AMD commits to serious open source Radeon driver development

Brian Ambrozy 7 Sep, 2007 at 9:42am ET Article published in Tech

AMD has partnered with Novell’s SuSE development team to bring higher Linux performance to Radeon HD and Radeon 1000-series cards. On September 10th, 2007, they’ll be releasing a driver package with initial focus on 2D performance. They have committed to following up with focus on 3D and media codec performance.

This bodes well for those who want to game on Linux. High performance video drivers have been a sore spot for a long time.

See the official press release for more info.

Comments

7 Sep 2007 ~ 10:18am Sledgehammer70 They needed to do this like 5 years ago
7 Sep 2007 ~ 10:20am GrayFox Anyone want to buy a nvidia 7900GS ?.

Nvidia's linux drivers are becoming progressively less maintained, since vista's release.

AMD has chosen the right path, All of my future cards will be AMD/ATI based.

Sledgehammer70 wrote:

They needed to do this like 5 years ago

They did something like this with the radeon 7500. (However they didn't follow it up with the 8500)
7 Sep 2007 ~ 3:02pm Sledgehammer70 We will see if they actually do good with their 3d performance...
7 Sep 2007 ~ 5:33pm muddocktor

Sledgehammer70 wrote:

We will see if they actually do good with their 3d performance...

I haven't done any gaming on Linux but from what I have read in the past, ATI/AMD's drivers sucked pretty badly. Hopefully they will put substance to their words this time.
7 Sep 2007 ~ 5:46pm Sledgehammer70 I have a feeling their drivers will become okay. It will take a huge leap for them to become better than Nvidia's current offerings.

I bet this announcement has even put a fire under Nvidia's butt to make their drivers even better.
7 Sep 2007 ~ 7:45pm Qeldroma

muddocktor wrote:

I haven't done any gaming on Linux but from what I have read in the past, ATI/AMD's drivers sucked pretty badly. Hopefully they will put substance to their words this time.

I think it was ATI that had issues about writing Linux drivers because it simply "was not cost-effective" at the time. I think with AMD at the helm now, this policy has changed.