AMD's OverDrive and CrossFire Come To Linux

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."

Awesome!

[PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258)]

GREAT! Now I can play ... uh ... well, someone can make some visually awesome (exclusive) games that I can play for linux!

YOTLD FTW!

Re:Awesome!

[edlinfan (1131341)]

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.

Re:

[QuantumRiff (120817)]

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:

[mweather (1089505)]

If you're judging on exclusives only, Windows doesn't look all that attractive either.

Re:

[Kjella (173770)]

If you're judging on exclusives only, Windows doesn't look all that attractive either.

An XB360 can never become a PS3 or vice versa. A Linux computer can always become a Windows computer (reboot). If I rephrase the grandparent as "games that can't already be played on this hardware" you're looking at a very slim list. That said, if you're running Linux it's of course much better to be able to play them under Linux without killing everything else you got running. On that note, I hope more games will be available through Steam and the like. It would seem many games whose only WINE problem is t

Re:

[jovetoo (629494)]

EVE? http://www.eve-online.com/ [eve-online.com]

Re:

[Grishnakh (216268)]

We already have awsome, exclusive games for Linux. Haven't you played TuxRacer yet?

Argh

[XanC (644172)]

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?

[MBCook (132727)]

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.

Re:

[ByOhTek (1181381)]

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:

[HappySmileMan (1088123)]

Yes segfaults affect the application only (unless the kernel itself segfaults, which never happened for me). Although if it's a driver that segfaults it may bring down the system, I think if it's built as a module and not compiled into the kernel it shouldn't

Re:

[repvik (96666)]

Being built as a module makes it no different from an in-kernel driver once it is loaded. A crashing driver would have the same effect whether it's a module or not.

Re:

[joe_cot (1011355)]

True, if the video driver segfaults, it'll only take down the display. You won't be able to see anything, but other than that, the system will be fine.

Re:

[ByOhTek (1181381)]

If you are logged in via kdm/gdm/xdm, it will also log out (at least in FreeBSD, the intel driver on my notebook has done that to me a couple of times in an older version of xorg).

Still, that's annoying, not a system crash.

Re:

[ruinevil (852677)]

Gaming usually better on Windows, since DirectX actually uses the new features on the GPUs where as Linux's OpenGL hasn't evolved quite as much, since it is primarily used in proprietary 3D CAD programs, which requires a stable codebase. The huge differences in between major DirectX versions does tend to screw up everything though.

Re:

[binarylarry (1338699)]

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

Re:

[walshy007 (906710)]

mod parent up

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[Yfrwlf (998822)]

That was my question that I never saw answered there, what was so important about extensions being "moved to core". If they still worked, but aren't completely "official" as part of the "official" specs and packages, so what? As long as the API is stable, the only issue I can think of would be possible issues with those extensions not being installed on the user's computer? DirectX gets around this partially by providing the most recent versions of DX along with the programs any way, so until the extensi

Re:

[MBCook (132727)]

That would be only interesting if there's any difference.

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.

It's not "segfaulting the system," it's segfaulting the game.

I haven't

Re:

[HappySmileMan (1088123)]

Well I've been using Linux for like 2 years, experienced many seg faults, in all kinds of applications, including games, and it's never taken down the system, or even X.

Are you sure it was the game and not the driver crashing? If it was just the game it shouldn't have touched anything else, not even X. If it was the driver then it could easily take down X and/or the entire system

More specifically, when TFA says the game segfaulted, do they actually mean the driver segfaulted, because there's a very big diff

Re:

[MBCook (132727)]

Right. But you can't see the source. Crossfire is only available with their binary blob driver. Whether that is temporary or permanent wasn't mentioned in the article.

Re:

[initdeep (1073290)]

I really hate when whiny posts like yours get modded insightful.

Maybe his post was modded insightful because he's not the only person wondering this?

Most "Gamers" are looking for the highest frame rates, and knowing if there is a large difference between the Windows frame rates and the Linux frame rates for the same games and same setup would be something most of them are VERY interested in.

Nice

[ByOhTek (1181381)]

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...

Re:

[larry bagina (561269)]

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.

Re:

[MrHanky (141717)]

Lack of third party support is principles? Sounds like a crap principle.

Re:Nice

[neuro88 (674248)]

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.

Re:

[fostware (551290)]

Yeah, and look who's principled code accounts for a metric truckload of commercial code.

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.

Re:

[eldepeche (854916)]

Personally, I traded in my indignity for usable drivers on nVidia chips.

You still sound pretty indignant to me.

great

[extirpater (132500)]

my shell will run a lot faster! i'm wondering my "ls" performance.

Really?

[jgtg32a (1173373)]

I just went through hell and back getting my 1950pro to work last week end.

Moral of the story hard work is never rewarded only procrastination is

Re:

[StevisF (218566)]

The motto is, "Working hard now sometimes pays off later, but procrastinating now always pays off now."

Re:

[Necreia (954727)]

*Wooosh*

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[Loibisch (964797)]

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.

ATI drivers

[atomic-penguin (100835)]

Since last year AMD has made ATI increasingly Linux friendly...

On average, my experience with ATI's drivers kind of go like this:

• Maybe get the driver to compile, the first time. Probably not, so I spend an hour browsing help forums looking for similar problems.
• Get X configured. Go through a few hundred "black screen of deaths" that locks up the whole damned system, NOT just X Windows. This happens every time you try to restart X Windows with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, run 'X -configure' or a click a logout button in your Window Manager.
• Hard reset the system. Because the d

Re:

[IBBoard (1128019)]

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

Re:

[initdeep (1073290)]

try installing using an nVidia 6150 onboard chip and then try to figure out where the mouse pointer is......

i abandoned Linux on one computer over this issue.
It wasn't worth the time to maintain on every new install.

switching to a computer with an ATI 2400 works nearly flawlessly.

Great.

[crhylove (205956)]

Now can ATI submit a kernel patch so we can use our FPU in cuda like fashion for all tasks? That would be nice. Can we also get a kernel patch that can automagically detect other local computers and automagically use their CPUs/FPUs real time in addition to the local terminal like a beowulf cluster?

These are things that should've already happened a couple years back.

"Yes, my cell phone is slow, but when I'm on my wifi-N network, it has the power of my desktop quad 4 extreme, and I can even play farcry 2 a

My usual question whenever this is "news"

[Hektor_Troy (262592)]

Does that mean we now have h.264 and/or Blu-ray support under Linux?

And I don't mean "I can play my 1080p Batman Begins just fine on my 2.6 GHz Quad Core" crap. I mean something that allows me to build a low power HTPC running Linux with hardware decoding.

Re:

[mr_mischief (456295)]

Why in the world would you want it to? KDE 3.5.7 FTW for now. KDE 4.4 maybe. Maybe.

Re:

[ruinevil (852677)]

Why in the world would you want it to? KDE 3.5.7 FTW for now. KDE 4.4 maybe. Maybe.

Uhhh...... I was using 3.5.9 before I made the switch to 4.1. What distro are you using... Corel Linux?

http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.5.9.php [kde.org]

Re:

[mr_mischief (456295)]

It was a little tongue-in-cheek. I do believe 4.1.x isn't quite ready to take over from the 3.5.x line.

I am actually running a patched 3.5.7 right now, though. Mandriva One 2008.0 is the distro. The base KDE packages are listed as 3.5.7-38.3mdv2008.0 and there are packages for 4.0 RC2. It's my main business desktop, so I'm a little conservative with it and let the repositories and automatic updates take care of most of my software. The only things I update outside of those tools are browsers, programming to

Re:

[HappySmileMan (1088123)]

Why in the world would you run 3.5.7... Wouldn't you want to run 3.5.10?

Re:

[Lussarn (105276)]

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

[wild_berry (448019)]

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.

Re:

[h4rm0ny (722443)]

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:

[h4rm0ny (722443)]

Sorry - meant to reply to your parent.

Re:

[LWATCDR (28044)]

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:

[imbaczek (690596)]

mine already has. nvidia has terrible issues with 2d performance, compiz was next to unusable for me (6600gt was sooo much slower than an integrated intel 945 on a freaking laptop!) not to mention running games in compiz made them run at 1 fps.

haven't installed linux yet though, so I can't speak from experience how ATI fares.

Re:

[siride (974284)]

Thank you. I have an x300 in a Thinkpad T43 and while the first year was rough, the OSS drivers have improved markedly. 2d performance is nearly on par with Windows, and is actually quite snappy with xcompmgr running. Compiz is also fairly fast these days, although still slower than a plain old desktop. X is rock solid stable, even using git for the entire X setup (I haven't had a random server crash once). And every week or so, I see a new set of commits that improve performance for r300 or EXA. It j

Re:

[j3tt (859525)]

I used to have problems with a mobility Radeon on my Thinkpad T40 a couple of years ago but things may have changed ... I currently have Ubuntu Hardy on a Thinkpad T60 with an ATI x1300. compiz ran out of the box. Have not had issues so far.