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AMD Launches New ATI Linux Driver
Michael Larabel writes "AMD has issued a press release announcing 'significant graphics performance and compatibility enhancements' on Linux. AMD will be delivering new ATI Linux drivers this year that offer ATI Radeon HD 2000 series support, AIGLX support (Beryl and Compiz), and major performance improvements. At Phoronix we have been testing these new drivers internally for the past few weeks and have a number of articles looking at this new driver. The ATI 8.41 Linux driver delivers Linux gaming improvements from the R300/400 series and the R500 series. The inaugural Radeon HD 2900XT series support also can be found in the new ATI Linux driver with 'the best price/performance ratio of any high-end graphics card under Linux.' While this new driver cannot be downloaded yet, in their press release AMD also alludes to accelerating efforts with the open-source community."
Really, it's not that I like nvidia. But I've been hearing reports on /. since the beginning of the year of ATI linux drivers coming soon. How about we wait until they're actually release before bothering to give them any support.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
They're useless to me unless the source is available, preferably under the GPL. I really wish they'd work -inside- the framework of the kernel, Mesa, and xorg projects instead of building one-off binary drivers. What if I want to use their card on PowerPC, want to link against the latest (or a non-mainline) kernel, or just want to run an all-open system?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I didn't see any word about MPEG2/MPEG4 offloading, or even word of proper Xv support/controls. I've got my fingers crossed, but for those of us who live & breathe MythTV, I fear it's still a one-horse town.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Unless they fired everyone responsible for writing the drivers and the entire QA department, then that still makes this one in a row. Even if AMD holds them to a higher standard, it'll take at least one more good driver to convince anyone of it. Like I said, ATI has had working drivers once or twice before.
Besides, people have a long memory when it comes to garbage hardware. A $40 game that blows can be a fluke. A $200 (or more) video card that only does 640x480 in 16 colors is harder to forget.
Once a company burns you on hardware, there's no reason to ever have to go back to them if there is any competition at all. Look at the other options you have for graphics. Hell, people are even using built-in video instead of ATI. How bad do you have to be for people to prefer onboard video?
I agree, but for some reason you've ruled out Nvidia. Great drivers and a fast card. ATI is the only company that thinks its ok to put out shitty graphics drivers.
I'd say Intel is worse shit than even ATI (which I detest). Out of the two Intel systems at work, neither will work outside of frame buffer mode, and worse than that, they cannot run at the native resolution of the LCD monitor.
The nVidia drivers just plain work. They detected the monitor correctly and have worked flawlessly ever since. Open or close source, they are by far the best drivers I've used. The ATI drivers I use on one of the machines support the monitors, but introduce periodic 2-D corruption when running Xemacs and corrupt the cursor when moving between Xinerama panes, but at least they can do 1680x1050 and Xinerama. I don't even mind that the 3-D is slow since this is a work machine and I don't really need 3-D.
The Intel drivers are far too slow at 2-D, and given I can only do 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 and both look like crap on the LCD monitors. One machine is a P-4 and the other a core 2 duo machine, and both are unusable with Intel.
I only want 2-D and the Intel drivers can't even do that right.
Also with nVidia, I don't really even need to care which chipset is used as long as it isn't too old, since the drivers just work. Even the open source nVidia drivers work well for 2-D.
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Hmm, that R500 forward imples that R300+ chips have some IP issues, or at least they are so buggy that AMD/ATI don't want to be embarassed :) - but the thing is already reverse engineered, at least big part of it and those who did it really did discover that chips are buggy
IMO, AMD should hire some people to work on merging their proprietary driver back to upstream DRI/DRM and enhancing the framework in the process, though the closed driver they just released probably is some kind of unified Vista+Linux architecture and hence it's probably very complicated to maintain it as a single source tree while at the same time have it working on DRI and be a public OSS project (if they don't want to open up Windows driver code).
I don't expect OSS driver to be as fast as closed one. It should be a clean and as stable as possible design, not compromising stability (and security!) for a few FPS. After all, it is dirty hacks and various "secret" math approximations that squeeze last few bits of performance out of cards and such nasty things are well hidden from public. ATI and Nvidia probably have dozens of experts with a full-decade experience of driver-level GPU/VRAM optimisation tricks for games (NOT for composited desktops though!).