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

[kode54]

Yeah, holy shit, Microsoft (only tools spell it with a dollar sign) invented a new way to fuck with you: Opening ports to facilitate file and printer sharing! News at 11!

[franpa]

And UAC is a useful tool, as not every process that is launched can pop up a UAC dialog to ask for full elevation, and even for processes that can, it's still a measure better than every single process that opens having total access to your complete Windows installation. Then again, as everyone becomes conditioned to just stab the Yes button, or tab-tab-tab-enter/space, it won't be so useful anymore. On the other hand, some people may be suspicious of random processes suddenly needing elevation to do things other than install software... Oh wait, installing, that's all malware needs to do anyway. Elevated once, then it sets itself up the rootkit or whatnot and never needs to be elevated manually again. Well, whatever.

Exactly, also I think there was a new virus fairly recently that a lot of the main A/V companies software missed but was thwarted by UAC. (It got into your system if UAC was off)

[sweener2001]

i've quashed one thing with a UAC prompt. so, i keep it on.

[paulguy]

Yeah, nothing wrong with a process requesting elevation, rather than just being able to do whatever by default, or not any ability to do anything without reloading. Some graphical Linux programs as well as some sh based installers use a similar mechanism.

[kick]

Catalyst 11.1a brings some cool new features for AMD cards:

- New OpenGL extensions (216 total) + bugfixes
- Greatly improved OpenCL performance (~2x faster)
- Tesselation slider for controlling the tess. level and a new 'AMD Optimized' tessellation setting
- A much more stable (less buggy) CCC2

[kick]

In the news:

* Intel updated it's OpenCL SDK - now with full OpenCL 1.1 support

* NVIDIA strikes back - SRAA (Subpixel Reconstruction Anti Aliasing) to counter AMD's MLAA. Gotta love competition

* AMD finally fixed the screen tearing (VSync) issue on Linux with Catalyst 11.1 - awesome!

[kick]

And now AMD finally opens up video decode acceleration (XvBA) on Linux.

Nice

[kode54]

But their hardware still can't do 1080p60.

[kick]

But their hardware still can't do 1080p60.

1080p60 is working fine here with UVD 2.2 (on Windows, with the ffdshow DXVA decoder).

It's QuadHD (3840x2160) VA that doesn't work at all with AMD cards (QuadHD H.264 is a bitch to decode)

[kode54]

Failed Tests
- 1080p60 60 fps L5.1 H.264

While going through our media streamer test suite, we found that many 1080p60 H264 clips wouldn't play properly.
...
We had protracted communication with both Dell and AMD, and it was one of the main sources of delay with respect to the publishing of this review. We waited quite a bit to see whether driver updates would fix the issue, but release after release went by without any improvement in the situation. After Catalyst 11.1, we gave up.

Yeah, that UVD3 hardware really sounds like it's only having problems with QuadHD. Yup, no problems with 1080p60.

[kick]

Yeah, that UVD3 hardware really sounds like it's only having problems with QuadHD. Yup, no problems with 1080p60.

AMD's support for 1080p60 in its lowest end cards is laughable. You need at least a HD 5570 (or a 6xxx series low-end discrete card with UVD3) for smooth 1080p60 playback.

Ganesh T S
Reviewer / Analyst, AnandTech Inc.

It's their crappy drivers, not their hardware. I know the hardware is more than capable of playing back 1080p60 L5.1 H.264 camera clips. I managed to play those videos smoothly on a HD3300 IGP with "UVD2 lite".

[kick]

UPDATE: I finally found out the cause of the Windows Firewall issue - it's not caused by any of the AMD Fusion services, but by a Windows 7 (64-bit) bug

Here's how to reproduce it:

- You must have a manually assigned/configured NIC/IP address/router
- DHCP service disabled
- DNS Service disabled (DNS caching by Windows disabled)
- Windows Firewall enabled
- Antivirus software installed
- CCC Installed
- Reboot the computer

When Windows 7 64-bit loads, the Windows Firewall encounters a permission error and doesn't load on startup. But starting the service manually works without issues (weird)

The issue is still not solved by Microsoft & the Support Team (they don't know how to fix it or what's causing it. All of their suggestions/possible solutions don't work. LOL)

[kick]

New AMD drivers (Catalyst 11.5a hotfix Rev.3) with more OpenGL extensions and important GL bugfixes.
Total extension count increased to 220

On the NVIDIA side, there's even more - the latest beta driver sets a new record with 274 (!)
(NOTE: Some of them are NVIDIA-exclusive + there's 18 new GL ES extensions for WebGL)

[Gil_Hamilton]

New AMD drivers (Catalyst 11.5a hotfix Rev.3) with more OpenGL extensions and important GL bugfixes.
Total extension count increased to 220

On the NVIDIA side, there's even more - the latest beta driver sets a new record with 274 (!)
(NOTE:many of then are NVIDIA-exclusive and there's 18 new extensions for WebGL)

Seriously? Manufacturer-specific OpenGL extensions?

I'm gonna release a card with FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SEVEN OGL extension supported.
All exclusive. With such promising names as GLDrawBlankScreen() and GLDestroyMonitor()

[grinvader]

Seriously? Manufacturer-specific OpenGL extensions?

I'm gonna release a card with FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SEVEN OGL extension supported.
All exclusive. With such promising names as GLDrawBlankScreen() and GLDestroyMonitor()

Was thinking the same..

GLBlit1tex(), GLBlit2tex(), GLBlit3tex(), .... GLSummonRaptor(), GLKnifeEyeAttack(), and so on.

[Gil_Hamilton]

It shall be engraved upon your soul! Divine assault! GLNibelungValesti()

[odditude]

GLExtFartInThyGeneralDirection()

[kick]

Both NVIDIA and AMD have released beta drivers with OpenGL 4.2 support.
NOTE: AMD's beta driver may not have all the extensions yet. Instead we get most of the GL 4.2 stuff + loads of bugfixes (which is even better IMO).
The stability, performance and image quality has improved a lot since the last official release).

Special thanks goes to this guy:
http://www.g-truc.net/post-0417.html#menu
for providing OpenGL test samples and filing bug reports to the AMD and NVIDIA driver teams.

[mudlord88]

Oh? So ATI is no longer shite when it comes to OpenGL?
Has hell froze over?

and yes, g-truc's site is utter win. Archiving of all decent extension usage code samples. Including native OGL 3 code!

And no other site has such win. Sadly. And MS's DX11 documentation is just as shoddy as the Khronos Group's.

tsk tsk.

[adventure_of_link]

Oh? So ATI is no longer shite when it comes to OpenGL?
Has hell froze over?

No, hell would actually freeze over the moment ATi and third party OS'es play nice (like Linux, BSD, etc)

[Gil_Hamilton]

Oh? So ATI is no longer shite when it comes to OpenGL?
Has hell froze over?

No, hell would actually freeze over the moment ATi and third party OS'es play nice (like Linux, BSD, etc)

Windows is made by AMD? I NEVER KNEW!

[Rashidi]

Oh? So ATI is no longer shite when it comes to OpenGL?
Has hell froze over?

No, hell would actually freeze over the moment ATi and third party OS'es play nice (like Linux, BSD, etc)

Windows is made by AMD? I NEVER KNEW!

Perhaps what he mean was Third Rate OS? you'know like third world countries?

[Deathlike2]

I've been very pissed off at NVidia's XP drivers post 260.xx series. There are Flash issues that occur... including browser freezing/OS unresponsiveness/BSODs.

I know this is an XP whine, but tbh, these things shouldn't happen.

Also, in the 270.xx series that I've used last... the freaking driver updating stuff seems to be massively bugged (at least some error message comes with it when I check a setting). Very annoying crap.

[kick]

UPDATE: The latest AMD beta driver finally adds the missing GL 4.2 extensions and the GL 4.2 context.

[I.S.T.]

I've been very pissed off at NVidia's XP drivers post 260.xx series. There are Flash issues that occur... including browser freezing/OS unresponsiveness/BSODs.

I know this is an XP whine, but tbh, these things shouldn't happen.

Also, in the 270.xx series that I've used last... the freaking driver updating stuff seems to be massively bugged (at least some error message comes with it when I check a setting). Very annoying crap.

Apparently that is more of an Adobe problem.

Also, while I don't run XP very often, post 260.xx runs fine on my system.