ATI amd64 drivers in december...

Message

superwutze · Post by **superwutze** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 5:19 pm

i haven't followed all the discussion in detail, but on http://www.ati.com/developer/altoschart.pdf on page 5 there are 64bit drivers for suse/redhat and xfree mentioned. what are those?

dangertools · Post by **dangertools** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 5:28 pm

i have seen this document already some days ago. it looks like there are drivers for 64bit somewhere in development as ati said already. but i don't think that this means that there are ready drivers somewhere out there. just waiting

jdevers · Post by **jdevers** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 8:40 pm

Actually, if you read that chart a bit more carefully, they are basically referencing the open source drivers, not their own.

ronmon · Post by **ronmon** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:16 am

Too bad for ATI. My GeForce arrived today and is running nicely. Screw 'em, and don't forget to tell them why you switched.

Acoc · Post by **Acoc** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:58 pm

There was news before about Mandrake adapting the x86 drivers for amd64, but I think they ended up with so many kernel patches that other distributions decided to wait for an official release. I believe Mandrake 10 on works can use the video cards, but I'm guessing they might have to use XFree86.

That was another thing I was wondering about, if ATI does release the drivers will they be able to be adapted to Xorg? The drivers I'm sure will show up in a kernel update, but will we be able to update them later without having to recompile the kernel?

John

superwutze · Post by **superwutze** » Sun Dec 12, 2004 12:31 pm

for me the question is not when the drivers will arrive, but what for. yesterday i installed windows xp for a test and encountered problems concerning my ati 9800xt and the amd 8151 agp ht tunnel. i have to switch my card back to agp 4x for 3d functions. so now i hope that problem will not exist on linux, but several threads in the amd forums point this out as a hardware incompatibility. has anyone encountered the same troubles?

zocker · Post by **zocker** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 9:11 pm

The Win32 4.12 drivers have been released today.

When will the new Linux x86 and, more important, the x86-64 drivers be released?

tomorrow?
next week?
next month?
when HURD comes out?

Who knows...

malloc · Post by **malloc** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:09 pm

zocker wrote:The Win32 4.12 drivers have been released today.

When will the new Linux x86 and, more important, the x86-64 drivers be released?

when HURD comes out?

That's my vote

ebrostig · Post by **ebrostig** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:54 pm

My bet is sometimes after the release of "Duke Nukem Forever"...

Erik

demosh · Post by **demosh** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 8:28 pm

My bet is sometimes after the release of "Duke Nukem Forever"...

Hopefully before. Itd suck having to play DNF with a software renderer

infirit · Post by **infirit** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 9:40 pm

Almost halfway through the month and getting worried

thaldyron · Post by **thaldyron** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:03 pm

infirit wrote:Almost halfway through the month and getting worried

Honestly, does anyone _really_ believe ATI will deliver on time?
No way! End of January or February would be a more realistic guess i suppose.

nazgum · Post by **nazgum** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:23 pm

I'm not going to post about how I'm ditching my ati card and buying nvidia... only because I bought a laptop with an ati card and switching would be too difficult :p

Honestly I bought it cause it was the best laptop around at the time, with the only handicap for me being the ati card. I looked on the linux forums at the time and while people bitched at least the card worked, so I went for it.

Never again.

Since that purchase I refuse to buy anything from ATI ever.

Besides that fact I like to reward people who make efforts towards linux (and in this case nvidia is hands down winner), ati's drivers are just garbage. I'm not just talking about their linux drivers, their drivers on windows are horrible as well.

Not only do they not support any cards from laptops themselves, the default drivers shipped with my laptop wouldn't even play most games. I had to grab some custom unsupported drivers to make games work, which breaks other aspects like tv-out or dual monitors.

So yes - after that rant it should be obvious i hate my ati card :p

planet-admin · Post by **planet-admin** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:17 pm

nazgum wrote:I'm not going to post about how I'm ditching my ati card and buying nvidia... only because I bought a laptop with an ati card and switching would be too difficult :p

Honestly I bought it cause it was the best laptop around at the time, with the only handicap for me being the ati card. I looked on the linux forums at the time and while people bitched at least the card worked, so I went for it.

Never again.

Since that purchase I refuse to buy anything from ATI ever.

Besides that fact I like to reward people who make efforts towards linux (and in this case nvidia is hands down winner), ati's drivers are just garbage. I'm not just talking about their linux drivers, their drivers on windows are horrible as well.

Not only do they not support any cards from laptops themselves, the default drivers shipped with my laptop wouldn't even play most games. I had to grab some custom unsupported drivers to make games work, which breaks other aspects like tv-out or dual monitors.

So yes - after that rant it should be obvious i hate my ati card :p

I would hereby like to go on a rant:

<rant>
ATI is a good company, and has ALWAYS produced some of the best hardware, back in the days before anybody even wanted an nvidia card, ramember the original All-in-wonders with rage 128? Amazing card.

Firstly, I'll agree that there aren't quite enough resources being poured into their linux development, BUT.....

ATI drivers work fine with xorg 6.7.0, giving you full opengl rendering, and though they aren't the fastest drivers in the entire world, please remember, they worked fine just a few months back. It was US that changed, xorg 6.8, look, we broke it, why aren't WE fixing it? It's obviously not the drivers, since they still work, just as they always have, with the system they were made for, and quite honestly, it's the developers of xorg whom are responsible for backwards compatibility with previous drivers, especially in the cases of outdated hardware for which there will never be new drivers(though this doesn't quite apply to ATI, but imagine how you would feel if your shiny video card stopped working completely with xorg 6.8 no matter what brand, and the company no longer exists, whose fault is that? Certainly not the company's.)

Yes, the ATI drivers should be released on a more timely basis, but they ARE released, remember, there ARE companies who don't support linux(i.e. Lexmark?) and likely never will. ATI, Intel, HP, most of the major players are at least playing along, and as we become less blinded by that we'll likely realize that they don't HAVE to do the things they're doing, for instance IPW2200 by Intel.

I vote we go back and diff the entire source base of xorg 6.7.xx(whatever last worked fine) and then the first release of 6.8 where it stopped working, and walk the changes back one by one, until we find out what's killing ATI-drivers(sure, it'll take weeks, but hell, wouldn't it be better than waiting and not getting results?)

This isn't meant as flamebait, so don't treat it as such, merely to provide the realization that ati did their job, and we changed the rules, so please, insightful comments only)

</end rant>

Michael

nigelhannam · Post by **nigelhannam** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:33 pm

So, when exactly did the drivers for xorg 6.7.0 work on a 64bit amd install?

I also bought a laptop and found that the only amd64 based ones available to me had ATI graphics cards in them. I always intended to run it as a 64bit install, and it seemed plausible that ATI would ensure that they were ahead of the game with 64 bit drivers if their product was the default standard in the laptops with 64 bit amd processors. Obviously not.

I also will not buy another product that includes ATI graphics hardware.

racoontje · Post by **racoontje** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:45 pm

ebrostig wrote:My bet is sometimes after the release of "Duke Nukem Forever"...

Erik

Which we will play on our Phantom (heh, fitting name) console.

planet-admin · Post by **planet-admin** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:59 pm

nigelhannam wrote:So, when exactly did the drivers for xorg 6.7.0 work on a 64bit amd install?

I also bought a laptop and found that the only amd64 based ones available to me had ATI graphics cards in them. I always intended to run it as a 64bit install, and it seemed plausible that ATI would ensure that they were ahead of the game with 64 bit drivers if their product was the default standard in the laptops with 64 bit amd processors. Obviously not.

I also will not buy another product that includes ATI graphics hardware.

I step aside on the 64bit issue, THAT is the valid point I did not address, but I tend to think most of the same people who hated matrix 2 and 3 will buy the box set, simply because....

Similarly, if ati made something that was $99 and beat a 6800 ultra, wouldn't you buy it, especially if the drivers improved?

64bit is valid, I'm glad you brought that up, and I'm sorry you have to suffer without drivers, truly, but for the 32bit drivers, it wasn't ati's fault.

Thanks again(for not flaming also),
Michael

nigelhannam · Post by **nigelhannam** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 10:21 pm

planet-admin wrote: Similarly, if ati made something that was $99 and beat a 6800 ultra, wouldn't you buy it, especially if the drivers improved?

It takes a hard work for a company to build a good reputation and very little for them to blow it.
I would need to see consistant top quality support for the O/S and arch of my choice before I would even consider risking anything from this company again.
Ask me in 5 years if I've been convinced. I suspect not

planet-admin wrote: 64bit is valid, I'm glad you brought that up, and I'm sorry you have to suffer without drivers, truly, but for the 32bit drivers, it wasn't ati's fault.

Well, this thread title includes the term "amd64", and is in the "Gentoo on AMD64" forum, so I'm guessing this is the main reason people are complaining.

Mythos · Post by **Mythos** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:20 pm

Bad coders from ATI i guess or best friends of Bill ...

This is unbelievable, amd64 have more the 1 year old, and they don't release any beta for linux.

bahhh why my laptop have ati mobile

well half Month and nothing ...

infirit · Post by **infirit** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 11:53 pm

@planet-admin

I think loads of people are willing to fix the problem created with Xorg 6.8 and AMD64. But they do not release any specs on the new gfx cards and hide behind a lame excuse that some of the technology used can not be disclosed. If they wanted they could open up just enough to have a decent working 2d/3d hardware accelarated, i mean just have the basics, opensource driver. But they don't

And i agree with you that there is A driver so Ati has not done nothing. However it has been of such low quality (overall) compared to the binary driver Nvidia that there where better of not releasing it at all.

Sorry i may sound a bit anry/harsh but i switched to Ati because of there good reputation on the gfx market. And 6 month later i still love the card on Windows Xp but got really frustrated and dissapointed in linux.

I'm done now just had to get this out of my system

planet-admin · Post by **planet-admin** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 1:06 am

infirit wrote:@planet-admin

I think loads of people are willing to fix the problem created with Xorg 6.8 and AMD64. But they do not release any specs on the new gfx cards and hide behind a lame excuse that some of the technology used can not be disclosed. If they wanted they could open up just enough to have a decent working 2d/3d hardware accelarated, i mean just have the basics, opensource driver. But they don't

And i agree with you that there is A driver so Ati has not done nothing. However it has been of such low quality (overall) compared to the binary driver Nvidia that there where better of not releasing it at all.

Sorry i may sound a bit anry/harsh but i switched to Ati because of there good reputation on the gfx market. And 6 month later i still love the card on Windows Xp but got really frustrated and dissapointed in linux.

I'm done now just had to get this out of my system

On the xorg issue, the new cards do work with the old drivers(most of em) so fixing the issue with 6.8 shouldn't have to depend on that, and I agree, there should be a higher quality driver released, but I believe it's coming, especially with the merged codebase for linux and windows, give it a little time. On the A64, I hope they release these for you guys soon, as I'm happy with my good ol pentium-m.

The legal issues of ATI releasing some of it's code is very very true, sure, they could open SOME of it, but that wouldn't help us very much, as ATI hasn't completely designed all of their chips their selves, and some of it does fall under NDA. The important parts.....*sigh* It's all a matter of patience basically. As for me, I'm gonna go and try XDirectFB again, and use the real transparency from it.

Thanks for listening,
Michael

ebrostig · Post by **ebrostig** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 1:39 am

I have never really gone into the ATi vs Nvidia war.
Simply because I'm not a huge gamer or 3d graphics user. The few games I play on my PC, I do play under Windows and I don't need top speed as long as the default speed is good enough for me to have a good game experience.

Under Linux, I'm more than happy with the drivers that comes with xorg-x11 since I have no need for 3d. For those of you who do or will not have a win partition for game playing, I can understand the frustration. ATi has not been very speedy with releasing drivers for AMD64, but not bad for x86 and esp not for Windows.

When that is said, I have more than once contacted ATi for 64-bit drivers and also signed the petition.

Alas, I don't think Santa Claus will visit us 64-bit Linux people wth propriatary candies from the ATi elves!

Erik

planet-admin · Post by **planet-admin** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 2:14 am

ebrostig wrote:Alas, I don't think Santa Claus will visit us 64-bit Linux people wth propriatary candies from the ATi elves!

Erik

Begin praying and fasting....

malloc · Post by **malloc** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 9:32 pm

Well i think there's something people are forgetting...
ATI may have produced excellent hardware in the past, however their drivers have always been crap, either for windows or for linux. A company can't be deemed excellent if they only do half the work.
Drivers are a primordial part of a graphics card, and on that level ATI simply sucks...

Trevoke · Post by **Trevoke** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 2:28 pm

That's unfair. The ATI drivers are EXCELLENT when they come out. ATI's main problem has always been a lack of driver updates (huh? We gave you drivers once already!). IIRC, they have said they would give us more updates.. Now, this may include only 32bit, or even only Windows, but ATI makes good drivers, and they make splendid cards. Restating what I said before, their problem is that they are static where NVidia is mobile.
Of course, their promise here seems to be a no-go .. Which sucks since I have ATI both at work and at home.
I don't want to give up ATI because I _know_ they make a good job.
I'll tell you this.. Most people I know who buy NVidia end up upgrading more often than people with ATI. Why is that?