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AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go
Michael writes "Back in September AMD had announced a new ATI Linux driver as well as opening up their GPU specifications, and today they have taken an additional step to better support the Linux OS. With the just-announced Radeon HD 4850 RV770 they have provided same-day Linux support, and the Linux driver is now shipping alongside the Windows driver on their product CDs. In addition, they are encouraging their AIB partners to showcase Tux on the product packaging as a sign of Linux support. Last but certainly not least, AMD is committed from top-to-bottom product support on Linux and they will be introducing high-end features in their Linux driver such as MultiGPU CrossFire technology. Phoronix has a run-down on AMD's evolutionary leap in Linux support along with information on the open-source support for the RV770 GPU."
but can you run linux on it?
I wasn't even aware they supported windows? At least that has been my experience with their horrible drivers.
how many native linux games are there that can utilize it ? nevertheless, it's a start for linux gaming. Hopefully more and more games ported to linux
Finally.. something i can use.
Somehow I don't see very many linux user's picking these up for their machines. Maybe in 2-3 years when the price-point comes down.
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
They're bothering to ship Windows drivers? People actually still use Windows? I don't believe it!
Seems like they actually did get the memo this time: '2008 is the year of the Linux desktop'.
glad i don't own AMD stocks. this is a wasted effort and will ultimately fail. no one makes games for linux - the tools just aren't good enough.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
their Windows drivers were more stable...
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?
Right now I would settle for a driver that works on recent kernels since one of those improvements mean much to me if I can't actually install them.
I used to be a huge ATI fan but I've completely stopped buying their stuff. If they can't be bothered to make working drivers or have useful support answers. I can't be bothered to shell out money for something that's just going into the garbage bin anyways.
Isn't this one of the first signs of the apocalypse?
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Is nVidia even paying attention to this, or are they just going to let AMD have the majority of the Linux graphics market?
will there REALLY be accel HD video support?
hell, even on windows xp nvidia (piss be upon them) has not released accelerated video drivers for their year-old 8series cards!
I was one of the suckers who bought an 8-series thinking the 'hardware accel' onboard would finally solve my HD playback tearing issues. nvidia is infamous for video stutter and tearing unless you use 'magical commercial' dvd playback programs. the regular free ones don't seem to have the magic and the magic is NOT in the xp driver, that's for sure. and there's no way in hell I'm going to convert to vista just to get their new driver support. so basically, I have a 'fast frame buffer' in the 8series card but there's a whole lot of hardware that is sitting idle due to their 'push' to vista and how they want to force the DRM of vista on people.
ATI was worse; but maybe things have changed? I simply want to have glitch-free playback of HD sources on some kind of video card and NOT be locked into vista or commercial players.
but for now, I've settled on the popcorn hour box. it Just Plain Works(tm), is fanless and does NOT care about which OS you use to serve networked files to it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
People debugging their Linux rivers will often also be helping to debug their Windows drivers too!
Hw vendors should really use OSS more to help them get more eyeballs on the code.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
i don't run a linux system at home. I'm a gamer during the evenings, and an OpenGL programmer and law student during the day time. There has simply been no need for me to. Since term ended I decided to give my beloved KDE ago and try out KDE 4.0 using Kubuntu via the Wubi installer. Fantastic package... it all went swimmingly well
Until... The proprietary nvidia driver decided its automatic screen mode (res and refresh rate) was best, and ignored any attempt to add a modeline to xorg.conf. I had to (gasp) look at the back of my monitor and add the v and h frequencies myself. Sadly the nvidia driver simply ignores my monitors EDID.
I've been a long long proponent of "if it works" proprietary drivers in the kernel, such as nvidia's, providing they are robust and either equally or a more significantly more beneficial component to the system than others more important. But that was back when I accepted the fact there was an amount of tinkering to be done, or there was an amount of work to be done to glue things together. As the linux "system" becomes better at handling things automatically, the flaws in proprietary drivers are becoming less forgiveable because they are a bottleneck. When proprietary pieces of technology can't be glued together because they're at fault, I begin see the issues. In my case the nvidia driver finally became a more significant hindrance to my system, than a graphically accelerated benefit when correctly configured.
It's finally the time to say the bottleneck in Linux on the desktop is edging towards drivers, so very slowly.
Matt
This sounds like a complete about face from a few years ago. I stopped completely using ATI products a few years ago when the fire drivers did funny things with the frame buffer object, and the official line was that there was no plan to have it ever fixed in the Linux drivers. I will have to reconsider my position now.
For me, compiz fusion has become really useful. My widescreen notebook has limited vertical screen real estate, so the ability to get rid of the bottom bar and use window scaling to find running apps is great. The ability to fade windows and look underneath them is also great. Up until recently, I have bought nVidia, because while the drivers are non free blobs, they have tended to just work. Now that's changing and this additional step in promoting Linux support means that the next graphics I buy will ATI.
I don't really play games except occasionally and the games that are available for Linux are more than enough. It's the advertised support for desktop effects and apps like blender that has me sold, but maybe the fact that they are pushing for Tux to be included on the box means that the mindshare has increased to the point where more games will follow.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Too bad the latest ATI drivers don't work with Fedora 9 without downgrading a major OS component (X.org). This is over a month after F9 release, not to mention many betas...
Hopefully the radeonhd project will get open source accelerated 3D working soon.
Phoronix already got the Radeon HD 4850 working with the open-source "Radeon" driver too: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12503
This crap happens every time the words "linux" "games" and/or "graphics" are put together.
Joking aside, since I refuse to have Microsoft products in my house, all my gaming is done on Linux. (When I do play games... I mostly use my workstations for "work", and I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer - IMHO that's what consoles are for anyway.) I run WoW, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 4, etc etc and all my games work flawlessly with nvidia-glx. I've been in the market for a new card and have been considering another nvidia, but I think now I'll reconsider.
However, here are my probs in the past w/ ATI:
1. BAD DRIVERS. Baaaad bad drivers. Under Windows and especially under Linux - and this is using their (ATI) drivers, not community drivers.
2. Crappy support. The thing is, I'm kind of curious to see what it would be like to make a tech support call for a Linux-based system. I think I'd have to record that one for posterity.
3. Bad DVD playback unless you use ATI-pushed players. Is my crap going to chop when I use mplayer/kaffeine/etc?
I really like what they're doing with this, and I hope nvidia follows suit. I'd love to see someone else get this card and test and review the hell out of it, hopefully items 1 and 3 wont be a problem. #2, though - I don't see that going away.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
'Bout time. Now at least my children's children's children will have same-day nVidia support in Linux/2038.
It's time finally there is some HW accelerated H.264 on Linux. Intel is def. on it, I read something on FFmpeg mailing list maybe this or around http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2008-February/042269.html post.
My choice in the last 5 years were cards by Nvidia only. The reasons are obvisouly. Their drivers work (on Linux).
I also prefer cards without active cooling and ATI ist known for many cards with passive cooling which consume low power.
So, if the drivers they made are pretty good, especially the OpenGL implementation (i write simple OpenGL programs and i use Blender),
they could be a very good choice for me. But after years of bad experiences with ATI on my Linux-powered notebooks,
i'm sceptic and wait until the responses to their drivers are positive.
I don't want slow, errorneous and CPU-intensive 3D-support through DRI again.
and the Linux driver is now shipping alongside the Windows driver on their product CDs.
Whew! Bill Gates was worried about Linux because it's open source and generally fairly stable.
Thank goodness hardware vendors are distributing binary drivers for it now.
I can't really say much more than that.
This is good news for the Linux crowd.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Hauppauge cards are supported to some extent but getting their remote controls to work is a pain in the butt, even on MythTV based distros!
In fact, getting the remote control to work is more of an exercise in frustration than anything else.
Great, now how about some proper OpenGL support?
From the article:
"AMD's proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA's Linux driver"
That's a bold statement my friend. Granted, they've made huge leaps over their pos drivers of not too long ago, but I think it's a little too soon to make a claim like that.
Just look at the known issues with the latest driver:
Moving the mouse or tapping a key may fail to close an OpenGL screen-saver and bring the user back to the x desktop.
Hmm, can't rely on stopping an opengl screensaver... that's not too good.
And looking at what's just fixed in this driver:
Quake 3 Arena (demo): Segmentation faults no longer occur when attempting to play the game.
Quake3: Corruption is no longer noticed when changing the display resolution when the game is running.
Wow, they just got quake3 working. Hey, we all know quake3 pushes opengl to it's limits and this is to be expected.
Don't mean to bash on them as it's great they are doing this. As far as buying an ati card, I've gone from when hell freezes over to cautious optimism.
But as I said, things are looking a lot better and I'll definitely consider ati for my next purchase, I just wouldn't run out and do it tomorrow.
Tux Racer is going to kick so much ass on the new AMD/ATI 4870 card with these new drivers!
http://www.pchdtv.com/
Not sure about your troubles with remotes, but that doesn't have anything to do with the TV card.
After AMD bought ATI and make claims that they were going to go full bore and fully support Linux I said. "When I see it, I will believe it."
Well, today I make the shift from Nvidia to ATI. I stuck with Nvidia because I had didn't have much trouble getting OpenGL apps to work in Linux and I hear horror stories about ATI and Linux.
... The proprietary nvidia driver decided its automatic screen mode (res and refresh rate) was best, and ignored any attempt to add a modeline to xorg.conf. I had to (gasp) look at the back of my monitor and add the v and h frequencies myself. Sadly the nvidia driver simply ignores my monitors EDID. It's true that things don't work in a standard way with the nvidia drivers, but you can adjust screen refresh and resolution very easily through the nvidia-settings utility. EDID should work properly if you use the nvidia utility to change your settings. It's a pain in the butt to be forced into using it, but it's tolerable and works.Now I have to eat my hat.
AMD wants in on that stuff.
...are we scared yet?
Good job ATI; you're finally allowing people to use your products with whatever operating system they want. ATI should NOT be applauded for this. Full linux support should be expected from all hardware vendors, no exceptions. This is too little, much too late.
:)
After spending two years battling fglrx for basic features like compositing and suspend-to-ram I've already moved on and committed to never purchasing another ATI product again. Have they even fixed suspend-to-ram in the pathetic fglrx blob yet? I wouldn't say ATI's products "support" linux until I can suspend-to-ram 100 times in a row without one flaw.
Can you tell that I'm bitter?
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
You need to support it with your buying decisions.
AMD is without equal in the x86 space right now in terms of openness. They release specs, and they write and release code. All the Family 10 support in coreboot (a.k.a. Linuxbios) was written by AMD employees. We saw this open approach earlier with the K8, then Hypertransport, then the Geode CPUs used in the One Laptop Per Child, now we see the same trend in graphics. AMD is on a roll right now with openness.
I just, yesterday, downloaded the "BIOS programmers guide" for the AMD FAM10. This is the kind of information that few vendors release.
If you care about having this kind of access to hardware specs, you need to vote -- with your purchasing $$$. AMD has taken a huge gamble on openness. Keep that in mind next time you need a machine.
Ron Minnich (who forgot his password)
Anandtech
Tech Report
1. Make it easier for people who are running to find a retail upgrade (wanna see what I mean? Try finding a Linux supported scanner at a retail shop)
2. Increase exposure for the "brand" - That bored sales rep will notice the new logo (nothing to do on those long spans when the store is dead but check out the merchandise boxes). Next time someone opens up with "Hey I'm looking for product x for Linux" the consumer will get a response other than "Can't help you".
3. Encourage more manufacturers to support Linux out of the box (hey if it helps sales...)
Lastly people will start asking about the cute penguin on the box! It's a huge win!
Well, I am one of the Linux users who has been avoiding ATI as well, mostly due to the horror stories. I have live some myself (thx Atheros wireless), and now I do check how well is the support of the hardware in Linux before make a purchase.
Until now, at least the NVidia drivers works fairly well, so NVidia has been my choice.
But, if ATI is really opening up like this, and NVidia doesn't open up, most likely ATI will be my next graphic card when I get a new comp in the next months.
Just skimming the summary, it seems that the open specs have nothing to do with the story in question, and are just about how ATI is good. And yeah, that's great, but...
All these new features are very likely being added to ATI's binary driver, and will be a long time coming in the FOSS driver. And while nVidia's driver isn't great, it has (in my experience) been much better than ATI's. Keep in mind that the nVidia driver has had most of these things (SLI, etc) for a very long time.
However, both ATI and nVidia's binary drivers suck giant donkey balls, unless something has changed with ATI since I last owned one of their cards. Intel's drivers have been better in every respect. If Intel's Larabee is what's promised...
I don't think this is so much about FOSS being better than proprietary. I think it's got at least as much to do with the moving target of the Linux kernel -- the most reliable way to get a working driver on Linux is to open the source and work with the kernel devs. This is almost certainly not true on other platforms, but it is on Linux.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Its....sniff.......ahem....beautiful man.....sniff....just ...just beautiful.
Oh God anyone got a hanky?
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
because nobody's used modelines in at least five years.
Bork bork bork!
Don't forget Savage, worth a mention as they've been supporting Linux for years. They're Indy too, no DRM bullshit, just good games.
How long before the driver is ported to mac osx?
The mac pro can do cross fire with it's 2 pci-e 2.0 slots it just needs a driver for it.
For shame. I had the marginal luxury of 50 MHz on you, but you decide. I've (and it still runs) an AMD K6-2 450 which _had_ 192 MB RAM (3x64) (now has 3x128, so it pairs with yours) and I put XP on it about 2003. I do AutoCAD with it, rotating 3d models in real time, with barely a lag. I also use it to play WMP WMAs at 64bit encoding (I daren't actually play the CD, that would start to choke it down). But as you said, minimal settings turned on and the like. All this at 1024 resolution.
/. post) that I haven't had time to do much with my laptop.
I think it pays off handsomely to learn how to setup a rig like this and have it be functional. The fact that I can use ACAD2k on the box and work on models with thousands of parts in 3D proves the usefulness of the system, the fact that it takes about 3-5 minutes to load ACAD2k proves how pitiful it performs nowadays in comparison to modern computers. The boot time is a beast too, which is odd, considering the stripped services. It seems to take forever, but it could be my drives are dying. She's done a good bit of service, so I'll likely do the right thing and Office Space her when she spins her last platter. Unless someone wants a working VooDoo3 3500TV AGP?
Okay, here's the only letdown to the whole show, it's been sitting powered down for about six months, as I've been so swamped between school and work (and the occasional
Now, having relayed that beautiful tear jerker (I know, huh) lemme just shoot down whoever says it won't run on less than 256 MB RAM. I know it will, I've done it, I'm not curious. It runs like shit until you "fix" Windows, but it runs. If you think I'm wrong, prove it. I tell you it runs. It runs like a dog, but it runs.
2^3 * 31 * 647
Screw your Mac pro, I want drivers for my Mac mini!
Oh wait...
Do you get HD acceleration offloading computation from the CPU? If so is it supported by the likes of ffmpeg etc.?
Lots of folks using the XBMC Linux port have had NOTHING but problems with ATI, meanwhile NVIDIA is damn near PnP using ENVY to load their drivers. Frankly I do not care wo's card I buy, I want it to properly support my HTPC setup and right now that is NVIDIA even though it's not got hardware acceleration working - I've got the CPU to decode it instead.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
In an open market the consumer will pay whatever the card is worth to him. So given proper linux drivers and performance comparable to the windows counterpart, what makes an AMD video card worth less to a linux user than it would be to a Windows user?
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
The argument that I got into hectar Ruiz about. One of the things I gave him as a direction for his company is to fully support open source since its really the only quickly growing market in the computer world left. Ever since it seems as if open source and AMD have been two peas in a pod.
Do you think this linux box was on the bargain rack at wal-mart?
beowulf cluster of hot grits, etc.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
After looking at that picture of Ruby and Tux together, Tux's bitch tits seem a little bigger than normal...
Task Mangler
The summary, claiming linux drivers on par with Windows seems to be overstating it a bit. From what I can see, there is still no sign of being able to use all the video acceleration capabilities of their cards.
So, what else are they offering? I guess it must be full 3D acceleration capabilities. That's great for all those linux 3D games, but what I want is a card that will offload decoding of high definition MPEG2 and H.264 decoding.
Their hardware supports it, but still no signs of Linux support.
I guess if VAAPI ever matures, along with improved Linux driver support, the Intel integrated video will be better than anything ATI or even Nvidia can offer for Linux.
The article was confusing, written in the normal cluebie breathless-hype style, and didn't seem to address the real issue: are AMD/ATI now shipping free Linux drivers for their hardware? Are these drivers included in Linux distributions? Do they support all the features of the hardware or are they crippled somehow? Yet another half-supported, buggy binary blob doesn't cut it - no, not even if the Windows drivers are of equally poor quality.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Always have been an ATI guy...
I keep reading, however, how it is incomplete support. In this day and age incomplete support is not good enough. Never experienced the ATI hell as people say and ATI always worked better, in my experiences, in Windows or Linux than NVIDIA. NVIDIA better wise up and open code or lose the Linux crowd it once had. Market share to Linux cannot be counted. It says 1% market uses Linux but everyone I know uses it. In Linksys routers, Hacked XBOX 1 systems, etc. Then my closer friends use it on their desktops as do I which is a pretty large number, say 56 of us in all. Never did we once think about reporting that we used Linux on the desktop as this was not a thought in our heads. So the Linux market share I could comfortably say could have more than 15-25% on the desktop(not counting XBOX and routers) and no one would know it. AMD is smart in seeing this and now the true counting of market share may begin to show in the next 6 months to 1 year. In 2 years we will have a more definite number of people who use Linux to Windows. ATI is a big player in the market but this could be a defining moment; we may want to mark on our calendars if they follow this trend. I can see a splitting rift NVIDIA for Windows and ATI for Linux and not buying an AMD system to run Linux on would be silly. I can see full blown AMD Ubuntu machines in Best Buy within a year and half time span here. Never did I buy into the year of desktop Linux euphoria but now I can see yearS of Linux computing in general becoming a mainstream mindset and Microsoft helped pave the way, but it was AMD/ATI who really got the ball rolling. Windows will exist where MAC and IBM is now innovating while the Linux programmers may get lazy and the "just good enough" attitude, and a new player in the market comes in and BOOM a new argument.
-Endafy
AMD ! Just open the specs to the latests chipsets and the latest drivers. Before the end of the year, you will have the best driver on the market.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I haven't had an ATI since my 4meg all-in-wonder pro burned itself out. I said I wouldn't ever buy again, but this has brought me back. Good job ATI. When I go to replace my aging 7600gt, it will be with an ATI product.
Too little, too late. ATI is dead to me. Plus their drivers suck anyway.
Death is life's great reward. R. Hoek
you can't use be a Linux Gamer!
you cant have 2 virginities at one time!
This is the reason I will support AMD over other vendors .. they really make an effort to support the *nix community ..
How do the non-free ATi drivers compare against the Linux drivers provided by ATi themsleves? And the FOSS drivers? I have always been impressed with the performance of XiG drivers and felt that they were well was worth the money.
I remember that XiG used an X benchmarking tool for comparison. Who will be the fist to compare ATi vs. XiG vs. FOSS drivers???
I used to be an nvidia fanboy, but for my last machine, I went with AMD/ATI specifically because of them opening up their GPU specs and helping open source developers with the new radeonhd driver.
Wine 1.0 gets released, MS admit defeat in standards war and support ODF and now Linux drivers are included with the latest and greatest ATI card along with open specs! Just how long have Linux fans been talking about this happening for it on /. - since slasdots inception, I believe. /. golden age alert! Next thing you know you'll be playing DNF on this thing ;)
I got a new laptop recently and I picked one with ATI gfx purely because they have opened their specs. compiz and blender run great but unfortunately not at the same time, but its nice to know the drivers will only get better. Go AMD/ATi!
Okay, maybe not soon as is "soon someone will flame this comment", but in the near future we will see game developers abandon the MSFT-only tools that games require a MSFT OS. Games will come on bootable disks and you computer will be used like console hardware. This will be the only way for the game developers to get the hardware to deliver the performance they need. As Desktop OSes become more bloated and storage on removable disks becomes greater, this will be a natural progression. The result will succeed cross-platform gaming. It will be no-platform gaming.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the
I'm just looking for in GPU video decoding under Linux. There are TONS of fanless cards out there with the power to decode HD with MSFT-only drivers. I want the same thing on my MythTV system.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the
They didn't talk much about this because they already have to some extent in other articles on their site. It wasn't a be-all end-all article, but one which adds onto earlier articles. You're right though that there are some questions left over even then. Right now it seems the open source drivers are rapidly catching up to the quality and features of the closed source one, but aren't there yet. It'd be perfectly happy with an open source driver which didn't include the DRM part, since that is potentially one issue, since I don't plan on running crap with DRM any way. Just makes the software seem totally lame to do stuff like that.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I know it's been more then a week, but I am supposed to change my graphics card today.
After having 3(or was it 4?) different Nvidia cards in the pass 2 years (had an ATI 9600XT before that, which was after I had used 3,4 Nvidia cards again), today I buy a 4000 series ATI card.
Get me full open drivers, and I will get more of my client / friend systems providing AMD/ATI with business.