Feedback on using AMD graphics with Slackware.
 

Hello All, I'm looking into purchasing a newer laptop with a higher screen resolution that uses an AMD Venus Pro graphic card and I wanted some feedback from fellow slackers that have used linux with an AMD graphic chip. I had a horrible experience in trying to get fglrx to work correctly and have stayed away from AMD products altogether. Problems I was having at that time was severe video tearing that I could not get rid of. That was 5+ years ago. I'm wondering if this problem still exists.

I don't know about your Venus Pro, but on my HD5850 fglrx works flawless. On Slackware 14.1 you'll need to use the beta driver though because of some newer things in Slackware like X11.

im useing a hd6850, and im not really happy with it under 14.1 x64. the fglrx betadriver is quite buggy, dont try playing games with it you will have no fun (even when updateing to a newer kernel and x11 radeon driver).

the buildin radeon driver works semi good up to 6870 i think.. your venus pro (as wikipedia says) is a hd8000 so i dont think you will have much fun without fglrx..

so.. i would say look for intel at the moment.. or maybe nvidia.. but i dont know how good or bad the drivers there are.

if you buy the laptop for work only, look for an older ati chip.. hd68xx or so.. :)

greatings and sry for my bad english - it isnt native :)

I got a laptop with AMD Radeon HD 8650G/8670M and it works fine, i tried a few games and it worked as i should.
But i think i will try radeon because it worked good on my last laptop.
Nvidia or AMD or intel depends on what you use your laptop for and if you value OSS drivers.

Getting fglrx to work will depend on what cards it does support as well as what kernel it will build against also.

The AMD free driver might not get good support for at least a year on newer cards and chipsets however, so user beware with AMD really.

Nvidia graphics are actually your best bet as they have fairly good driver support, but that's just my experience.

Agree with above, have had nvidia and AMD over the years, and I have both cards in my system now, but while the radeon drivers in the kernel might be less problematic than the nouveau drivers, the binary AMD drivers always seem to have a problem whereas the nvidia drivers usually seem to work...

Just my experience and impression, hopefully this doesn't degenerate into a Nvidia vs AMD flame fest.

why should it.. i love amd - in windows, but it looks like thay dont care about linux so much. nvidia got a bit better after linus sayd his f*u* to nvidia.. maybe amd needs that too? ;)

Two cards (RS480 and R600) under current-x86_64, both running the open source drivers. Zero pain.

Running a HD3200 (currently still no UVD support) and a HD6870 with the free drivers. Works pretty well, development of that driver is fast and the developers are helpful. Only problem is that I still can't play Metro: Last Light with that driver, anything else works well.

GeForce 9800GT with the 331.38s on both Slackware and FreeBSD series drivers... no problems here. Everything works.

AMD \ATI is very worse company. their hardware -wideocards - looks like not bad in technical terms, but company attitude to consumers is horrible - if you have a videocard, who was announce in 2008 ( yet those is not bad even todays -like as 4850, 4870) - latest driver from ati / amd is catalyst 13.1 legacy.
maximal kernel for this installation is 3.4.x, and it restrictions on x server version too. support is abandoned, npo chances to newer driver. and even that 13.1 is buggy - there are problems, for ewxample, to process multibeam workunits in seti at home project.
maybe, if you can live with free drivers ( who, as i know, do not support cal / opencl, and as so cannot be use on setiathome and boinc), then maybe things is easier, but...

in contrast - nvidia support is much, much better.
some weeks ago i download from nvidia site driver for fx5200 and install it on slackware 14.1 without problem (( and fx5200 ius announced in 2003 !! 11 years ago, and still supported by drivers!). in that case nvidia looks good. i percsonally get struggle about 3 weeks to get to work hd4350 ( anounced in 2008) with boinc, and cannot get it for slack 14.1
finally i get it worked on slack 14.0, after a long struggles, and even then the mb units processing not work. and on week work i already have one lock-upo in processing, i think - because of great driver. x server restart, happ7y, solve this nand i noit must restart entire server.

i never again choose an ati as videocard. nvidia is far better, in any way - in linux.

Not that many people here will recognise the codenames like 'venus pro'. 'Radeon HD 8850M' is more recognisable.

Personally, I'd avoid the AMD 8XXX cards for now with linux, support is likely to soemwhere between pretty bad and awful.

Not much point getting the newest 8XXX or 8XXXM GPUs, they are just rebadged 7XXX or 7XXXXM GPUs.

Who wants a standalone GPU (if it is standalone, its likely to be the new 'Enduro' switchable graphics setup.....which is different to the older 'Dynamic Switchable Graphics' used with the 7XXXM GPUs) in a laptop anyway?

Nope, you can use newer kernels than 3.4 with fglrx-legacy

Not that simple.

nVidia has better closed drivers, but bloody awful open source drivers. AMD has worse closed drivers, but much much better open source drivers.

I'd pick an ATI/AMD card for use with open source drivers ever time, and for long term use I'd rather have an ATI/AMD card as well.

You can? How about later xorgs?

I bought a laptop with an HD4000 gfx chipset (which I thought was pretty future proof!), and within weeks, AMD announced that they were dropping Linux support for these chipsets! Yet the laptops were still being made and on sale! I swore I would never buy anything from AMD again, despite having been a faithful customer for nearly twenty years!

I stuck with an old version of Slackware and a 3.4 kernel because I couldn't get it to play HD video with anything more modern! I finally gave up on it a few weeks ago, when a Slackware update broke the fglrx driver again, and I couldn't fix it! Its now a very expensive doorstop!

So please tell how to get it working with newer kernels? Even if it is as buggy as a pile of manure, at least it worked some of the time!

--
Pete

Yes, you can-

https://launchpad.net/debian/+source...ver/+changelog

I believe that you need to patch the kernel with 3.4/3.5+ kernels.

AFAIK, no, later xorg versions than X.XX (1.12 I think, I havent checked) will not work.

Support for the HD2XX/3XXX/4XXX was dropped in May 2012 (well, not exactly 'dropped', more 'no new features or performacne gains, just bug fixing and a slower release cycle'). HD4XXX cards and chipset intergrated GPUs came out in mid 2008.

So you bought a 4 year old video chipset thinking its 'future proof'?

There has been a lot of developement on the open source 'radeon' drivers over the last few years, and with a chipset that old you should get similar performance if you were using the closed drivers with the open soruce drivers.

But you'll get the best performance with the newest drivers and software. Check out VA-API, it can really help with watching videos, and works with the open soruce drivers.

Usually one would think that chipsets that are still sold are also still supported. Mainboards with 760G and 880G chipsets are still sold in masses, even 2 years after AMD dropped support (and yes, I mean dropped, releasing a buggy driver once a year that only works on an ancient software stack when not using 3rd party patches is not what I call support).
In 3D applications most of the time you get about 80% of the Catalyst performance, in some cases (for example games based on the Source engine) you may even get better performance and a smoother experience.

When it comes to video acceleration, AMD has released VDPAU support in the drivers using the UVD engines, unless you are one of the users of a RV790 (HD4860, HD4890), RS780 (HD3200) or RS880 (HD4200), the latter one still widely sold. In that case: No hardware video decoding for you.