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AMD's OverDrive and CrossFire Come To Linux

Posted by timothy on from the first-they-laugh-then-they-create-drivers dept.

twljagflba writes "Since last year AMD has made ATI increasingly Linux friendly by releasing 3D programming guides and helping out the open-source community. At the same time they have been continuing to develop their binary Catalyst driver for the Linux platform and most recently they delivered same-day support for their new graphics cards. Today though they have released the Catalyst 8.8 Linux driver that adds two very important features: CrossFire and OverDrive support for Linux. Linux users are now able to use CrossFire to split the rendering workload between multiple GPUs and they're also able to overclock their graphics cards now using the binary-only driver. Phoronix has a complete run-down on both features — including benchmarks — in their AMD OverDrive on Linux and ATI Radeon CrossFire On Linux articles. Other features were also introduced in this update such as Linux 2.6.26 kernel support, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing, and other fixes."

9 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome! by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    GREAT! Now I can play ... uh ... well, someone can make some visually awesome (exclusive) games that I can play for linux!

    YOTLD FTW!

    1. Re:Awesome! by edlinfan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Y'know, games aren't the only things that benefit from powerful video acceleration. I use my linux box for 3d modeling -- if I had crossfire-compliant cards, you can bet I would be downloading this software right now.

  2. And on Windows? by MBCook · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've got to say I'm disappointed they don't provide Crossfire numbers for the same hardware on Windows. It's nice that Crossfire can improve things in some situations and some games that are supported under Linux, but I'd like to know the relative benefit.

    That is, when going to Crossfire do both Windows and Linux gain 40 FPS? Or do they both go up 60%? Or does Windows go up by 70% to 100 FPS where Linux only goes up 40% to 80 FPS?

    How close are they? That's what I'd like to know.

    I also find the "we had no problems except for some segfaults during Quake Wars, and they say that will be fixed in a month or two with the next version" a little worrying. A problem with a driver is a game looking off, or having slow frame rates. Segfaulting the system is not a problem, it's a BIG PROBLEM.

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    1. Re:And on Windows? by binarylarry · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's completely wrong.

      OpenGL supports all the latest features of graphics hardware. Some of the features are ARB extensions and the like, but you can do anything in OpenGL that you could do in Direct3d.

      Do you honestly think id would be developing their next gen titles with OpenGL, if OpenGL was a crippled shadow of d3d might? No, OpenGL is comparable. OpenGL's main problem is that its really, really crufty because it supports every feature known to man, things Direct3d doesn't. Unfortunately, most of these things are very old.

      OpenGL fixes that problem by cleaning up the API. That's what all the bitching was about last week when Khoronos announced the new specs. All the newbies were bitching about how certain extensions weren't moved to core, which doesn't matter in a practical sense anyway.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  3. Nice by ByOhTek · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's nice to see they are providing both their own driver implementation AND the specs for OSS drivers.

    Once the OSS drivers are done, then even within the realm AMD cards, users will still have some choice.

    At least in Linux. Us FreeBSD users will have the OSS only...

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    1. Re:Nice by neuro88 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's funny, isn't it... all the GPL/GNU zealots talk shit about Freedom, but it's the BSD folks that quietly have the principles.

      What? You're saying this because there are no proprietary radeon drivers for BSD? What about the closed source nvidia drivers? There aren't any proprietary radeon drivers for BSD, because AMD/ATI feel BSD doesn't have enough users to be important, not because of the principles of the BSD folks.

  4. great by extirpater · · Score: 3, Funny

    my shell will run a lot faster! i'm wondering my "ls" performance.

  5. Really? by jgtg32a · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just went through hell and back getting my 1950pro to work last week end.

    Moral of the story hard work is never rewarded only procrastination is

  6. Re:Second choice by wild_berry · · Score: 3, Informative

    2005 called and asked for their gripe back. The reputation of the most recent ATI drivers is much enhanced from what it was. And whether someone will buy nVidia, Intel or ATI graphics for Linux depends upon their preference for powerful but proprietary binaries, free software compositing and low power consumption or the choice of reasonable performance in ATI's binaries or high-performance free software from the X.Org drivers.