# AMD Releases OpenGL 4.0 Drivers **URL:** \ **Category:** OpenGL\ **Tags:** drivers\ **Created:** [March 25, 2010, 10:57am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416 "2010-03-25T10:57:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gsellers](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/9fc29f/32.png) [@gsellers](https://community.khronos.org/u/gsellers)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 10:57am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/1 "2010-03-25T10:57:01Z")
AMD has released a preview (beta) of our OpenGL 4.0 drivers for ATI Radeon HD 5000 series. It also includes support for OpenGL 3.3 on ATI Radeon HD and ATI FirePro Graphics Adapters. More information (including links to drivers) here: [http://links.amd.com/OpenGL](http://links.amd.com/OpenGL) Graham ---
**Author:** ![Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/alfonse_reinheart/32/4357_2.png) [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/u/Alfonse_Reinheart)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 11:13am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/2 "2010-03-25T11:13:06Z")
Well… that was unexpected. ---
**Author:** ![Rob\_Barris](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/c4cdca/32.png) [@Rob\_Barris](https://community.khronos.org/u/Rob_Barris)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 11:38am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/3 "2010-03-25T11:38:31Z")
> [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](#): > > Well… that was unexpected. OTOH your style is somewhat predictable ! ---
**Author:** ![Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/alfonse_reinheart/32/4357_2.png) [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/u/Alfonse_Reinheart)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 11:42am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/4 "2010-03-25T11:42:57Z")
For previous versions of OpenGL, it took them a good 3 months or so to have drivers out. So it’s far from unreasonable to say that it is unexpected for them to have beta 3.3 and 4.0 drivers out in less than a month. ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 1:04pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/5 "2010-03-25T13:04:12Z")
I agree with “unexpected” but with a smile it would haven’t kill anyone. We all noticed the increase of commitment by AMD during the past 1 or 2 years. They had work to catch up and this is a proof they fill up most of the gap. A personnal satisfaction point to me: the release of OpenGL 4.0 drivers before nVidia. Just that nVidia always has to say “We are first and so awesome”. It might be true and I think it is but being humble is a nice attitude too. I would find a lot of person calling that “education”. Look what it does: making people angry all the time like Alfonce. 😛 Nice work! 😃 Nice one, I like this playing someone else game and beat him. ---
**Author:** ![Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/alfonse_reinheart/32/4357_2.png) [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/u/Alfonse_Reinheart)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 2:00pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/6 "2010-03-25T14:00:55Z")
> A personnal satisfaction point to me: the release of OpenGL 4.0 drivers before nVidia. To be fair though, it helps when you have 4.0 capable hardware actually out 😉 Anyway, I wasn’t intending to be negative with regard to the release. Think of it as “cautiously optimistic.” I do my main development on NVIDIA cards because of stable OpenGL support, but the current state of NVIDIA cards has had me looking towards ATI’s offerings. I would probably already have had an HD 4xxx or 5xxx card if I could count more on ATI’s OpenGL implementation. ---
**Author:** ![barthold](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@barthold](https://community.khronos.org/u/barthold)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/7 "2010-03-25T20:55:36Z")
Regardless of your preference for OpenGL vendor, this is good news for OpenGL. For the viability of the only cross-platform 3D graphics API, both across OSes as well as across a wide range of devices (phones through workstations), we need implementations rapidly following spec releases. Plus, competition is good for all of you 🙂 Congratulations to AMD with their OpenGL 4 driver release. Barthold (with my ARB hat on) ---
**Author:** ![Heiko](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/heiko/32/127_2.png) [@Heiko](https://community.khronos.org/u/Heiko)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/8 "2010-03-25T23:29:00Z")
Very nice job AMD! ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/9 "2010-03-26T02:49:12Z")
> [@barthold](#): > > Plus, competition is good for all of you 🙂 I follow that! Beware because if you continue that way the Khronos Group is going to kill the competition … with Direct3D! Ok ok, we are not there yet but I like to think that with all the good work you have been doing it might happen. Well, “I like” expect that I hope that Direct3D will remain to be a good competitor. ---
**Author:** ![ZbuffeR](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/ce7236/32.png) [@ZbuffeR](https://community.khronos.org/u/ZbuffeR)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 1:53pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/10 "2010-03-26T13:53:21Z")
Anyone with ideas/details about GL\_AMD\_conservative\_depth ? ---
**Author:** ![Ilian\_Dinev](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/ilian_dinev/32/109_2.png) [@Ilian\_Dinev](https://community.khronos.org/u/Ilian_Dinev)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/11 "2010-03-26T15:14:39Z")
I bet it’s the feature, where you hint/specify the maximum deviation of the gl\_FragDepth (when you’re specifying/overwriting it in the shader). Useful to not-trash the whole Hi-Z culling compression. ---
**Author:** ![CatAtWork](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@CatAtWork](https://community.khronos.org/u/CatAtWork)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 3:40pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/12 "2010-03-26T15:40:51Z")
So do the 5700 and lower 5000 series support double precision natively? I thought they did not. Edit: A 5770 supports gpu\_shader5 with these drivers, but is this emulated? ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 4:52pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/13 "2010-03-26T16:52:40Z")
Yes, this is emulation using 2 floats values: super slow! In this drivers it’s not supposed to work yet… Following OpenGL convention the drivers should not return GL\_ARB\_gpu\_shader\_fp64 or OpenGL 4.0 version. Well… it’s preview drivers… ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/14 "2010-03-26T18:26:23Z")
First test and problem: I create an OpenGL 3.3 context. I use: glGetIntegerv(GL\_MAJOR\_VERSION, &MajorVersion); glGetIntegerv(GL\_MINOR\_VERSION, &MinorVersion); It returns 4.0 😛 (Same with 3.0 / 3.2) ---
**Author:** ![Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/alfonse_reinheart/32/4357_2.png) [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/u/Alfonse_Reinheart)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 8:58pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/15 "2010-03-26T20:58:13Z")
This is 100% valid behavior. Read the WGL\_ARB\_context\_create specification again. The current version (after ARB\_context\_create\_profile was added) says that you can get the version you asked for or any higher version, so long as no functionality from the version you asked for was removed since between the two. Nothing was removed between 3.3 and 4.0, so this is perfectly legitimate. ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 5:47am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/16 "2010-03-27T05:47:17Z")
Ah ok so at least when I request OpenGL 3.0 or 3.1 I should not get 4.0. Thanks for the clarifications! ---
**Author:** ![Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/alfonse_reinheart/32/4357_2.png) [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/u/Alfonse_Reinheart)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2010, 1:42pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/17 "2010-03-27T13:42:40Z")
> Ah ok so at least when I request OpenGL 3.0 or 3.1 I should not get 4.0. No, you can still get that. What you will get is the 4.0 compatibility profile. And since the extension disallows you from asking for 3.0/3.1 + core, this remains perfectly legal behavior. The idea is that you shouldn’t care as long as you’re getting at least what you ask for. ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 5:52am UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/18 "2010-03-28T05:52:15Z")
Some more problems I encounter: - Conditional rendering with GL\_ANY\_SAMPLES\_PASSED =\> hard reset. - When I was playing around with the (amazing and please extend its features to uniform and varyings) GL\_ARB\_explicit\_attrib\_location extension, the OpenGL drivers just stop working. No other software run. The first frame was ok but generate an error and then all the frames generate errors everywhere. I tried to reinstall the drivers. It didn’t work. I try to removed my nVidia card. it didn’t work. I end up to install Catalyst 10.3 which brings me back to normal and working OpenGL 3.2 drivers. ---
**Author:** ![Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/alfonse_reinheart/32/4357_2.png) [@Alfonse\_Reinheart](https://community.khronos.org/u/Alfonse_Reinheart)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 12:37pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/19 "2010-03-28T12:37:57Z")
> amazing and please extend its features to uniform and varyings I can understand uniforms, but what good would varyings be? You don’t have to query them, so there’s no need to assign arbitrary numbers to them. > I try to removed my nVidia card. You meant ATi, right? ---
**Author:** ![imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/imported_groovounet/32/75_2.png) [@imported\_Groovounet](https://community.khronos.org/u/imported_Groovounet)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416/20 "2010-03-28T18:01:47Z")
- Separate shader program and Transform feedback - No I meant nVidia as I have both. In case of a conflict. [Next page](https://community.khronos.org/t/amd-releases-opengl-4-0-drivers/60416.md?page=2)