ATi Open drivers are coming of age... :)

[sandyd]

I think it may pay you to keep an eye on the first post of this thread (& likely the last page too), as Perry3D, researches, compiles, tests & only passes on to his Arch repo users what has shown itself to be good stuff.

Occasionally a fault gets past him, if so it is fixed (inside of his repo) inside of 24 hours anyway.

We all use parallel kernels anyway so if you do happen to upgrade into trouble you can reboot into a safe house.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic....613720#p613720

i actually keep multiple mesa installations on my computer through a specialized chroot/mount environment. If theirs an issue with the mesa/xf86-video-ati/libdrm drivers, I can pull back to the last working one by using mount --bind .

However, mesa itself doesn't seem to have many regressions, even though im pulling from svn.

But still, i have to say that gallium is making a lot of headway compared to the junk i had when using ubuntu 9.10. Even though it isn't up to par with win7, its well enough for daily usage . The only thing I find lacking (this is actually gentoo's fault) is that due to lazy binding (-z), I cant use it on hardened configs.

[sandyd]

Just did another svn pull this morning.
Seems that the KDE transparent menu stopped lagging when theirs an application under it .

Now if they could finish the antialiasing for r600 and full vaapi/vdpau support... .

[JDShu]

Did you guys notice that they're starting to work on optimizations? Last night a developer committed some code to r300g claiming up to 10% speed increase in TORCs. They'll probably apply it to r600g too

Btw, I got a dvi to vga cord to hook up an unused monitor for a dual monitor setup. It works great! I just wish there was an easy way to calibrate the colors.

[sandyd]

Did you guys notice that they're starting to work on optimizations? Last night a developer committed some code to r300g claiming up to 10% speed increase in TORCs. They'll probably apply it to r600g too

Btw, I got a dvi to vga cord to hook up an unused monitor for a dual monitor setup. It works great! I just wish there was an easy way to calibrate the colors.

ya, i saw some new code additions to r300 during the svn pull

and Vaapi actually works, I think it just needs some more testing thats all.

EDIT: I just decided to fiddle a bit with the xorg.conf options, and after

        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
        ### <percent>: "<f>%"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "NoAccel"                # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "Dac6Bit"                # [<bool>]
        #Option     "Dac8Bit"                # [<bool>]
        Option     "BusType" "PCIE"                # [<str>]
        #Option     "CPPIOMode"              # [<bool>]
        #Option     "CPusecTimeout"          # <i>
        #Option     "AGPMode"                # <i>
        #Option     "AGPFastWrite"           # [<bool>]
        #Option     "AGPSize"                # <i>
        Option     "GARTSize" "64"              # <i>
        #Option     "RingSize"               # <i>
        #Option     "BufferSize"             # <i>
        Option     "EnableDepthMoves" "on"       # [<bool>]
        Option     "EnablePageFlip" "1"         # [<bool>]
        #Option     "NoBackBuffer"           # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DMAForXv"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "FBTexPercent"           # <i>
        #Option     "DepthBits"              # <i>
        #Option     "PCIAPERSize"            # <i>
        Option     "AccelDFS" "1"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "IgnoreEDID"             # [<bool>]
        #Option     "CustomEDID"             # [<str>]
        #Option     "DisplayPriority"        # [<str>]
        #Option     "PanelSize"              # [<str>]
        #Option     "ForceMinDotClock"       # <freq>
        Option     "ColorTiling" "1"            # [<bool>]
        #Option     "VideoKey"               # <i>
        #Option     "RageTheatreCrystal"     # <i>
        #Option     "RageTheatreTunerPort"     # <i>
        #Option     "RageTheatreCompositePort"     # <i>
        #Option     "RageTheatreSVideoPort"     # <i>
        #Option     "TunerType"              # <i>
        #Option     "RageTheatreMicrocPath"     # <str>
        #Option     "RageTheatreMicrocType"     # <str>
        #Option     "ScalerWidth"            # <i>
        Option     "RenderAccel" "true"            # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SubPixelOrder"          # [<str>]
        #Option     "ClockGating"            # [<bool>]
        #Option     "VGAAccess"              # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ReverseDDC"             # [<bool>]
        #Option     "LVDSProbePLL"           # [<bool>]
        Option     "AccelMethod" "EXA"            # <str>
        #Option     "DRI"                    # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ConnectorTable"         # <str>
        #Option     "DefaultConnectorTable"     # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DefaultTMDSPLL"         # [<bool>]
        #Option     "TVDACLoadDetect"        # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ForceTVOut"             # [<bool>]
        #Option     "TVStandard"             # <str>
        #Option     "IgnoreLidStatus"        # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DefaultTVDACAdj"        # [<bool>]
        #Option     "Int10"                  # [<bool>]
        #Option     "EXAVSync"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ATOMTVOut"              # [<bool>]
        #Option     "R4xxATOM"               # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ForceLowPowerMode"      # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DynamicPM"              # [<bool>]
        #Option     "NewPLL"                 # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ZaphodHeads"            # <str>

Desktop performance is FLYING. even with the notorious KDE Blur on. Im not noticing any performance difference with switching blur on or off.
oh yay!

[handy]

I'm getting better performance than I've ever had on my R600, using Gallium.

For my usage, I have no problems running with this driver stack, except that I can't play much more than WoG with it due to the 3D being too slow.

If they have gotten most of the other priorities out of the way, & can start focussing on optimisation it is going to get pretty exciting for us who have been using, watching & waiting for this time to come for so long. (That is not derogatory re. the dev's, they have really done an awesome job over the last year or so.)

Fingers crossed it starts to happen for us real soon now.

[del_diablo]

Phoronix: A more ATI comparision
Lets see: 2 week old gitpull with 2.6.37 VS Catalyst 10.12
The 2 weeks is not going to make a difference, the drivers are **** except for the oldest of the showcased cards here. On the oldest the performance is reaching "acceptable" levels, so long you are running a 60 Hz monitor.
I wonder how long it will be until proper performance, 2-3 years?
And by that I mean Gallium 3D performing at the least 95% of catalysts performance.

[mjhouska]

Well i updated to Ubuntu 10.10 on my Lenovo T60p (ATI firegl 5250) An gcompris is now working! so i guess 3d is now working finally. But still celestia refuses to load(i can only use the nonGL version of celestia in XP) so i will be going back to NVidia ASAP anyway. In XP GL Celestia loads but text is mangled up.

[mjhouska]

BTW Kstars works fine

[JDShu]

Phoronix: A more ATI comparision
Lets see: 2 week old gitpull with 2.6.37 VS Catalyst 10.12
The 2 weeks is not going to make a difference, the drivers are **** except for the oldest of the showcased cards here. On the oldest the performance is reaching "acceptable" levels, so long you are running a 60 Hz monitor.
I wonder how long it will be until proper performance, 2-3 years?
And by that I mean Gallium 3D performing at the least 95% of catalysts performance.

Hmm, do you use a CRT monitor? As far as I know, *all* LCDs are 60 Hz.

[handy]

I have found over the last year that this driver stack including the associated parts of the kernel have from time to time made dramatic leaps & bounds in their progress.

So as I said previously I expect that when the other things are done & 3D performance becomes the priority, that performance will improve incredibly quickly.

When you look at where things are at here:

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

It is easy to see that 3D performance is getting very close to becoming the main focus for the dev's.


Something that is easy to forget is that AMD have been & are being a truly great help in the development of the open driver stack.