Testing AMD’s New FirePro Linux Driver With The FirePro V8750

“Earlier this month AMD rolled out a new workstation graphics
card driver, which is effectively the same Catalyst driver used by
the consumer-oriented Radeon graphics cards but with greater
testing and certification for the ATI workstation offerings. The
press release announcing this new driver was titled “Application
Performance Increases By Up To 20 Percent with Latest ATI FirePro
Graphics Driver,” so we decided to see if this proprietary driver
really lives up to its claims under Linux.

“Also stated in the AMD press release is that this newest
FirePro graphics driver update adds support for stereo 3D and audio
over DisplayPort. According to this press statement, the areas
where the workstation 3D performance should be more than 20% faster
are for CATIA, 3DS Max, and ProENGINEER, among others. The
DisplayPort audio that works with the ATI FirePro graphics cards
offering such connections will allow up to 5.1 Dolby Digital and
5.1 DTS surround sound along with 8-channel uncompressed audio.
While not directly related to this effort, AMD has also announced
they will begin issuing bi-monthly workstation driver updates for
those notebook users with a mobile FirePro graphics processor.”

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