Shader problems with ATI Radeon drivers [Solved]

Website · Post by **Cody** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:28 pm

Earlier today I updated my Radeon HD 3650 driver from 9.10 to 9.11
First thing I did was launch Oolite, looking for some small improvement in Shaders.

WTF… my Griff ship set had lost all colour and texture.
They looked like fresh, unpainted aluminium… tinny.

I’ve now re-installed 9.10 and will be contacting ATI soon.

Anybody else had such a problem?

lfnfan · Post by **lfnfan** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:33 pm

wait till Screet hears about this...poor ATI!

I'm just upgraded my HD4670 from 9.6 to 9.10 and all seemed ok. Never was an 'early adopter'.

How do the nebulae look, btw?

Website · Post by **Cody** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:43 pm

Nebulae... and in general:

From 9.6 to 9.9 the improvement was very obvious.
From 9.9 to 9.10 no difference.

9.11... well, two more OpenGL extensions and the above problem.

Bah!

prallo · Post by **prallo** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 5:46 am

No problem here with the new 9.11 drivers.
Shader are OK, nebulas are OK.
Everything fine here !

lfnfan · Post by **lfnfan** » Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:34 am

what's your graphics card, prallo?

prallo · Post by **prallo** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 10:13 am

ATI Radeon 4870

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:14 pm

lfnfan wrote:
wait till Screet hears about this...poor ATI!

Indeed I recently found out that the 9.8 driver which is the latest for X800XTPE still has the nebulae problem - but subentities and textures usually show properly now. Only two ships had a problem, one being entirely black and the other visible for a fraction of a second and then completely invisible (in theshipyard) - reproducibly.

I'm just so glad that I was able to exchange the 4870x2. It's a shame that they build such nice cards with lousy drivers which ruin the experience. Hope they'll learn...

Screet

Website · Post by **Cody** » Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:30 pm

Screet wrote:
It's a shame that they build such nice cards with lousy drivers which ruin the experience. Hope they'll learn...

Yeah, agree with that.

Prallo, have you got any Griff ships installed? If so, do they still look nornal with 9.11?

prallo · Post by **prallo** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 4:16 am

I didn´t have a griff ship installed but of course I tried it out.
And yes, the griff ships look strange.

I play with neolites.oxp, famous_planets.oxp and system_redux.oxp and everything is fine.
Why the griff ships look strange ?

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 11:36 am

prallo wrote:
I didn´t have a griff ship installed but of course I tried it out.
And yes, the griff ships look strange.
I play with neolites.oxp, famous_planets.oxp and system_redux.oxp and everything is fine.
Why the griff ships look strange ?

I think Griff pushes the shader code quite hard - that may be the reason?

Website · Post by **Cody** » Sun Nov 22, 2009 1:25 pm

prallo wrote:
And yes, the griff ships look strange.

Thanks, Prallo, I had a feeling it was only the Griff ships.
DH is probably right about the shader code.

I'll stick with 9.10 for the time being.
It's pointless trying to contact ATI.

Regards

Website · Post by **Cody** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:05 pm

I just installed the latest ATI 9.12 driver.

Exactly the same result as 9.11.

Back to 9.10 again.

<sigh>

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:09 am

DaddyHoggy wrote:
I think Griff pushes the shader code quite hard - that may be the reason?

Hmmm...at least for some old oxp which used a buggy version of griffs shader code (IIRC that's fixed otherwise) I had the result that the ATI drivers failed with it while nVidia simply took it without any problems.

Screet

Website · Post by **Cody** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:15 am

I just tried to e-mail AMD/ATI and got this:

Email Submission Form is Temporarily Unavailable

Due to AMD office closures during the holiday period, Customer Care via our Email Submission Form is temporarily unavailable.
We encourage you to seek assistance via the following self-service options during this time:

AMD Support Knowledgebase
AMD Support Forums

Our offices will return to normal operating hours on Monday January 4th, 2010, at which time all Customer Care services will be restored.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

They have a nice long holiday there, don't they.

<sighs again>

_ds_ · Post by **_ds_** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:19 am

El Viejo wrote:
I just tried to e-mail AMD/ATI and got this:

Email Submission Form is Temporarily Unavailable
[…]

FWIW, open-source 3D support for the R600- and R700-series cards (basically, RadeonHD [2-4]xxx) isn't that far away… actually, I think that it's here now if you're prepared to build some things from git source. (xf86-video-ati certainly, mesa probably, X probably, libdrm probably… I don't know if Linux 2.6.31.* or .32.* are new enough, but .33, for which the first -rc is yet to be released, will be.)