AMD Catalyst 11.9 Driver Is Now Available

[Dutchy]

The long awaited AMD Catalyst 11.9 Driver that is supposed to fix the Gnome 3 problems is out!

From Phoronix:

There's a new AMD Linux driver blob available for those that haven't yet fetched it, but it's not particularly exciting, unless you're using GNOME3.

The new AMD Catalyst 11.9 for Linux driver should fix up some of the GNOME 3.x issues that have long been experienced for months. But don't expect a perfect experience yet with this binary driver and the GNOME 3.0/3.2 desktop. Aside from that, there isn't much to see in terms of improvements. Sadly, for those using KDE 4.x, there are reported regressions within this new AMD Linux driver build.

The driver (with download links) is already being discussed at length in this Phoronix Forums thread. See the thread for the full scoop.

I'm going to test it right away.
Let's hope that it is finally usable (although the first reactions aren't very praising unfortunately).

[sosoggy]

From my experience, they didn't fix the Gnome issues.

Originally, I had a HD5850 installed, applied the 11.9 drivers and experienced poor UI performance and heavy artifacting. I read around and noticed some had success with the new Catalyst but they were running older cards. Figuring it might be an issue with Cypress and higher cards, I swapped out the 5850 for my old 4870; No artifacting but UI performance was still sluggish and laggy.

I'm hoping the 11.10 release finally fixes the bugs.

[Dutchy]

@sosoggy
That's too bad!

My experience: Quite good!

I have a fairly old and low budget card: Radeon HD 4300.
The last time I checked the proprietary driver it was unusable (very, very slow, especially with dragging windows).
Now it has definitely got better: No more artefacts and just slightly jerky window movement while dragging them.

Comparison between the open source and proprietary drivers:
-Performance
Open source: Overall good, quick window movement but slow scrolling of the Gnome application menu.
Proprietary: Overall good, somewhat jerky window movement when they are dragged but it is fast and smooth when using the activities switch. Also scrolling through the application menu is now very smooth.

Appearance
Open source: No noticeable artefacts at runtime, but heavily corrupted screen for a second at login after boot and resume. Also a little invisible horizontal line is drawn over the Gnome 3 application menu. Graphical boot is shown. When starting a WINE program the screen flickers for a while.
Proprietary: No noticeable artefacts at runtime (edit:with some programs (Pidgin) there are some artefacts when using the notification area and it is quite annoying but no deal breaker for now), but somewhat corrupted screen for a second only after resume from suspend. No invisible lines. No graphical boot any more. WINE programs start without any flickering.

Usability
Open source: Suspend works (but occasionally all graphical functions stop functioning after resume). Hibernate doesn't work because it can't wake up properly.
Proprietary: Suspend and hibernate both work (couldn't check it thoroughly for errors). The Catalyst Control Center follows the settings of the Gnome Configuration Panel (i.e. display settings). This is quite nice but at first can be a little confusing. Of course the proprietary driver gives one much more control over the cards settings and configuration.

To sum it up: It's pretty good and I am satisfied! Performance could be a little better when one drags a screen around the screen but overall it's good!

[sosoggy]

My friend is going to lend me his 8800GTS; I think I'm going to go Nvidia until this mess is sorted out.

I actually might ditch AMD/ATI altogether as it seems Nvidia has better overall *NIX support.

[alexeik]

I also tried 11.9.

lspci:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV770 [Radeon HD 4850]

it works in gnome/compiz.
I saw artefacts in gnome shell when I move pointer to upper left and lower right.
OpenCL works with my Radeon card.
I returned back to open source driver

[Dutchy]

I also reverted to the open-source driver.
Performance wise it doesn't really matter which one I use but with 11-9 I keep finding more and more glitches.
Most I can live with like some Virtual Box guest addition weirdness or the notification errors a few programs have but somehow it won't let me take proper screenshots.

At least it has finally improved so hopefully next release will be truly useful.