Latest On AMD Crimson For Linux: Supports 4.x Kernels, Drops Pre-GCN GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Latest On AMD Crimson For Linux: Supports 4.x Kernels, Drops Pre-GCN GPUs

Here's the latest in my hurried but exciting testing of the AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition for Linux atop Ubuntu...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Crimson-Pre-GCN

[eydee]

I wonder why AMD doesn't realize that dropping support for working cards owned by the majority won't force people to buy GCN, people will move to nvidia instead. For better performance, and for revenge of course.

[MoonMoon]

However, no word if this release supports the latest Linux 4.3 kernel nor if it can handle the fresh X.Org Server 1.18.

From the AMD website:

• Xorg/Xserver 7.4 and above (up to 1.17)
• Linux kernel 2.6 or above (up to 3.19)

[haagch]

I wonder why AMD doesn't realize that dropping support for working cards owned by the majority won't force people to buy GCN, people will move to nvidia instead. For better performance, and for revenge of course.

They don't drop all support, they only drop support from their proprietary driver. For the pre GCN GPUs, the open source radeon driver is (almost) complete and performs well. There's not much reason to use catalyst over it. I think once tessellation is completed (already in active development: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied.../?h=r600g-tess) it will support everything that the hardware can support, right? http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...0g-Almost-GL41

[bug77]

Meanwhile, last week nvidia has released drivers that add support for xorg-server 1.18 for GeForce 6000 series. The GeForce 5000 FX series support stopped at 1.15 though. And that's 64bit Linux support. For those that don't know, those cards were released in 2004 and 2003, respectively.

[eydee]

They don't drop all support, they only drop support from their proprietary driver. For the pre GCN GPUs, the open source radeon driver is (almost) complete and performs well. There's not much reason to use catalyst over it. I think once tessellation is completed (already in active development: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied.../?h=r600g-tess) it will support everything that the hardware can support, right? http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...0g-Almost-GL41

Unfortunately xorg being broken for DVI displays for ages, there is no way to generate a xorg.conf file and disabling vsync on these cards, when you're using open source drivers. That means drastically decreased performance.

Dropping Catalyst support would be fine, if it was feature complete, but it (once again) never reached that stage, only for windows. Dropping windows support is fine, as the card can do everything it is capable of and can run everything it is capable of, at maximum possible performance. Linux performance on the other hand is still stuck somewhere around 50-70% and would require a bunch of work.

[asdfblah]

Here's some info regarding the new retired cards: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9815/a...gpus-to-legacy . APUs are in the list:

So all pre-Kavari APUs: Llano, Trinity, and Richland, are now also legacy APUs

They don't drop all support, they only drop support from their proprietary driver. For the pre GCN GPUs, the open source radeon driver is (almost) complete and performs well. There's not much reason to use catalyst over it. I think once tessellation is completed (already in active development: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied.../?h=r600g-tess) it will support everything that the hardware can support, right? http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...0g-Almost-GL41

What about OpenCL in the open-source driver?

BTW, from what I can see, AMD devs working in the graphics part of the open-source driver "stopped working" on it a long time ago. Dave Airlie and others have been adding features, the AMD devs have been mostly working on new archs and bug fixing.

I could be completely wrong, though.

[Serafean]

Meanwhile, last week nvidia has released drivers that add support for xorg-server 1.18 for GeForce 6000 series. The GeForce 5000 FX series support stopped at 1.15 though. And that's 64bit Linux support. For those that don't know, those cards were released in 2004 and 2003, respectively.

And mesa is still supporting r200 (released in 2001) cards and newer, with at least with r300g (for cards from 2003 - 2007) providing more features than catalyst ever did.
Two can play at this game...

[dungeon]

This is nothing new but expected ~3 year dropping cadence, same happened in year 2006, 2009., 2012. and now in 2015.

That said, expect GCN 1.0/1.1 drop in 2018.

[FireBurn]

Unfortunately xorg being broken for DVI displays for ages, there is no way to generate a xorg.conf file and disabling vsync on these cards, when you're using open source drivers. That means drastically decreased performance.

Dropping Catalyst support would be fine, if it was feature complete, but it (once again) never reached that stage, only for windows. Dropping windows support is fine, as the card can do everything it is capable of and can run everything it is capable of, at maximum possible performance. Linux performance on the other hand is still stuck somewhere around 50-70% and would require a bunch of work.

Do you have the bug number for that issue? I might be able to help