AMD Dismisses Another 5% Of Its Workforce

[ElectricPrism]

AMD/ATI is dead ... sad but true ...

Nah brah, I almost bought a AMD 390x last week, the deciding factor was that I couldn't spend my money on promises when I knew the GTX 970 would perform well for my work and gaming needs with 0 days delay.

AMD will come back and when they do I'll spend thousands on their GPUs, CPUs and Mobos - as a system builder I'm sure they'll be back on their game with some interior company adjustments. Until then lets remain optimistic and not disappointed and keep our eyes open for the day AMD is back at 100% speed ahead.

I was looking to get an Alienware 15" Laptop with a new Skylake processor and of course and AMD graphics card but called the help number as there didn't appear to be a 4k screen option anymore. The person on the phone wasn't very helpful and really tired to get me to buy an nVidia card stating that 90% of their sales were nVidia which sounds like a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy to me. AMD aren't going to get sales if you deliberately force them down the nVidia road

As someone with a 4k monitor - I can't hold back offering my opinion that 15" is not a practical thing to want. 4k @ 43" is 96dpi - at 15" it's 293 DPI which is unreadable. Not to mention that a laptop would ideally require a GTX 970 or GTX 980 to push 4k on a laptop - and the heat output would likely cause the laptop to have a very short life. Not to mention that most games don't scale well about 1080p so your UI in your games would be so small you couldn't read it. .02

[ElectricPrism]

its really sad.. most sites especially this one shits all over AMD. IN FAVOR OF NVIDIA

Phoronix has simply done benchmarks on AMD and Nvidia current generation cards - meaning they own and tested R9 290s, R9 Fury's and many other AMD cards. If you would like to debate the authenticity of those benchmarks - go buy 6 AMD cards for $1,500 and present your data, but this time use 1) ACTUAL EVIDENCE & DATA and not just 2) YOUR OPPINION that X is better than Y as the source.

drivers are rock solid atleast on Windows

The title of this website is:
Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source Benchmarks & Linux Performance - Phoronix

Anyone who has their mental facilties operating correctly knows a claim about "Windows Drivers" functioning well is irrelevant on a blog about "Linux".

i dont get it oh well enjoy your 1000$ gtx 960

Since when did a GTX 960 cost $1,000? They must be trying to rip you off at that price!

JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE LOVES SOMETHING THEY ARE INSTANTLY A FANBOY, You are stupid and posted the most useless shit.

All-Caps on the internet implies YELLING, and calling someone "stupid" and their post "shit" is hitting below the belt - I'm sorry but you instantly loose the debate because you hit below the belt.

linux wont even write to a usb drive, still suck at performance

My Linux writes to a USB drive perfectly well, you must be encountering a user error, or a software error (caused by a user error.)

Ubuntu supposedly fixed catalyst under 4.2+ yet when i install it, it hangs at loading splash screen
id use linux more if i could fix these problems

Here you admit to using proprietary drivers on your AMD when earlier you cited that Linux is about "using open source drivers". In english - this is called a "contradiction".

AMD wanted Multi core support on every OS especially paired with x64 but it seems x86 is still going strong

Here you confuse x64 and x86. x86 is both 64-bit and 32-bit - their correct accronyms are x86 (32-bit) and x86_64 (64-bit). Unless you meant AMR_x64 in which case your statement is false as ARM 64 is not "going strong" as you put it.

i think intel and nvidia prevented this with $$$$$$$.

A Conspiracy Thoery? Tell me More! Let me get my popcorn.

Is it not what this website is for? or is it only for promoting NVidia benchmarks?? I mean this is an AMD topic.....

As I pointed out earlier Phoronix bencharks AMD cards aswell. What's that old proverb?

"A wise person listens and takes in more instruction, but the heart of the fool blurts out his foolishness."

You are stupid, We are talking about fixing AMD problems on linux

Since all restrictions to courteousness and name calling have been thrown out the window when you repetidly called other posters "stupid", I am convinced you have Borderline Personality Disorder.

Signs & Symptoms of BPD
☑ Extreme reactions?including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions?to abandonment, whether real or perceived
☑ A pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often veering from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)
☑ Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days
☑ Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger
☑ Having stress-related paranoid thoughts

Can someone please help me get Catalyst working on Kernel 4.2 i know it can be done... Much appreciated

The proper venue you seek is this invention called IRC (an acronym meaning - Internet Relay Chat) - using this IRC you can talk live with about 2,000 users of Ubuntu at the IRC server irc.freenode.net/#ubuntu

However be warned, if you display agreesive, arrogant outburts and show no consideration others will likely 1 ) shun you 2 ) not help you 3 ) kick you or if the mods feel you are being disruptive the mods may 4 ) ban you.

[zakhrov]

btw thanks intel for buying the market and vendors from under AMD back in 2001 might have actually had competition and money for development on both Windows and Linux at this day and age..

I couldn't agree more At least in the laptop segment. Finding a decently configured AMD powered laptop is like finding the Loch Ness Monster. Fortunately on the Linux side their OSS drivers have caught up with Catalyst.

[soulsource]

Imho the biggest problem with fglrx: It's still available for consumer graphics cards, therefore people still assume that proprietary=recommended, try to install it, and are inevitably disappointed.
Look at Intel. They don't offer proprietary drivers for Linux at all, and their open source drivers are (if I remember correctly) not on par with their Windows drivers. Still, there is little bad blood towards their drivers, simply because they work. The open source AMD drivers simply work as well and offer a similar set of OpenGL extensions as the Intel drivers. While they are not on par with their Windows drivers, they are nearly on par with their proprietary Linux drivers performance wise. That's why I think for Linux the best thing AMD could do would be to put fglrx behind a paywall - by limiting it to their FireGL products.

But back on topic: It's sad for the employees that have to leave. Let's hope they find good new opportunities somewhere else.
[insert rant about the financial market, where the worth of a company isn't directly linked to the company's success...]

[akincer]

All i'm saying is the way AMD is today is not because of hardware but because when a reviewer reviews a piece of hardware they find one minor hiccup in AMD hardware and instantly promotes intel/nvidia before finding a fix for the problem.

I disagree. It's the mixed (at best) experience people get when buying their hardware. I've had driver updates make games go from enjoyable to unplayable. I've had bugs that suddenly appear with an update and still exist right up to the GPU being moved out of support of Catalyst over a year later. I have a laptop running AMD components that get so hot it will burn the skin. It creates so much heat I can use it as a space heater. I'm not even joking. And this is with the OS sitting idle.

So no -- sorry. It's not from reviewers. It's from the experience that makes buying their products an exercise in principle vs practicality. That's not a great position to put customers in that WANT to support you.

[dungeon]

I disagree. It's the mixed (at best) experience people get when buying their hardware. I've had driver updates make games go from enjoyable to unplayable. I've had bugs that suddenly appear with an update and still exist right up to the GPU being moved out of support of Catalyst over a year later. I have a laptop running AMD components that get so hot it will burn the skin. It creates so much heat I can use it as a space heater. I'm not even joking. And this is with the OS sitting idle.

So no -- sorry. It's not from reviewers. It's from the experience that makes buying their products an exercise in principle vs practicality. That's not a great position to put customers in that WANT to support you.

Thing is that so called 'regressions' can happen to any software so those happen more or less always and usually it does happen to all vendors with any drivers ... if that is experience with Windows Beta Drivers for any vendor you probably know what i am reffering to - driver regression happens also for nVidia, Intel and AMD GPUs or any other... regression also happens and usually does happen if you use opensource drivers during development some random git version, that again also happens for some nVidia, Intel and AMD GPU... Usually not all gen are affected, but if it is for all that get fixed very quickly.

Roughly speaking after 1-3 years since gen release, all of those drivers for then older chips starts to get less attention by driver developers, and so on... not because they don't won't or can't fix it, but they start to not have hardware in hand to reproduce bug while priorities are always on new hardware.

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

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

[duby229]

I disagree. It's the mixed (at best) experience people get when buying their hardware. I've had driver updates make games go from enjoyable to unplayable. I've had bugs that suddenly appear with an update and still exist right up to the GPU being moved out of support of Catalyst over a year later. I have a laptop running AMD components that get so hot it will burn the skin. It creates so much heat I can use it as a space heater. I'm not even joking. And this is with the OS sitting idle.

So no -- sorry. It's not from reviewers. It's from the experience that makes buying their products an exercise in principle vs practicality. That's not a great position to put customers in that WANT to support you.

Take that laptop apart and clean and reseat the heatsink. 99% of the time people that complain about hot laptops, the problem is the heatsink is clogged up or isn't seated directly on the chip and isn't getting cooled at all.

EDIT: You kind of have to remember that thermodynamics is driven by entropy.

[akincer]

Take that laptop apart and clean and reseat the heatsink. 99% of the time people that complain about hot laptops, the problem is the heatsink is clogged up or isn't seated directly on the chip and isn't getting cooled at all.

EDIT: You kind of have to remember that thermodynamics is driven by entropy.

The heat issue happened literally immediately after I did a hard upgrade of Ubuntu that also included the latest Catalyst that no longer supported my (1 year old) laptop. No upgrade since has fixed the heat issue. Honestly at this point I'm past giving a crap about it. I haven't even turned the laptop on in months. Maybe I'll install the latest Ubuntu when it comes out for giggles and see if it fixes it. Otherwise, I'm just not interested in taking it apart to fix it. But you might be right.

[akincer]

Thing is that so called 'regressions' can happen to any software so those happen more or less always and usually it does happen to all vendors with any drivers ... if that is experience with Windows Beta Drivers for any vendor you probably know what i am reffering to - driver regression happens also for nVidia, Intel and AMD GPUs or any other... regression also happens and usually does happen if you use opensource drivers during development some random git version, that again also happens for some nVidia, Intel and AMD GPU... Usually not all gen are affected, but if it is for all that get fixed very quickly.

Roughly speaking after 1-3 years since gen release, all of those drivers for then older chips starts to get less attention by driver developers, and so on... not because they don't won't or can't fix it, but they start to not have hardware in hand to reproduce bug while priorities are always on new hardware.

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

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

IIRC, the bug was in the open driver. I stopped playing games and haven't turned on my gaming rig in over a year, so it might very well be fixed by now. It was present in every version I was able to install right up until I quit playing.

[dungeon]

IIRC, the bug was in the open driver. I stopped playing games and haven't turned on my gaming rig in over a year, so it might very well be fixed by now. It was present in every version I was able to install right up until I quit playing.

Yeah in opensource driver for older cards (pre GCN) power managment is not that good, like it is AFAIR after i think 3.10 kernel for GCNs... well even for those radeon gives a little bit more heat then what user with Catalyst has, but nothing much to complain about it is maybe just 10-15% more or something.