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January 29th, 2009, 18:15 GMT · By Marius Nestor

Latest ATI Linux Video Driver Introduces Full OpenGL 3.0 Support

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AMD has just announced a new and improved version of its ATI Catalyst Linux display driver, available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. ATI Catalyst 9.1 introduces final and stable support for the Ubuntu 8.10 Linux operating system, full OpenGL 3.0 support, Hybrid CrossFire support and Multiview support.

While the support for Ubuntu 8.10 is now in a mature stage, the newly introduced support for Hybrid Graphics delivers to its AMD 780G/780D and ATI Radeon HD 2400/3400 owners a substantial 3D performance boost. But, the most important feature of ATI Catalyst 9.1 is the full support for OpenGL 3.0. The following OpenGL 3.0 extensions have been added in ATI Catalyst 9.1:

· ARB_framebuffer_object
· ARB_half_float_vertex
· ARB_texture_rg
· EXT_texture_array
· EXT_texture_integer
· EXT_transform_feedback
· NV_conditional_render
· WGL/GLX_create_context (for new 3.0 contexts)
· GLSL 1.3
· ARB_color_buffer_float
· ARB_vertex_array_object
· EXT_draw_buffers2.

Last but not least, ATI Catalyst 9.1 allows users to render applications using single or multiple GPU configurations with individual displays. The following graphics cards are supported by the Multiview feature: ATI Radeon 2000 and 3000 series. The Multiview settings can be found in the "Display Properties" tab of the Catalyst Control Center. For more details about the resolved/known issues in this release, take a look at the official release notes in PDF format.

Requirements:

· X.Org 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 or 7.4
· Linux kernel 2.6 or higher
· glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
· Support for POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) is necessary for 3D programs
· The following packages should be installed on your system: XFree86-Mesa-libGL, libstdc++, libgcc, XFree86-libs, fontconfig, freetype and zlib.

Supported operating systems:

· Red Hat Enterprise Linux
· Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux
· Ubuntu 8.10.

Detailed installation instructions can be found here, in PDF format.

Download the ATI/AMD Linux Display Driver 9.1 right now from Softpedia.

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READER COMMENTS:

Comment #1 by: alalal on 30 Jan 2009, 03:58 UTC	reply to this comment
I would use it but since the article says stable support for ubuntu and not my distro, I guess I won't. It's a shame when a site needs to use the ubuntu buzzword for page hits.

Comment #1.1 by: Marius Nestor on 30 Jan 2009, 07:34 GMT

From the official release notes:

"This release of ATI Catalyst Linux introduces support for the following new operating system:
• Ubuntu 8.10 production support"

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/catalyst_91_linux.pdf

Comment #2 by: Jeff on 30 Jan 2009, 16:36 UTC	reply to this comment
Now if they could only make drivers for OS X.

Comment #3 by: cantormath on 30 Jan 2009, 20:53 UTC	reply to this comment
It is about time, go AMD.

Comment #4 by: Rocky Hinten on 30 Jan 2009, 21:15 UTC

reply to this comment

There is a missing feature that I hope they have added. ATI cards have the ability to output HDTV component video signals through their DVI ports with a special adapter. I got one of these cards (traded a friend for an NVidia card) just to get this feature. I have an older HDTV capable of 1080i that only takes component video for high def signals. For my media PC, I have to have a dual boot setup because the Windows Catalyst driver lets you directly select "1080i" as a display mode. The Linux Catalyst driver doesn't. If you try to set a resolution of 1920x1080 for the second monitor, the X window system tries to "detect" the "monitor" and just pukes. Since they know their cards can do it with the Windows driver, why don't they include that in their Linux driver? Just include all the regular HD modes.

Comment #5 by: Chris Schulz on 01 Feb 2009, 09:22 UTC	reply to this comment
...and yet it still flickers when i play a video. sigh.

Comment #6 by: john on 01 Mar 2009, 19:08 UTC

reply to this comment

I'm wondering about the long list of video corruption and multi head issues: this driver looks like it doesn't promise very much in the way of stability. I'd hate to buy one of the supported cards only to find the promises of this driver is not fulfilled due to other hardware issues.

I took a risk a while back and bought an X1600 - but never got it working. I see it's still not on the list of supported cards. Why did I spend $100 on a card that lives in a drawer when all I needed was a $5 GF4-MX440 to run compiz?

Comment #7 by: marcel on 16 Nov 2009, 14:16 UTC	reply to this comment
tried the HD 4650 1GB but it's hardly better than the old radeon i had. The performances are better on web pages, but playing movie is quite bad (flickering). i tried the newest proprietary drivers. the one included in ubuntu isn't even working with kwin... i didn't find a nice nvidia agp card for my pc...

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