I have a Sony Vaio E series laptop with the AMD Radeon™ HD 7650M.
Everything seems to be working fine, but ubuntu is telling me that I could install the restricted driver.
My basic question is, what would I gain/lose from installing this driver?
Also, It lists two drivers: The fglrx driver, and then the post-release updates fglrx driver. if I was to use the restricted drivers which one would I use?
Generally speaking the open source driver isn't as good as a closed source driver as you probably already know, but looking at recent updates it appears the gap is closing in on some cards in some areas, but it is always a mixed bag that open usually looses.
Ultimately it is up to you which works best and which to choose. If everything is working fine then that isn't to say you would have an even better experience with the closed source drivers.
A good source of benchmarks is http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r600g_compete12&num=1
Which gives a run down on this exact thing.
If I was you I would test both and see which one worked for me. If the open source driver works perfectly that is just one less thing you need to fool around with post install.
If GNU Freedom is a concern then you have only one choice.
Hope this helps.
There are thermal issues and power management problems with the open source drivers (Radeon). That's the reason I chose to install FGLRX on my notebook.
As for what drivers to install it's up to you to choose between one of the provided versions or the most recent release of ATI's Catalyst. I went with the second option and had no problems whatsoever. Instructions on installing the latest drivers can be found here:
What is the correct way to install proprietary ATI Catalyst Video Drivers (fglrx) directly from AMD?
