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AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta For Linux

By - | Views: 18,242
AMD has unleashed their latest beta driver for AMD graphics card holders, full of lots of goodies.

It's good to see AMD stepping up with the bug-fixes which is no doubt thanks to SteamOS and Valve for pushing them to work on their drivers.

I still see all too often people bashing AMD's graphics drivers, so let us know how this one works out for you!

Many people where worried about some Steam Machines using AMD graphics, I was too, but considering they are applying direct fixes for SteamOS as detailed below I don't think we will have to worry too much.

It includes support for their new APU's as well as Xserver 1.15 support & Kernel 3.13 support.

Bug Fixes
Quote[386897] : System hang on resume from S4 with OpenGL screen saver running
[387678] : Backtrace occurs when kill X
[387664] : Failed to start X without kernel module loaded
[378620] : OpenCL test failure in CrossFire Mode
[386945] : piglit test "spec/ARB_copy_buffer/overlap" failed
[386710] : piglit test "spec/ARB_draw_buffers_blend" failed
[386818] : piglit test "spec/OpenGL 2.0/depth-tex-modes-glsl" failed
[386941] : piglit test "spec/ARB_blend_func_extended" failed
[386903] : piglit test "spec/OpenGL 3.0/gl-3.0-required-sized-texture-formats" failed
[386840] : Viewport goes blank when mouse cursor leaves when run Houdini on Ubuntu
[387596] : piglit test "spec/ARB_framebuffer_object (fbo-scissor-blit)" failed
[389174] : Failed to get fan speed on Bonaire card
[388110] : Intermittent flashing problem when running at 2560x1600
[372656] : Crash when resizing Konsole
[388325] : Brightness cannot be adjusted on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
[388330] : piglit test "spec/ARB_framebuffer_object (fbo-blit-stretch)" failed
[385457] : Blue/white screen after using Google-chrome to run fishietank
[388500] : piglit test "spec/EXT_texture_integer" failed
[388802] : piglit test "spec/ARB_map_buffer_alignment" failed
[386396] : piglit test "spec/ARB_depth_buffer_float/fbo-depthstencil-drawpixels" failed
[389431] : Screens are distorted when connecting an external monitor on some Haswell platforms
[389530] : Blank screen/crash observed while running unigine heaven benchmark in windowed mode
[387124] : OpenCL performance drop observed on Hawaii compared to Tahiti XT
[386940] : piglit test "spec/EXT_texture_sRGB" failed
[392137] : [SteamOS] Failed to return to desktop from steam.
[392015] : [SteamOS] Screen is locked when changing user.
[392014] : [SteamOS] Failed to login Steam sometimes
[391231] : Blank screen observed while running steam games with Big picture


Still To Fix
Quote[390964] : Stuttering and poor performance after playing an OpenGL game for a several minutes on Ubuntu
[393377] : Terminal panel stops refreshing until there is movement from mouse cursor
[392546] : System hang observed while hotpluging the stereo display
[388835] : Corruption and system hang observed while running Sanctuary BM with TFD enable
[392552] : Enabling Overlay: StartX , the screen shows corruption


Download: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-linux-beta-driver.aspx Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Hardware
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11 comments
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abelthorne Feb 2, 2014
Well, the usual story: they fix bugs, there are still serious issues (e.g still can't play Natural Selection 2) and the Linux drivers still have worse perfs than on Windows (and far worse than nVidia cards, being on Linux or Windows). I recon that the drivers have evolved a lot in the past year thanks to Valve but there's still a lot to do and I am still worried about Steamboxes using AMD cards.

At least, this new driver doesn't plain crash the default session on Ubuntu 13.10 (Unity), unlike the "stable" 13.2.
HadBabits Feb 2, 2014
Glad they're still improving. I give them a lot of flack for their mistakes (though I think they deserve a lot of it), but it's also important to recognize progress :)
Half-Shot Feb 2, 2014
Quoting: HadBabitsGlad they're still improving. I give them a lot of flack for their mistakes (though I think they deserve a lot of it), but it's also important to recognize progress :)
I think the flack might have pushed them a bit though. And its good to see they are recognising issues as well as fixing them. Still far from what i want but every update makes it a bit faster.

What we could do with is a few 'crysis' type games on linux that will force AMD to improve their drivers to a condition that preforms as well as the greens or they will look terrible when the steam machines turn up.
aAMDuser Feb 2, 2014
Well, there is the still persistent issue about the backlight screen not working (it is turned off when X starts and it is impossible to turn on) on a lot of laptops, expecially ASUS, with the ATI HD 5000 family. It is going on since the catalyst 13.4 and affects both GNU/Linux systems and Windows. In Windows you can install the old catalyst 13.4 but on recent GNU/Linux distros it is, obviously, incompatible with recent X servers and kernels. So what to say? 10 months without a fix means that AMD created new NVIDIA clients.
Personally I'm happy with the radeon free open source driver that I discovered to have performance almost similar or better than the proprietary catalyst. But next time I'll go with NVIDIA for sure because AMD/ATI showed to be incapable to fix grave problems (hey 10 months!!! :><:) and to offer proper support on GNU/Linux.
aAMDuser Feb 2, 2014
Quoting: GuestJust curious...you are aware that those open source drivers are so good because AMD has been officially supporting them, right? Compared to nvidia, who don't lift a finger to help open source driver efforts at all. Just saying....if the open source work so good for you, they will track with updates and get bugfixes faster than any proprietary driver (from any company), which you might want to consider.

...ah ops, really? that changes a lot then. I suppose that I'm looking pretty stupid right now....
Well, these open source drivers seem really good and if AMD is supporting them... chapeau!
paupav Feb 2, 2014
No change in performance at all. The biggest bug is still here: you can play games only for 40 minutes e.g Dota2 before FPS drops to 15 on low settings. I have Radeon HD 7770 and I can play on High settings with 60 FPS on Windows. I get 100-125 score on Linux on Unigine's Heaven benchmark where on Windows I get 500-550 FPS.
111qqq Feb 3, 2014
Quoting: aAMDuser
Quoting: GuestJust curious...you are aware that those open source drivers are so good because AMD has been officially supporting them, right? Compared to nvidia, who don't lift a finger to help open source driver efforts at all. Just saying....if the open source work so good for you, they will track with updates and get bugfixes faster than any proprietary driver (from any company), which you might want to consider.
...ah ops, really? that changes a lot then. I suppose that I'm looking pretty stupid right now....
Well, these open source drivers seem really good and if AMD is supporting them... chapeau!

NVIDIA Starts Contributing to Open Source Drivers, Linus Torvalds Gives It a Thumbs Up
http://news.softpedia.com/news/NVIDIA-Starts-Contributing-to-Open-source-Drivers-Linus-Torvalds-Give-it-a-Thumbs-Up-423104.shtml
Anonymous Feb 3, 2014
Quoting: paupavNo change in performance at all. The biggest bug is still here: you can play games only for 40 minutes e.g Dota2 before FPS drops to 15 on low settings. I have Radeon HD 7770 and I can play on High settings with 60 FPS on Windows. I get 100-125 score on Linux on Unigine's Heaven benchmark where on Windows I get 500-550 FPS.
Strange. I have a RadeonHD 7770 too and while I have a few issues with some specific games, I don't have the kind of problem you describe (general performances are not great but I don't have sudden drops after a while). Maybe you have something outside of the games that trigger at a specific time and begins to take system resources?
paupav Feb 3, 2014
Quoting: Anonymous
Quoting: paupavNo change in performance at all. The biggest bug is still here: you can play games only for 40 minutes e.g Dota2 before FPS drops to 15 on low settings. I have Radeon HD 7770 and I can play on High settings with 60 FPS on Windows. I get 100-125 score on Linux on Unigine's Heaven benchmark where on Windows I get 500-550 FPS.
Strange. I have a RadeonHD 7770 too and while I have a few issues with some specific games, I don't have the kind of problem you describe (general performances are not great but I don't have sudden drops after a while). Maybe you have something outside of the games that trigger at a specific time and begins to take system resources?

Weird. They even documented it on their site as "open issue"
Hamish Feb 3, 2014
Quoting: 111qqqNVIDIA Starts Contributing to Open Source Drivers, Linus Torvalds Gives It a Thumbs Up
http://news.softpedia.com/news/NVIDIA-Starts-Contributing-to-Open-source-Drivers-Linus-Torvalds-Give-it-a-Thumbs-Up-423104.shtml

Which is a step in the right direction, but still nowhere near the level of support offered by either AMD or Intel, nor is that likely to change anytime soon.

"We do not have any plan to work on user-space support. So do not uninstall that proprietary driver just yet." - Alexandre Courbot
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