- AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver for Linux 15.9
- This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.
- Overview
- What’s New
- Specs
- Related Drivers 10
- Introduction
- Identifying your graphics card or APU
- Unsupported chips
- Supported, but hardware is too old for Unity
- AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver for Linux 15.9
- This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.
- Overview
- What’s New
- Specs
- Related Drivers 10
AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver for Linux 15.9
This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.
Overview
What’s New
Specs
Related Drivers 10
New Features:
- AMD PowerXpress support for laptops equipped with Intel 6th generation (Skylake) CPUs
- Linux Platform Atomics & SVM Fine Grain Buffer support for Carrizo APUs
- Multi-Device support for OpenCL 2.0
Resolved Issues:
- [425910] Driver installation sometimes fails on Ubuntu 14.04.3
- [424450] Company of Heroes 2 — Game crashes while running the performance test
- [424794] Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor — Corruption observed in game
- [424882] DIRT Showdown — Corruption observed in game
- [425234] DIRT Showdown — Game crashes after the loading screen
- [424802] DOTA 2 – Application hang observed while exiting the game
- [424255] AMD Catalyst Installer removing EGL links resulting in Xserver/Xorg load failure
- [423471] Unable to switch desktop mode after installing AMD Catalyst driver
- [423735] Renaming Counter-Strike: GO and other Steam game binary improves performance
Known Issues:
The AMD Catalyst 14.4 Driver for Linux is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility
- AMD Radeon R9 290 Series
- AMD Radeon R5 230 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 280 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 270 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 260 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 250 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 240 Series
- ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series
AMD All-In-One Desktop Product Family Compatibility
- AMD Radeon HD 7600A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6600A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7450A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6350A Series
AMD Embedded Product Family Compatibility
AMD APU Product Family Compatibility
- Desktop
- A-Series AMD Radeon R7 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R6 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R3 Graphics
- AMD Radeon HD 8000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000G Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000G Series
AMD Mobility Product Family Compatibility
- AMD Radeon R9 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000M Series
- AMD Radeon R7 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series
- AMD Radeon R5 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000M Series
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series
Distributions supported:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Suite 7.1, 7.0, 6.6, 6.5
- Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, 14.04.2, 15.04
- SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3, 12
- OpenSuSE 13.1
- Distribution specific packages are available for:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Suite 7.1, 7.0, 6.6, 6.5
- Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, 14.04.2
System Requirements:
Before attempting to install the AMD Catalyst Linux graphics driver, the following software must be installed:
- Xorg/Xserver 7.4 and above (up to 1.15)
- Linux kernel 2.6 or above (up to 3.15)
- glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
- POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is required for 3D applications
Note: If a Linux 2.6.11 or newer kernel was built with CONFIG_AGP enabled, the kernel AGP frontend is required to load the fglrx kernel module. To identify whether your kernel with CONFIG_AGP enabled, look for CONFIG_AGP=y in the kernel config file, or if the ‘agpgart’ module is loaded
System Recommendations:
For optimal performance and ease of use, the following are available:
- Kernel module build environment
- Kernel source code include either the Kernel Source or Kernel Headers packages
- The RPM utility should be installed and configured correctly on your system, if you intend to install via RPM packages
The following packages must be installed in order for the AMD Catalyst Linux graphics driver to install and work optimally:
- gimp-help-en
- gimp-help-common
- XFree86-Mesa-libGL
- libstdc++
- libgcc
- XFree86-libs
- fontconfig
- freetype
- zlib
- gcc
Here’s other similar drivers that are different versions or releases for different operating systems:
Introduction
This guide shows you how to use the open source Radeon driver for some ATI/AMD graphics cards and APUs, which is part of the xserver-xorg-video-ati package.
This driver provides 2D and 3D acceleration in your video hardware. For the most recent releases of Ubuntu (and its flavours) this driver is usually as fast as the closed-source, proprietary fglrx driver (called AMD Catalyst) from AMD Inc. Furthermore the Radeon driver supports some older chipsets that fglrx does not.The Radeon driver is already pre-installed in Ubuntu.
Identifying your graphics card or APU
First, check your graphic card name and chipset:
sudo update-pciids #optional command, requires internet
lspci -nn | grep -E 'VGA|Display'
It should report something like this for your graphics card and/or APU:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV710 [Radeon HD 4550]
If the report shows two different hardware devices, then you probably have a «hybrid graphics» system, with an iGP (integrated graphics processor inside the CPU) and a dedicated GPU.
Unsupported chips
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and newer: for some most recent graphics cards (R9 285, R9 380/380X, R9 M395X, R9 Nano/Fury/FuryX, RX 460/470/480, RX 550/560/570/580. ) and APUs (Carrizo, Stoney), the open-source AMDGPU driver is enabled by default. For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS AMDGPU-Pro hybrid driver is also available to download here (please read the release notes for known problems and limitations).
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: if you have Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with Linux kernel 4.4.0 (HWE stack Xenial), you can’t install the proprietary fglrx/Catalyst driver. However the open source AMDGPU driver is available to install through the xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu package.
Supported, but hardware is too old for Unity
These cards will not run Ubuntu’s Unity desktop with 3D acceleration. They will still run Unity, but the CPU will be used for basic drawing and performance may suffer. If you have one of these cards, a lighter desktop (such as XFCE or LXDE, found in Xubuntu and Lubuntu respectively) is recommended.
AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver for Linux 15.9
This particular software suite updates the AMD Catalyst Display Driver and the AMD Catalyst Control Center. This unified driver has been updated, and is designed to provide enhanced performance and reliability.
Overview
What’s New
Specs
Related Drivers 10
New Features:
- AMD PowerXpress support for laptops equipped with Intel 6th generation (Skylake) CPUs
- Linux Platform Atomics & SVM Fine Grain Buffer support for Carrizo APUs
- Multi-Device support for OpenCL 2.0
Resolved Issues:
- [425910] Driver installation sometimes fails on Ubuntu 14.04.3
- [424450] Company of Heroes 2 — Game crashes while running the performance test
- [424794] Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor — Corruption observed in game
- [424882] DIRT Showdown — Corruption observed in game
- [425234] DIRT Showdown — Game crashes after the loading screen
- [424802] DOTA 2 – Application hang observed while exiting the game
- [424255] AMD Catalyst Installer removing EGL links resulting in Xserver/Xorg load failure
- [423471] Unable to switch desktop mode after installing AMD Catalyst driver
- [423735] Renaming Counter-Strike: GO and other Steam game binary improves performance
Known Issues:
The AMD Catalyst 14.4 Driver for Linux is compatible with the following AMD products.
AMD Desktop Product Family Compatibility
- AMD Radeon R9 290 Series
- AMD Radeon R5 230 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 280 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 270 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 260 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 250 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 240 Series
- ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series
AMD All-In-One Desktop Product Family Compatibility
- AMD Radeon HD 7600A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6600A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7450A Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6350A Series
AMD Embedded Product Family Compatibility
AMD APU Product Family Compatibility
- Desktop
- A-Series AMD Radeon R7 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R6 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
- A-Series AMD Radeon R3 Graphics
- AMD Radeon HD 8000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000D Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000G Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000G Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000G Series
AMD Mobility Product Family Compatibility
- AMD Radeon R9 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 7000M Series
- AMD Radeon R7 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series
- AMD Radeon R5 M200 Series
- AMD Radeon HD 8000M Series
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series
Distributions supported:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Suite 7.1, 7.0, 6.6, 6.5
- Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, 14.04.2, 15.04
- SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3, 12
- OpenSuSE 13.1
- Distribution specific packages are available for:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Suite 7.1, 7.0, 6.6, 6.5
- Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, 14.04.2
System Requirements:
Before attempting to install the AMD Catalyst Linux graphics driver, the following software must be installed:
- Xorg/Xserver 7.4 and above (up to 1.15)
- Linux kernel 2.6 or above (up to 3.15)
- glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
- POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is required for 3D applications
Note: If a Linux 2.6.11 or newer kernel was built with CONFIG_AGP enabled, the kernel AGP frontend is required to load the fglrx kernel module. To identify whether your kernel with CONFIG_AGP enabled, look for CONFIG_AGP=y in the kernel config file, or if the ‘agpgart’ module is loaded
System Recommendations:
For optimal performance and ease of use, the following are available:
- Kernel module build environment
- Kernel source code include either the Kernel Source or Kernel Headers packages
- The RPM utility should be installed and configured correctly on your system, if you intend to install via RPM packages
The following packages must be installed in order for the AMD Catalyst Linux graphics driver to install and work optimally:
- gimp-help-en
- gimp-help-common
- XFree86-Mesa-libGL
- libstdc++
- libgcc
- XFree86-libs
- fontconfig
- freetype
- zlib
- gcc
Here’s other similar drivers that are different versions or releases for different operating systems: