AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go 352
Michael writes "Back in September AMD had announced a new ATI Linux driver as well as opening up their GPU specifications, and today they have taken an additional step to better support the Linux OS. With the just-announced Radeon HD 4850 RV770 they have provided same-day Linux support, and the Linux driver is now shipping alongside the Windows driver on their product CDs. In addition, they are encouraging their AIB partners to showcase Tux on the product packaging as a sign of Linux support. Last but certainly not least, AMD is committed from top-to-bottom product support on Linux and they will be introducing high-end features in their Linux driver such as MultiGPU CrossFire technology. Phoronix has a run-down on AMD's evolutionary leap in Linux support along with information on the open-source support for the RV770 GPU."
But.... (Score:5, Funny)
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I think you misspelled limps.
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Isn't that always the case, how we have time for /. and naught else...
As far as C:\Program Files\Common Files there's a lot of crufty stuff, if you're looking to slim the disk space. If you're looking for lowest overhead, then you can muck about in there, but disk is not usually at a premium anymore (unless you're trying to hit a USB disk size).
Two places where you can make some substantial disk space available at the expense of all else is to make sure you never enable hibernation and to reduce the page f
Re:But.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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do you use paypal or something similar? I can spot you the nickel so you can by a better computer.
It might help their Windows drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
People debugging their Linux rivers will often also be helping to debug their Windows drivers too!
Hw vendors should really use OSS more to help them get more eyeballs on the code.
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Re:It might help their Windows drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It might help their Windows drivers (Score:5, Interesting)
Nvidia uses basically the same driver for every card they've made, and a lot of times new drivers will give more performance to older cards(within reason of course). It's these optimizations they don't want seen, not the hardware itself.
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The reason Nvidia and ATI never wanted to disclose drivers and APIs is that the drivers are the difference between a GeForce and a Quadro, or a Radeon and a FireGL.
Re:It might help their Windows drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
How many video cards do MPEG decoding? Did you think that service was free? There is a lot of IP in most video cards, and all of that IP is either owned by nVidia or AMD/ATI, or by someone else. AMD/ATI or nVidia could surely give their own IP away (be silly to, but sure) but they can't legally break an NDA companywide.
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Sure, but they're both in a very good position to negotiate whatever contract terms they desire.
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Since when was the MPEG decoding algorithm a secret?
Re:It might help their Windows drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Since it was convenient to use that as a reason not to open-source the drivers.
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It's not a secret at all. The problem is this. [mpegla.com] Distributing a software or hardware implementation requires paying a royalty for using the patents. It's (part of) the reason for off-shore sites like Debian-multimedia. [debian-multimedia.org]
What I don't know is why the patents would prevent them from releasing their driver code. If the decoder is implemented in hardware there shouldn't be much code for it in the driver. Honestly, I would expect most of the licensed IP would be on the hardware side of things. But then agai
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linux games (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Funny)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Funny)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, Linux support is my #1 deciding factor in deciding on a laptop or video card. Like a lot of others I dual-boot, XP for gaming, Ubuntu for all else. Since nvidia & ATI are nearly equal, dollar for dollar, for gaming then Compiz support becomes the default deciding factor.
ATI supporting Linux opens up a whole world of, for instance, new laptop choices. The cheap embedded GPUs in the laptops will run Compiz without sweating.
finally someone gets it (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't just games (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, compiz fusion has become really useful. My widescreen notebook has limited vertical screen real estate, so the ability to get rid of the bottom bar and use window scaling to find running apps is great. The ability to fade windows and look underneath them is also great. Up until recently, I have bought nVidia, because while the drivers are non free blobs, they have tended to just work. Now that's changing and this additional step in promoting Linux support means that the next graphics I buy will ATI.
I don't really play games except occasionally and the games that are available for Linux are more than enough. It's the advertised support for desktop effects and apps like blender that has me sold, but maybe the fact that they are pushing for Tux to be included on the box means that the mindshare has increased to the point where more games will follow.
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What I find interesting is that 768 vertical pixels seemed like enough when I had only 1024 going from side to side. Now that I have 1680 going from side to side, even 1050 vertical pixels do not seem to be enough. I know that it is because of the aspect ratio and DPI resolution, but still, the effect is interesting.
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Yep. Not a problem on AC, but a biggy on battery. I would like to see a power saving option to disable it on battery. I keep meaning to investigate running a user defined script when the power switches from ac to battery and vice versa. I might just remember to do that today... unless someone here knows where to look...
All that said, the recent 2.6.24-19 generic Ubuntu kernel seems to be running a lot cooler (~10C for both CPUs and gfx) so it's improving.
Re:It isn't just games (Score:5, Informative)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:linux games (Score:5, Insightful)
Nexuiz is better than quite a few FPS's I've played and i didn't even have to pay for it.
I also have Prey, Guild Wars, Starcraft, Grand Theft Auto 2, Diablo 2, Age of Wonders and all the games on my steam account installed.
Some of them might be older but they are still damn fun. Besides the only way to get games on Linux is to have a demand for them. As someone with a single OS I'm helping to creating that demand.
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Do you write to the game developers and let them know that you need support for Linux? Here are a few addresses to get you started:
ArenaNet: http://www.arena.net/contact.php [arena.net]
Ironclad Games: http://www.ironcladgames.com/contact.html [ironcladgames.com]
Blizzard Entertainment: http://us.blizzard.com/support/webform-us.xml?gameId=0 [blizzard.com]
Firzxis: http://www.firaxis.com/support/ [firaxis.com]
Electronic Arts: http://www.info.ea.com/company/company_prlist.php [ea.com]
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But then one day I woke up to a frozen computer and when I restarted all I got was the file missing message. I was really pissed because i was in the middle of ripping and encoding an old family movie for a friend and when i went to reinstall i couldn't find my XP cd and the Ubuntu one was sitting on top of my computer from showing someone the live CD that i just threw it in and haven't lo
Re:linux games (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:linux games (Score:5, Interesting)
Arrrgh, Swedish chef destroyed my post! (Score:5, Informative)
Bork bork bork!
Don't forget Savage [s2games.com], worth a mention as they've been supporting Linux for years. They're Indy too, no DRM bullshit, just good games.
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Demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Demand? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Demand? (Score:5, Informative)
NUMA architecture-- Intel doesn't do it-- really, REALLY helps with this on all but one of the CPUs in the machine.
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Demand? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
I also prefer cards without active cooling and ATI ist known for many cards with passive cooling which consume low power.
So, if the drivers they made are pretty good, especially the OpenGL implementation (i write simple OpenGL programs and i use Blender),
they could be a very good choice for me. But after years of bad experiences with ATI on my Linux-powered notebooks,
i'm sceptic and wait until the responses to their drivers are positive.
I don't want slow, errorneous and CPU-intensive 3D-support through DRI again.
Shipping Windows drivers? (Score:2, Funny)
Seems like they actually did get the memo this time: '2008 is the year of the Linux desktop'.
Signs (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't this one of the first signs of the apocalypse?
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The other signs include, among other things, chairs flying at a respectable altitude over Seattle.
nVidia, where art thou? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is nVidia even paying attention to this, or are they just going to let AMD have the majority of the Linux graphics market?
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Re:nVidia, where art thou? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:nVidia, where art thou? (Score:5, Funny)
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Now once games-makers get hold of it, things may/might change.
Re:nVidia, where art thou? (Score:4, Insightful)
high-def features? (Score:5, Informative)
hell, even on windows xp nvidia (piss be upon them) has not released accelerated video drivers for their year-old 8series cards!
I was one of the suckers who bought an 8-series thinking the 'hardware accel' onboard would finally solve my HD playback tearing issues. nvidia is infamous for video stutter and tearing unless you use 'magical commercial' dvd playback programs. the regular free ones don't seem to have the magic and the magic is NOT in the xp driver, that's for sure. and there's no way in hell I'm going to convert to vista just to get their new driver support. so basically, I have a 'fast frame buffer' in the 8series card but there's a whole lot of hardware that is sitting idle due to their 'push' to vista and how they want to force the DRM of vista on people.
ATI was worse; but maybe things have changed? I simply want to have glitch-free playback of HD sources on some kind of video card and NOT be locked into vista or commercial players.
but for now, I've settled on the popcorn hour [popcornhour.com] box. it Just Plain Works(tm), is fanless and does NOT care about which OS you use to serve networked files to it.
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single core CPU or something?
8800 is a big card. I am using a fanless 8500 (I think its that model). basically the lowest 8series asus that is fanless and has the 'magic chip' for hw decode on it.
I use mpc. I did turn off overlay and used VMR7 or 9.
now, you mentioned all this 'other stuff' and THAT is my issue! why should you have to use haali render or anything lik
i heart this (Score:5, Insightful)
Until... The proprietary nvidia driver decided its automatic screen mode (res and refresh rate) was best, and ignored any attempt to add a modeline to xorg.conf. I had to (gasp) look at the back of my monitor and add the v and h frequencies myself. Sadly the nvidia driver simply ignores my monitors EDID.
I've been a long long proponent of "if it works" proprietary drivers in the kernel, such as nvidia's, providing they are robust and either equally or a more significantly more beneficial component to the system than others more important. But that was back when I accepted the fact there was an amount of tinkering to be done, or there was an amount of work to be done to glue things together. As the linux "system" becomes better at handling things automatically, the flaws in proprietary drivers are becoming less forgiveable because they are a bottleneck. When proprietary pieces of technology can't be glued together because they're at fault, I begin see the issues. In my case the nvidia driver finally became a more significant hindrance to my system, than a graphically accelerated benefit when correctly configured.
It's finally the time to say the bottleneck in Linux on the desktop is edging towards drivers, so very slowly.
Matt
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In my case, the issue is with the screensaver, either gnome-screensaver or xscreensaver. When I try to come back from it, either the computer hangs with the disk light flashing, or I get a mouse cursor over the (stopped) screensaver. Sometimes I can get to an alternate TTY to kill either Xorg or compiz, and log in again, but sometimes I have to reboot.
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It's finally the time to say the bottleneck in Linux on the desktop is edging towards drivers, so very slowly.
I've been using Linux since 2000 and for me it's ALWAYS been drivers.
Modem drivers when I was dual booting mandrake and win 98.
ATI drivers when I was dual booting SuSE and Win XP.
A combination of WiFi drivers and some lingering video driver problems now that I'm triple booting Ubuntu, XP, and Vista.
Virtualization, Wine, and the fact that a lot of great software has been developed on and ported to Linux has eliminated most of the other small problems.
finally (Score:4, Interesting)
It's Already Working With Open-Source Driver Too (Score:5, Informative)
H.264 decoding? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow. (Score:2)
This is good news for the Linux crowd.
Waiting for a supported TV card (Score:5, Informative)
Hauppauge cards are supported to some extent but getting their remote controls to work is a pain in the butt, even on MythTV based distros!
In fact, getting the remote control to work is more of an exercise in frustration than anything else.
Ask and ye shall receive (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pchdtv.com/ [pchdtv.com]
Not sure about your troubles with remotes, but that doesn't have anything to do with the TV card.
I think they're jumping the gun. (Score:4, Interesting)
"AMD's proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA's Linux driver"
That's a bold statement my friend. Granted, they've made huge leaps over their pos drivers of not too long ago, but I think it's a little too soon to make a claim like that.
Just look at the known issues with the latest driver:
Moving the mouse or tapping a key may fail to close an OpenGL screen-saver and bring the user back to the x desktop.
Hmm, can't rely on stopping an opengl screensaver... that's not too good.
And looking at what's just fixed in this driver:
Quake 3 Arena (demo): Segmentation faults no longer occur when attempting to play the game.
Quake3: Corruption is no longer noticed when changing the display resolution when the game is running.
Wow, they just got quake3 working. Hey, we all know quake3 pushes opengl to it's limits and this is to be expected.
Don't mean to bash on them as it's great they are doing this. As far as buying an ati card, I've gone from when hell freezes over to cautious optimism.
But as I said, things are looking a lot better and I'll definitely consider ati for my next purchase, I just wouldn't run out and do it tomorrow.
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It is not too soon. I'm guessing you haven't tried the Nvidia driver on linux, because compared to what I have experienced, the ATI bugs you listed don't sound very bad. I had to turn off all the features and I am afraid to try anything which may be out of the ordinary on my Nvidia machine because it risks constant crashes. My machine with intel graphics may not allow mplayer to play in the root window, but at least it doesn't completely crash the system hard.
Running a linux system with the proprietary Nv
just what I've been waiting for... (Score:5, Funny)
After AMD bought ATI (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, today I make the shift from Nvidia to ATI. I stuck with Nvidia because I had didn't have much trouble getting OpenGL apps to work in Linux and I hear horror stories about ATI and Linux.
^&@$#l?/)(**!!!1!!! (Score:5, Funny)
AMD sees the writing on the wall (Score:5, Insightful)
AMD wants in on that stuff.
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Don't forget the supercomputer geeks. I'm sure they'd like to write an order for 4000 of those Tflop graphics cards and 2000 maxed out server procs to the guy that wants to be number one on Top500.org next year.
Supercomputer geeks don't run windows.
too little too late (Score:2, Insightful)
After spending two years battling fglrx for basic features like compositing and suspend-to-ram I've already moved on and committed to never purchasing another ATI product again. Have they even fixed suspend-to-ram in the pathetic fglrx blob yet? I wo
If you really care about open source (Score:5, Insightful)
AMD is without equal in the x86 space right now in terms of openness. They release specs, and they write and release code. All the Family 10 support in coreboot (a.k.a. Linuxbios) was written by AMD employees. We saw this open approach earlier with the K8, then Hypertransport, then the Geode CPUs used in the One Laptop Per Child, now we see the same trend in graphics. AMD is on a roll right now with openness.
I just, yesterday, downloaded the "BIOS programmers guide" for the AMD FAM10. This is the kind of information that few vendors release.
If you care about having this kind of access to hardware specs, you need to vote -- with your purchasing $$$. AMD has taken a huge gamble on openness. Keep that in mind next time you need a machine.
Ron Minnich (who forgot his password)
Re:If you really care about open source (Score:5, Informative)
Not a slacker when it comes to Windows either... (Score:5, Informative)
Anandtech [anandtech.com]
Tech Report [techreport.com]
This could be big (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Make it easier for people who are running to find a retail upgrade (wanna see what I mean? Try finding a Linux supported scanner at a retail shop)
2. Increase exposure for the "brand" - That bored sales rep will notice the new logo (nothing to do on those long spans when the store is dead but check out the merchandise boxes). Next time someone opens up with "Hey I'm looking for product x for Linux" the consumer will get a response other than "Can't help you".
3. Encourage more manufacturers to support Linux out of the box (hey if it helps sales...)
Lastly people will start asking about the cute penguin on the box! It's a huge win!
Good news (Score:4, Interesting)
Until now, at least the NVidia drivers works fairly well, so NVidia has been my choice.
But, if ATI is really opening up like this, and NVidia doesn't open up, most likely ATI will be my next graphic card when I get a new comp in the next months.
AMD Support (Score:5, Funny)
Oh God anyone got a hanky?
-Hack
HD acceleration? ffmpeg support? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of folks using the XBMC Linux port have had NOTHING but problems with ATI, meanwhile NVIDIA is damn near PnP using ENVY to load their drivers. Frankly I do not care wo's card I buy, I want it to properly support my HTPC setup and right now that is NVIDIA even though it's not got hardware acceleration working - I've got the CPU to decode it instead.
Re:HD acceleration? ffmpeg support? (Score:4, Interesting)
The point is right now my video card isn't doing the work - my 3Ghz C2D is instead. I'd REALLY rather offload that work to the GPU as would MANY others who wish to build cheap HTPC. IF ATI actually supported hardware accel of video on Linux then I might switch but if it's much like the closed NVIDIA drivers and simply supports a limited feature set then I might as well stick to NVIDIA and brute it with the CPUs cores. Right now the NVIDIA drivers are stable and working, ATI on the other hand has been no end of issues for the users and apparently some added work for the developers to support. Where's the beef?
Since they are claiming Linux "parity" with NVIDIA's LINUX feature set (gee....) then IMO they aren't supporting acceleration like they *DO* on Windows already - in which case this announcement is so much a hand job bullshit thing. Give me feature parity with WINDOWS drivers - that means hardware acceleration of HD video codecs like H.264 and MPEG - and I'll be tempted to switch from my already working card and risk their drivers.
Video decoding support? No? No Thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary, claiming linux drivers on par with Windows seems to be overstating it a bit. From what I can see, there is still no sign of being able to use all the video acceleration capabilities of their cards.
So, what else are they offering? I guess it must be full 3D acceleration capabilities. That's great for all those linux 3D games, but what I want is a card that will offload decoding of high definition MPEG2 and H.264 decoding.
Their hardware supports it, but still no signs of Linux support.
I guess if VAAPI ever matures, along with improved Linux driver support, the Intel integrated video will be better than anything ATI or even Nvidia can offer for Linux.
Re:losing strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaming is HUGE, Linux is gaining every day, as far as I see it they can't go wrong here, because its not like its Linux only, it still supports Windows, they probably hired one or 2 people to code the Linux drivers... so what, no real loss there, and if they created their own little open-source driver thing it would be no loss at all really, and I think its fairly safe to say that Linux isn't going anywhere, and will be increasing the market share consistently for years to come...
They are creating the demand (in part) now we just have to wait for the supply (the game devs)...
Re:losing strategy (Score:5, Informative)
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Add Cisco to this list, and HP, and Dell, and IBM.
Did you forget that you're pitiful desktop measures in portions of a server? Do you know how many desktops they have to sell to match one large server (8U or better?) I mean honestly. And they have a lot more to gain from being a RHEL or whatever partner.
Re:losing strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Other notables... Nvidia has had a lock on the Linux market for years because of their support. The WRT line with Linux support made that router long outlive its normal market time.
Is that enough for you? No? Then take away the silly consumer sector requirement and I'll add fifty more.
Finally, there's no way to "partner" with Linux. Either you support it (at some level) or you don't. Who would you partner with?
Re:losing strategy (Score:4, Informative)
What I don't get are these crazies who say they're ready to jump ship to AMD/ATI already - over a BINARY driver. But that just goes to show that this "Linux initiative" is paying off.
The first graphics card manufacturer to have open source, quality drivers is going to win big. My guess is NVIDIA is already prepared to release theirs, but they're waiting while AMD plays catch-up.
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you were modded down, and you are no more powerful than you were before.
Re:But is this open? (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop playing the FOSS zealot if you don't know what your talking about.
ATI HAS released the specs to their cards unlike nVidia. The new card already runs with the FOSS driver. The FOSS driver is improving daily.
Conflicting messages... (Score:4, Interesting)
All these new features are very likely being added to ATI's binary driver, and will be a long time coming in the FOSS driver. And while nVidia's driver isn't great, it has (in my experience) been much better than ATI's. Keep in mind that the nVidia driver has had most of these things (SLI, etc) for a very long time.
However, both ATI and nVidia's binary drivers suck giant donkey balls, unless something has changed with ATI since I last owned one of their cards. Intel's drivers have been better in every respect. If Intel's Larabee is what's promised...
I don't think this is so much about FOSS being better than proprietary. I think it's got at least as much to do with the moving target of the Linux kernel -- the most reliable way to get a working driver on Linux is to open the source and work with the kernel devs. This is almost certainly not true on other platforms, but it is on Linux.
Re:But is this open? (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, the card already works with the open-source xf86-driver-ati thanks to the code-sharing and documentation provided by ATI. Pretty soon the R6xx series (The generation I've got) will have 3D hardware acceleration as the R5xx series has now. It's not perfect and complete support, but it's getting there and progress has been excellent. If you really want to support a company that's supporting Linux, you would buy an ATI (Or Intel?) card. NVidia sure as hell isn't talking about any F/OSS drivers.
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Ummm... they did open it all up. These chips are incredibly complex and it will take more than a year for the open source folks to write complete drivers utilizing all of the features the chips offer.