AMD & NV drivers - now with OpenGL 4.2 & OpenCL 1.1 support

kick · Post by **kick** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 1:30 am

Looks like AMD (for the first time) got ahead of NVIDIA with the latest ATI Catalyst drivers:

Surprise!

Catalyst 10.3.1 brings full OpenGL 4.0 support to the RadeonHD 5000 series of cards, while older cards get an upgrade to OpenGL 3.3.

Now all we need is a crapload of bugfixes, better support for physics and L5.1 profile decoding support for DXVA.

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 4:12 am

Video card: 4870 HD

The program claims I only have OpenGL 2.1 after installing 9.1. Looking deeper in the program, it says I only have 76% of OpenGL 3.0.

kick · Post by **kick** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 5:31 am

snkcube wrote:Video card: 4870 HD

The program claims I only have OpenGL 2.1 after installing 9.1. Looking deeper in the program, it says I only have 76% of OpenGL 3.0.

I need some more info like Operating System / 32 or 64 bit,number of extensions and OpenGL driver version (i.e. 2.1.8302).

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 6:35 am

OS: Windows XP Home 32-bit
Extensions: 130
OpenGL version: 2.1.8395

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 12:16 pm

Thanks kick for alerting me to the retarded ATI driver glGetString() bug (why such a function is broken is beyond me).

I'll most likely make a bugfixed version of my GL info app. Dunno when.

kick · Post by **kick** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 2:59 pm

Here's what you get with a low-end Radeon HD 2000 series card (WinXP 32bit):

The Radeon HD4k series has only one extension more (GL_AMD_texture_texture4).

Post by **grinvader** » Fri Jan 30, 2009 8:14 pm

still obvious

i'd rather grab a SD pic, at least it's not failing at what it does

Tallgeese · Post by **Tallgeese** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 1:18 am

Yeah uh, skin does not shine like that

kick · Post by **kick** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:29 pm

Thanks kick for alerting me to the retarded ATI driver glGetString() bug (why such a function is broken is beyond me).

I'll most likely make a bugfixed version of my GL info app. Dunno when.

The latest ATI driver has another stupid bug:

Besides the stupid glGetString(GL_VERSION) issue,there's another strange bug with the latest ATI driver. It has something to do with the Catalyst A.I. setting in the Catalyst Control Center (CCC):

* When Catalyst A.I is disabled everything's OK
* With Catalyst A.I enabled (slider on 'Standard' [default]) = OK
* With Catalyst A.I enabled and slider on 'Advanced' = CRASH

The crash (in the glTexImage2D function) with Catalyst A.I. comes from the texture pixel format. Some textures used by my application are in 3-channel RGB format and when CCC A.I. is set to 'Advanced', I think the driver expects a 4-channel RGBA texture to perform some clever (???) anti-aliasing tricks. My application provides a 3-channel RGB texture,so the driver crashes in glTexImage2D. I simply bypassed the Catalyst bug by setting all textures used by the application to 4-channel RGBA. Now, no matter if CCC A.I. is enabled or disabled,my application works fine (albeit with reduced performance)

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:56 pm

kick wrote:caught up with nVidia

Funny, I must have missed the bus on this one, since my nVidia WHQL release (181.20) drivers don't fully support OpenGL 3.0. Maybe I need the special beta drivers or something.

kick · Post by **kick** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 12:23 am

kode54 wrote:
kick wrote:caught up with nVidia
Funny, I must have missed the bus on this one, since my nVidia WHQL release (181.20) drivers don't fully support OpenGL 3.0.

Upgrade your drivers. 181.22 is the latest WHQL driver at the moment (171 extensions)

Maybe I need the special beta drivers or something.

You need the 'NVemulate' utility to enable full OpenGL3 support on Windows.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 5:56 am

kick wrote:Upgrade your drivers. 181.22 is the latest WHQL driver at the moment (171 extensions)

Yeah, I heard. Whoopie, new PhysX runtime.

kick wrote:You need the 'NVemulate' utility to enable full OpenGL3 support on Windows.

I didn't think that was necessary with the correct drivers, heh.

h4tred · Post by **h4tred** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:20 pm

Funny, I can use OpenGL geometry shaders just fine, yet that test fails....Go figure. And I am running a 9800GT.

EDIT: Oh wai....using ARB geo shaders instead of GLSL.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:42 am

AMD released a hotfix for AGP hd2000 and 3000 cards under Vista.

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 1:58 pm

9.1 AGP Hotfix released for Vista & XP

Nice

I hope this one (finally) fixes the most stupid bugs ever introduced in a driver: Broken SSE detection code causing BSODs on all CPUs without SSE3 (forcing one to use a third-party patch as a workaround) and FUBAR'd video acceleration with HD2k cards.

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 5:15 pm

No need to post your info anymore.
GLSL 1.30 *is* actually there,but it's not detected because of another stupid bug in the AMD/ATI driver.It will be fixed in the next release.

GLSL Version: 1.20 = BUG! (should be fixed in the next version of Catalyst)

Great - three (new) stupid bugs introduced with this driver release

Squall_Leonhart · Post by **Squall_Leonhart** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:48 pm

AMD shouldn't enable things till they are sure its ready.

Hence why Nvidia hasn't activated OGL3 and GLSL 1.3 in their own drivers yet.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 2:38 am

Squall_Leonhart wrote:AMD shouldn't enable things till they are sure its ready.

consider that ATi has ALWAYS done this (if not similar) even back when they've been away from AMD

Squall_Leonhart · Post by **Squall_Leonhart** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:40 am

adventure_of_link wrote:
Squall_Leonhart wrote:AMD shouldn't enable things till they are sure its ready.
consider that ATi has ALWAYS done this (if not similar) even back when they've been away from AMD

Remember that they'd disable things without needing to also.

kick · Post by **kick** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 10:01 pm

kick wrote:I hope this one will finally fix the FUBAR'd video acceleration with HD2000 cards.

Nope

http://stashbox.org/396349/HD2600_Video ... _XPSP3.png

F****** POS drivers

Everything else works great,except video acceleration (the thing I bought this card for)

I'm really tired of this crap,having to wait a whole f****** year until I can finally use this card (as with any ATi card before this one).Definitely switching to nVidia next time,even if that means having lower performance for the buck,worse TV out and multimonitor support,worse colors and image quality.At least with nVidia cards everything works as it should.

shit hardware + good drivers > good hardware + bug-ridden drivers

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:49 pm

Uh, check the Nvidia forum before jumping ship... they also have somewhat hopeless TV out and stuff too.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=34 ... owforum=33

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 3:41 am

comprehension fail

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 3:51 am

and now you all understand my point I made several months ago about nvidia > ATi

oh btw, IIRC isn't there some kind of programming hack you have to put into some programs? I believe it was discussed in the gambatte thread.

kick · Post by **kick** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:35 am

adventure_of_link wrote:and now you all understand my point I made several months ago about nvidia > ATi

oh btw, IIRC isn't there some kind of programming hack you have to put into some programs? I believe it was discussed in the gambatte thread.

That's for *really old* ATi cards,newer ones don't need that hack.

and now you all understand my point I made several months ago about nvidia > ATi

Not really.

ATI cards are better if you buy an older model or have the patience to wait one year until you can use every feature of the card. Old cards work great (mature drivers),just don't buy a new one when it's released or you'll regret your purchase.

With nVidia,every feature works right from day 1 (the 3dfx team they acquired makes really solid drivers),but you'll have to deal with other problems like hardware-related issues and 'over-optimized' drivers*

* The result of over-optimized drivers is noticeably lower image quality compared to ATI cards and really bad issues like this one here:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=15 ... opic=88670

Boot times with nVidia cards are also longer.

kick · Post by **kick** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:22 am

Another weird thing about the ATI cards is the extremely bad performance on Windows without drivers (using VgaSave) and in Safe Mode.With the older cards it was tolerable,but with the latest series it's a pain in the ass,like watching a slideshow.Older nVidia cards were optimized for this mode,so the performance was close to the one with native drivers.
If you do a lot of (troubleshooting/cleaning/repair) work in Safe Mode,this can be a real problem.
I don't know if the latest nVidia cards now have the same problem as the ATI ones (since they lack dedicated 2D hardware)

ZSNES board

AMD & NV drivers - now with OpenGL 4.2 & OpenCL 1.1 support

AMD & NV drivers - now with OpenGL 4.2 & OpenCL 1.1 support

Even more bugs

Re: AMD brings full OpenGL 3 support to RadeonHD cards

Re: AMD brings full OpenGL 3 support to RadeonHD cards

Re: AMD brings full OpenGL 3 support to RadeonHD cards