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

[highlandsun]

I switched from the open source driver to Catalyst to get OpenCL support on my Asus NP56D laptop (Trinity APU with HD7700M discrete GPU). The open source stuff doesn't support the OpenCL 2.0 APIs and is (obviously, I suppose) missing all of the AMD-specific OpenCL extensions. Unfortunately the fglrx driver doesn't let me use both GPUs at once, Catalyst is setup with PowerXpress and only lets me use one or the other of the dGPU or iGPU. With the open source driver I could use both at once (but only on much simpler, older OpenCL code).

I'm currently on 15.7, will installing this new Crimson let me use both GPUs at the same time in OpenCL?

[bridgman]

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

Michael, I can't find any indication (other than this article) that we dropped pre-GCN support from this Crimson release. AFAIK the announcement said that 15.9 would be the last WHQL certified release, but I doubt that Linux users are too worried about that.

[bridgman]

Yeah, AFAIK we announced that we were *going* to be moving Catalyst support for pre-GCN hardware to legacy but not in *this* release.

[adrenochrome]

where from comes this info ? crimson edition run as usual on my 5870m, as stated on the supported cards list available on amd download page

[Yorgos]

Fixed that for you. If you really think that any driver in the kernel will have support forever, especially in a moving area like graphics drivers, you are utterly mistaken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Rage

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY4MjM

If I had to invest in a card, I would invest in a card that has support 18 years after its release and that's a card that has oss driver or has documentation released to the public.
Don't pollute my posts with your ignorance.

[darkblu]

Here we go again...

I'm intrigued: those of you who claim AMD "dropped support" for your card, what component of Catalyst are you missing when running the FOSS drivers?

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/GalliumCompute/

(my card is Evergreen)

[Slartifartblast]

I have a RadeonHD 4550. It works great with the open source driver...

It didn't when they dropped HD4000 support in catalyst, the FOSS drivers were crap. No reclocking and your laptop sounded like a vacuum cleaner because the fans were full on due to lack of power management plus a long list of other bugs. They were far from production ready, people seem to have short memories. AMD are in a downward spiral and it's only a matter of time before they either fold or are taken over. It's going to take a lot of effort on AMD's part and some large investor cash injections before I would even consider them again. Intel and Nvidia need some serious competition to keep prices down but I don't see I coming from AMD, it's ARM and friends that are the keeping the up the pricing pressure and that's only in the low end of the market.

Would I like to see AMD as a decently competitive company who supports the customer well ?

Of course.

Do I see that happening ?

I'll paint my arse blue and run down the street naked if that happens.

Nvidia, ten years support - take effing note AMD.

[smitty3268]

Can this pre GCN drop have anything to do with vulcan support? since only GCN cards will get vulcan.

Actually it has everything to do with DX12 support.

Because everything in the fglrx driver is driven by Windows - the entire Crimson release is driven by the Windows changes they are making. Linux is just along for the ride.

They want to separate out the current DX12 hardware with drivers they update all the time, from the previous legacy hardware which won't support DX12, and which are entering their legacy drivers which are hardly ever updated. On windows, that doesn't matter so much, but there's no point to them on linux when they so quickly stop working. So you're stuck with the OSS drivers instead (not necessarily a bad thing, anyway).

So I guess in a roundabout way you could say it's about Vulkan support, in as much as Vulkan support lines up pretty much directly with DX12 support.

[MrCooper]

And mesa is still supporting r200 (released in 2001) cards and newer, [...]

Mesa still supports R100 as well.

[Nille_kungen]

I have a 6870 (Northern Islands) and I never felt the need to use the proprietary drivers. Tesselation and OpenCL could be a reason, but the former is coming to open source drivers and my card isn't that great for the latter anyway.

Not surprising.

Last time when R600 generation got moved to legacy, it was also the AMD/AMD hybrid graphics owners who got the short end of the stick: Those who had legacy internal graphics and discrete non-legacy graphics had to use the legacy driver.
Lesson learnt: Avoid AMD/AMD hybrid graphics if you depend on their latest proprietary driver.

I'm not avoiding anything and will buy a new AMD based laptop next year.
The only thing i used catalyst for was for one game i played in wine that wouldn't run with radeon on my hardware.