Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit and RadeonSI drivers (Radeon HD 7950)

[Michael Murphy]

Anyone know how to reliably get these Radeon HD 7xxx cards to function with open source drivers? Fglrx is too unstable and unplayable in most instances.

I found https://launchpad.net/~cybjit/+archive/ppa-glamor which finally gets me out of LLVM software rendering, but upon trying to play any Source game on Steam, I get errors about installing S3TC texture support (which is already installed).

[UnkendTech]

far as i know the only real support for it will be in Kernel 3.11 using the git driver as well

[Michael Murphy]

I see, I heard about the many massive changes in the radeon open source drivers which will be in kernel 3.11 but I'm very skeptical about whether it will truly support radeonsi out of the box on, say, Ubuntu 13.10. I remember being promised Recon3D support in kernel 3.5 but even in 3.10 it still doesn't work.

[UnkendTech]

Postat inițial de Furudo Sticky:

I see, I heard about the many massive changes in the radeon open source drivers which will be in kernel 3.11 but I'm very skeptical about whether it will truly support radeonsi out of the box on, say, Ubuntu 13.10. I remember being promised Recon3D support in kernel 3.5 but even in 3.10 it still doesn't work.

Catalyst 13.6 looks good now lets hope AMD work's all the bug's out of it
i see a lot of user's having a hard time getting Drivers to Work (mostly just on Ubuntu) i don't know why Bad Install's? Bad Code in Ubuntu?
i have been using the AMD Catalyst for many years and i Don't use Ubuntu's installer i build the package's and install my own driver's using the Terminal
i also see a lot of Nvidia user's Driver's breaking on Ubuntu? so is it Linux Driver's or Just Ubuntu's Hacky way of doing thing's?
i hope you get it working

[Michael Murphy]

Catalyst 13.6 is broken with Radeon HD 7xxx in gaming. As I posted before here it is really unstable, framerates are atrocious, and things break in weird ways; it's a very common thing. A great example is that Steam crashes A LOT with fglrx drivers, XBMC has delayed audio on the main menu, I've had VLC crash several times before due to fglrx, Skype crashes were caused by it too, Steam overlay causes extreme lag, graphical corruption in all Source games, TF2 gets 5-9FPS and input lag, wine games break or perform horribly, etc. etc.

I've been 'trying' to get things working since I bought this graphics card a year ago. Only recently with kernel 3.8 could I actually render the desktop with my HD7950. I remember when I had similar problems with Radeon HD 6xxx when it released, which now runs well in Linux. But Radeon HD 6xxx is not GCN architecture. Thus we have this whole 'RadeonSI' driver thing where everything needs to be reprogrammed from scratch.

The open source driver currently only supports OpenGL 2.1, which is practically DX9 only. However, it renders much more smoothly than closed source drivers and doesn't lag in the games that I can get it to run.

There's no problem with Ubuntu code, just that more users use Ubuntu, especially for Steam on Linux. The real problem is the age old problem that Linux does not properly support modern hardware. Radeon HD 7xxx = horrible support. The latest NVIDIA cards face a similar problem as well.

[UnkendTech]

Postat inițial de Furudo Sticky:

Catalyst 13.6 is broken with Radeon HD 7xxx in gaming. As I posted before here it is really unstable, framerates are atrocious, and things break in weird ways; it's a very common thing. A great example is that Steam crashes A LOT with fglrx drivers, XBMC has delayed audio on the main menu, I've had VLC crash several times before due to fglrx, Skype crashes were caused by it too, Steam overlay causes extreme lag, graphical corruption in all Source games, TF2 gets 5-9FPS and input lag, wine games break or perform horribly, etc. etc.

I've been 'trying' to get things working since I bought this graphics card a year ago. Only recently with kernel 3.8 could I actually render the desktop with my HD7950. I remember when I had similar problems with Radeon HD 6xxx when it released, which now runs well in Linux. But Radeon HD 6xxx is not GCN architecture. Thus we have this whole 'RadeonSI' driver thing where everything needs to be reprogrammed from scratch.

The open source driver currently only supports OpenGL 2.1, which is practically DX9 only. However, it renders much more smoothly than closed source drivers and doesn't lag in the games that I can get it to run.

There's no problem with Ubuntu code, just that more users use Ubuntu, especially for Steam on Linux. The real problem is the age old problem that Linux does not properly support modern hardware. Radeon HD 7xxx = horrible support. The latest NVIDIA cards face a similar problem as well.

far as i know the new OpenSource Driver supports opengl 3.2

[Michael Murphy]

The R600 (example: Radeon HD 6xxx) driver is at OpenGL 3.1.
The GCN/RadeonSI (example: Radeon HD 7xxx) driver is not.

OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD TAHITI
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.1.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

Only compliant to OpenGL 2.1. The closed source driver supports OpenGL 4.3 compliance but it is broken.

[UnkendTech]

Postat inițial de Furudo Sticky:

The R600 (example: Radeon HD 6xxx) driver is at OpenGL 3.1.
The GCN/RadeonSI (example: Radeon HD 7xxx) driver is not.

OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD TAHITI
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.1.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

Only compliant to OpenGL 2.1. The closed source driver supports OpenGL 4.3 compliance but it is broken.

that sucks hmm the Kernel in Ubuntu 13.04 sucks as well it's a little Broken a lot of users been jumping to the next kernel up

[Michael Murphy]

I'm hoping everything will get fixed by the release of Ubuntu 13.10. Canonical is probably going to use kernel 3.11. I do custom build desktops and sell them with Ubuntu preinstalled and these driver problems are my only complaint about Linux as a desktop in the real world.

[UnkendTech]

Postat inițial de Furudo Sticky:

I'm hoping everything will get fixed by the release of Ubuntu 13.10. Canonical is probably going to use kernel 3.11. I do custom build desktops and sell them with Ubuntu preinstalled and these driver problems are my only complaint about Linux as a desktop in the real world.

nope 13.10 is going to be a full Beta OS using Mir

[Michael Murphy]

Except it shall be using kernel 3.11 and not be a beta but will ship with Mir/Unity8 by default in a perfectly workable condition. It wouldn't make sense not to use kernel 3.11 if we need radeonsi support since proprietary graphics may not support Mir yet.