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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."

5 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 cgt · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. 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

  3. 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.

  4. Re:Kudos to AMD for this, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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