SteamOS ati driver how to?

[SkärgårdsdoktorN]

Hello there im completely new to SteamOS but ive been on many ubuntu dists trough the years. Yet i havent been rather deep inside the system so maybe im underdeveloped or something on this issue.

However .. I made an install of the SteamOS but regonized that my graphics card Ati radeon HD 5970 is really doing porly. i had som severe lags in dota with the graphics maxed out. I went to the system and found out that it says that i got 0gb memory recognized by the system. It crossed my mind rather early that i dont got the proper Amd/Ati driver for my card.

So now my idea is to install the correct drivers but it seems to be harder than i earlier thought. The SteamOS dont even allow me to unzip the file i downloaded nor install a proper program for it. Is there by any chance someone out there that could help me out to install the driver ? // Michael

[XÆЯO_Vince]

It's a bug with Steam that causes it to report that you have 0 GB of video RAM but it doesn't impact game performance.

What does the System settings say under "Video card" and "Driver version" in SteamOS? SteamOS now uses the latest Catalyst 15.9 driver.

Also, proprietary AMD drivers are rather poor on Linux, especially with very old cards like the 5000 series, which I also have. Intel Iris Pro and Nvidia graphics cards are much better choices for Linux gamers at this time. One solution here is to overclock the Radeon graphics card, which is possible on Linux but first check to see what SteamOS settings say about your card.

[SkärgårdsdoktorN]

In system it reports that i got a 5900 graphics card. The system also reports that i got the "4.5.13399 Compatibility Profile Context" driver version. Is this of any use to you ?

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Yes that is helpful. 4.5 Profile Context is referring to the OpenGL version exposed by the driver. Only Catalyst supports OpenGL 4.5 with Radeon so it appears the driver is working and if it wasn't working, SteamOS would probably say you're using llvmpipe software rendering and every kind of 3D rendering would be quite slow for the most part.

Have you tried like Portal 2, Half Life 2 and some other games? Those run pretty well with my Radeon HD 5850. Maybe try those games to ensure your driver is functioning properly as those should run at high framerate with your card.

[SkärgårdsdoktorN]

Ah okay that makes sense. Well i havent tried another game yet since im only a dota player and it takes up most of my time. So it is kinda necessary to get it to work as fast as possible. But you are blowing my mind somehow when youre saying that even the AMD driver from their website probably wont perform that well. So my only option is really to abandon the SteamOS idea and get back to Windows?

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Well some games work okay with the AMD driver but many 2014-15, graphically intensive AAA games don't run well with it unless you have the very latest AMD graphics cards, such as the R9 300 series or Fury / Fury X but even this is still worse than Nvidia performance per watt. Nvidia is the premium choice for advanced graphics AAA gaming on Linux, at least until Vulkan takes off.

Basically it works like this:

AMD's DirectX 11 performance is slightly slower than Nvidia's on Windows.
AMD's OpenGL performance is much slower than Nvidia's on Linux.
AMD's DirectX 12 performance is faster than Nvidia's on Windows (at the moment).

I would try some other games to be sure everything is working.
But If you're not happy with the performance, you have two options:

* Reduce in-game graphics settings and/or resolution

* Overclock your graphics card. I've used AMDOverdriveCtrl to overclock my Radeon HD 5850 on Linux. It also lets you adjust fan speed and RPM scaling, much like MSI Afterburner. You obviously have to experiment to find the best performance and stability--googling other peoples' results is a help. With success, you can generally realise between a 10 to 20 FPS improvement in games with overclocking.

[SkärgårdsdoktorN]

Okay thanks im gonna consider it. My second problem is something i havent even seen before. It doesent matter what im trying to install trough the terminal i get the very same response "The package firefox-mozilla-build:i386 needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it" What is the workaround for this very annoying problem ? Second of all i installed spotify but as with everything else in this system it doesent work ofcourse. The program refuse to launch. its an easy thing to solve in ubuntu but in this system im lost rly .. Thanks for your time btw you've been helpfull.

[Aoi Blue]

Currently you should install the drivers from AMD's web site.

The fglrx Crimson edition was recently released. While having many improvements, it's probably not as big a change as the Windows release, as some of the changes didn't make the Linux release, and some of the changes (such as shader cache) were already in earlier Linux releases.

The installer can build a package for you using the --buildpkg option, which you can then install. This is the preferred method on Debian based distros such as SteamOS.

Here is the link to the driver. (This is the dynamic link to the latest stable release.)
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Linux+x86_64

[daniel.mantione]

No, DO NOT INSTALL Radeon Crimson, because it does not support the Radeon HD5970! The only improvement over Catalyst 15.9 is a mouse cursor corruption issue, unless you suffer from this, Radeon Crimson is better ignored.

Catalyst 15.9 is currently the best driver to use for AMD owners.