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AMD Publishes Open-Source Radeon HD 8000 Series Driver

Posted by Soulskill on from the getting-out-ahead-of-the-game dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The hardware hasn't been released yet, but AMD has made available early open-source Linux GPU driver patches for supporting the future Radeon HD 8000 series graphics cards. At this time the Radeon HD 8800 'Oland' series is supported with the Mesa, DRM, X.Org, and kernel modifications. From the driver perspective, not many modifications are needed to build upon the Radeon HD 7000 series support."

9 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Well done AMD by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is excellent from AMD to release source in a very timely manner. It shows commercial companies can support Free Software losing the ability to compete (which AMD will have factored in).

    They are supporting us so I suggest we support them - vote with your wallets gentlemen! We win because we get drivers that will be supported for a long time, we also win because AMD GPUs generally have the best price-per-perfomance value (even if not always at the insanely expensive peak of absolute performance), and AMD will also win because it gets sales from customers that recognize the mutal win.

    Hopefully NVidia will also see this move and get the hint. That would be a further win.

    1. Re:Well done AMD by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not gonna happen until the FOSS driver built from sources like these shows itself to be competitive in performance with nVidia's closed Linux drivers on comparable hardware.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    2. Re:Well done AMD by cgt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So they should have released the driver a decade before they release the hardware?

  2. Kudos to AMD for this, but... by ameline · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How is the stability and performance compared to their drivers on Windows for the same hardware?

    Functional parity (GL version and extensions) would also be nice.

    --
    Ian Ameline
    1. Re:Kudos to AMD for this, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ""The hardware hasn't been released yet,"

  3. gearing up for steam on linux? by cod3r_ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe they are getting ready for an influx of gamers switching to linux?! That'd be cool

  4. Qualifications? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Every time I've bothered to dive into one of these AMD open source driver stories I find qualifications. It's 2D driver code only, or mode setting code only, no MPEG-2/4 AVC acceleration, etc. What are the qualifications this time? Is this the real McCoy, full stack accelerated OpenGL driver with video acceleration and everything?

    Didn't think so.

    Want good video drivers on Linux? Intel or NVidia. Want good open source video drivers? Intel.

  5. Already supporting them by future+assassin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Built two htpc's in the last month one for work and one for home using A10-5800K and A8-5600K. My WD TV Live is pissing me off (Slow as molasses) so gonna build a simple htpc for my bedroom using an A4-5300K and another file server for the house with the same chip.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  6. Re:Hey AMD Nice Job by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Steam arriving on Linux has caused them to make significant improvements to the fglrx drivers. For example in the latest Linux beta driver changelog there's "up to 300% performance improvement in Team Fortress 2".