[arch-general] Open-source Radeon drivers status: HD7600M / HD7520G

[Robbie Smith]

Hi all

I've got a laptop with dual graphics: AMD A6-4400M processor with 
HD7520G "built in" (?) and HD7600M dedicated GPU. At the moment I'm 
using the Catalyst drivers that Vi0L0 packages[1], and it works quite 
well. I can switch which card I use (albeit with a restart of X), so I 
can enable the dedicated graphics only when I need it.

I was wondering what the status of the open-source drivers are for these 
cards, and how they compare to the Catalyst ones. The Xorg wiki has a 
feature table[2] which seems to indicate that it should work (Wikipedia 
says the cards are part of the Northern Islands family), but I tried 
using xf86-video-ati on initial install and got only a black screen. 
Asides from KMS, what else does the open-source driver offer?

Robbie

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57084
[2] http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature