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AMD's OverDrive and CrossFire Come To Linux
Posted by
timothy
on Wednesday August 20, @03:15PM
from the first-they-laugh-then-they-create-drivers dept.
from the first-they-laugh-then-they-create-drivers dept.
twljagflba writes "Since last year AMD has made ATI increasingly Linux friendly by releasing 3D programming guides and helping out the open-source community. At the same time they have been continuing to develop their binary Catalyst driver for the Linux platform and most recently they delivered same-day support for their new graphics cards. Today though they have released the Catalyst 8.8 Linux driver that adds two very important features: CrossFire and OverDrive support for Linux. Linux users are now able to use CrossFire to split the rendering workload between multiple GPUs and they're also able to overclock their graphics cards now using the binary-only driver. Phoronix has a complete run-down on both features — including benchmarks — in their AMD OverDrive on Linux and ATI Radeon CrossFire On Linux articles. Other features were also introduced in this update such as Linux 2.6.26 kernel support, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing, and other fixes."
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Hardware: AMD Releases 3D Programming Documentation 94 comments
Michael Larabel writes "With the Free Open Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) starting today, where John Bridgman of AMD will be addressing the X.Org developers, AMD has this morning released their 3D programming documentation. This information covers not only the recent R500 series, but goes back in detail to the R300/400 series. This is another one of AMD's open source documentation offerings, which they had started doing at the X Developer Summit 2007 with releasing 900 pages of basic documentation. Phoronix has a detailed analysis of what is being offered with today's information as well as information on sample code being released soon. This information will allow open source 3D/OpenGL work to get underway with ATI's newer graphics cards."
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Technology: AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go 352 comments
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."
Firehose:AMD's OverDrive & CrossFire Come To Linux by Anonymous Coward
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Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
YOTLD FTW!
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Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, games aren't the only things that benefit from powerful video acceleration. I use my linux box for 3d modeling -- if I had crossfire-compliant cards, you can bet I would be downloading this software right now.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Id Games? I've been enjoying Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for a long time on Ubuntu. (although the newest Ubuntu 8.04's pulseaudio seems to have broken the Microphone part of the audio, not Id's fault)
Besides, you can always right your own rendered 3d version of Soduko!
Re: (Score:3)
Argh (Score:2)
I would snap up a 790GX-based board in no time flat for HTPC / big-screen gaming purposes, but it doesn't support more than 2-channel LPCM over the HDMI port!!
And on Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got to say I'm disappointed they don't provide Crossfire numbers for the same hardware on Windows. It's nice that Crossfire can improve things in some situations and some games that are supported under Linux, but I'd like to know the relative benefit.
That is, when going to Crossfire do both Windows and Linux gain 40 FPS? Or do they both go up 60%? Or does Windows go up by 70% to 100 FPS where Linux only goes up 40% to 80 FPS?
How close are they? That's what I'd like to know.
I also find the "we had no problems except for some segfaults during Quake Wars, and they say that will be fixed in a month or two with the next version" a little worrying. A problem with a driver is a game looking off, or having slow frame rates. Segfaulting the system is not a problem, it's a BIG PROBLEM.
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Re: (Score:2)
did it say the /OS/ segfaulted? I'm pretty sure I had apps segfault in Linux without taking the OS down with them. Admittedly it's been a while since I've used Linux (about a year?), so I can't remember for certain.
Re: (Score:2)
That's precisely what I want to know. That would give me an indication how mature the drivers are, how much more performance there is to gain, and how much they cared about creating this. I mean is it worth the risks (like the crashes in some games) or if the performance is going to take another 25% jump maybe I just want to wait for the next driver version in September or October.
I haven't
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's completely wrong.
OpenGL supports all the latest features of graphics hardware. Some of the features are ARB extensions and the like, but you can do anything in OpenGL that you could do in Direct3d.
Do you honestly think id would be developing their next gen titles with OpenGL, if OpenGL was a crippled shadow of d3d might? No, OpenGL is comparable. OpenGL's main problem is that its really, really crufty because it supports every feature known to man, things Direct3d doesn't. Unfortunately, most of thes
Nice (Score:4, Informative)
It's nice to see they are providing both their own driver implementation AND the specs for OSS drivers.
Once the OSS drivers are done, then even within the realm AMD cards, users will still have some choice.
At least in Linux. Us FreeBSD users will have the OSS only...
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Lack of third party support is principles? Sounds like a crap principle.
Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny, isn't it... all the GPL/GNU zealots talk shit about Freedom, but it's the BSD folks that quietly have the principles.
What? You're saying this because there are no proprietary radeon drivers for BSD? What about the closed source nvidia drivers? There aren't any proprietary radeon drivers for BSD, because AMD/ATI feel BSD doesn't have enough users to be important, not because of the principles of the BSD folks.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 2000's TCP stack became reliable once they inserted large chunks of BSD code to get things done. And all BSD gets back is FUD.
great (Score:3, Funny)
my shell will run a lot faster! i'm wondering my "ls" performance.
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Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Moral of the story hard work is never rewarded only procrastination is
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The motto is, "Working hard now sometimes pays off later, but procrastinating now always pays off now."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So now in your head imagine Crossfire.
It's two cards, which with fglrx probably means twice the amount of work to get it running.
Re: (Score:2)
Why in the world would you want it to? KDE 3.5.7 FTW for now. KDE 4.4 maybe. Maybe.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nvidia still is the way to go if you want a card that works really good today. I've been using Nvidia cards like forever but now I decided to go ATI for my latest (I want to support the OSS frendliness of AMD/ATI). I bought a 4850 card. Works pretty good, but not nearly as good as Nvidia cards. No OpenGL in wine, no workspace switching when using fullscreen OpenGL apps and some other things. UT2004 works very nice though, 1680x1050 4xAA.
Re:Second choice (Score:4, Informative)
2005 called and asked for their gripe back. The reputation of the most recent ATI drivers is much enhanced from what it was. And whether someone will buy nVidia, Intel or ATI graphics for Linux depends upon their preference for powerful but proprietary binaries, free software compositing and low power consumption or the choice of reasonable performance in ATI's binaries or high-performance free software from the X.Org drivers.
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're joking? I got a HD2600Pro at the end of last year. 3D was still problematic back then, but the 2D ran very well. By this point, it has excellent support. The turn around this year so far has been enormous. I'd definitely recommend ATI cards as having the best support in Linux now because as well as a good (and regular) update program, you have the OSS projects running in parallel. They are also the most OSS friendly graphics card company and I bought ATI rather than NVIDIA for that reason, likewise
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are so out of date.
ATI has made great progress and is not working with the FOSS community to produce "Free" drivers that will make even the biggest FOSS fan happy.
I used to stick with Nvidia because of their Linux support. My next box is probably going to have ATI all the way.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Strange. On average I've had two Linux and ATI experiences:
1) Download pre-built RPMs from Livna. Install using package manager. Restart and go.
2) Give up on waiting for Livna to make new releases. Download drivers from ATI. Compile using built-in "Fedora X" version. Install RPMs. Let RPMs reconfigure my XOrg.conf properly (or just change "radeon" to "fglrx" by hand, because that's all it seems to need). Run with graphical acceleration without a problem.
The only time I've had a problem is with Fedora 9, and