are supported and the box says OpenGL 4 support, not even having OpenGL 3 is not only bad procedure but also false advertising. (GL_EXT_texture_compression_rgtc is an OpenGL 3 extension.) AMD didn't seem to care this far, even though game developers themselves keep reporting such issues. No wonder that everyone goes green regardless that AMD could dominate the gaming market through the consoles...