Linux AGP support in Catalyst 8.11?

[Dandel]

I agree with kano, a major system upgrade would be the best choice, however if you don't need to upgrade right away, i recommend waiting until the middle of next year, and asking around for what the best gaming options are.

of course, if you must upgrade now, and want to do gaming, look at going with 4gb of ram and a 790gx series motherboard ( if you are going with amd).

[BlackPak]

Thanks for all the help, legume and mdmadph! The card is installed and I believe it is working well enough. Unlike my attempt to move to this card in July, the Linux distributions that I use are now able to make use of the card.

I have to admit that my results are spotty enough to make me wonder if I should have bothered upgrading the card, or if it was a mistake to move to ATI. My move was from a GeForce3 Ti 200 with 64 MB RAM to a Radeon 3650 with 512 MB RAM.

One of my top-priority tasks is greatly improved: I can now browse directories of large photograph files quickly, with a greater capacity for storing thumbnails and thumbnails being generated more quickly. I take that to be a result of the increased video RAM.

However, my presently preferred Linux distribution, Mandriva 2009, stutters too much to be pleasant to use. It was working smoothyl under the geForce 3. I don't know what to think of that. I've used the backports feature to install the latest release of the Radeon drivers - version 8.10.

Things are fine under Kubuntu 8.10. Window movement had been slow under Kwin, but is perfectly responsive under Compiz. However, I was hoping to improve the performance in some minor areas of Compiz (i.e., some minor jerkiness in the rendering of some window transitions). That hasn't happened. The one real problem is that asking the system to shut down often stalls out at a black screen.

Should I attribute all this to the current software landscape and figure the bugs will all be worked out in time? Or should I return this graphics card again while I still can?

[wfeltmate]

I would recommend that you return the card while you can. The sluggishness and bottlenecks you are experiencing aren't something that can be properly solved by a new video card; it may relieve or hide them some, but the cause of these issues is the age of the other parts.
Instead of paying that money on a new card, go out and buy a new motherboard(grab one with an onboard video chipset to hold you over until you have the money to buy a good add-on card) that supports dual channel ram, PCI-E 2.0 and dual/quad-core cpus. Ram and cpu prices are fairly cheap. Here's what i can get from a local retailer(fyi, these are in canadian funds and from a store specializing in computer parts and not a store like Best Buy or Circuit City)

AMD PHENOM X4 9550 QUAD-CORE 2.2GHz 4MB 95W -- $172.00
ASUS M3A78-CM AMD780V+ATISB700* 2PCI/1PCI-E 16X,4D.DDR2-1066 ATI RV610 DVI MicroATX -- $98.00
Kingston kvr800d2n5k2/2g DDR-2 800MHz 2x 1GB Kit -- $46.00

So, for $316 I could get a fast cpu, a good motherboard and 2GB of brand name ram. Sure, it's likely a fair bit more than what you paid for the card, but even with the onboard video chipset, you will likely notice FAR better performance than your old GeForce or with the HD3650 you bought. And when you have the money again, you can add a nice new PCI-E card as this board supports PCI-E 2.0

[wfeltmate]

As another note, I have been using only AMD cpus and ATI cards(either onboard or add-on) since the ATI 9800pro was new and have never had any major problem with them. I made the full switch from windows to linux about 1.5 to 2yrs ago and haven't experienced anything that would make me switch to nvidia.
Sure, I have experienced a few bugs, had to revert to a previous driver after trying the new release, but I'm still a happy ati customer. They just get a bad rep because they have decided not to write a LOT of extra code to fix a minor issue with video tearing(I see it myself, but it's nothing that takes away from my ability to enjoy the movie) like nvidia has. It'd be a huge waste of time and money for a minor issue, when they have more important concerns like looking after their workstation customers that make up a very strong majority of their linux customer base

[hybridr6]

I'm no expert and I can only attest to my own experience, but I would venture to say that the 3650 will have better support in the near future. I myself am using an athlon64 on a 754 mobo with a sapphire 3850 and I have had problems in the past where the card just would not work. Fortunately the card started working around 8.6 and things have only gotten better. I still have the dreaded video tearing but it only happens during scenes with lots of motion. You however may find video tearing to be much worse on an older cpu. As for the stuttering you have with compiz effects you may try running a "lighter" window manager or see if there are some services running that you dont need. Like Ubuntu running bluetooth by default even if you don't have a bluetooth device...

Best of luck and don't upgrade it until it dies!

[BlackPak]

To this point, I've ignored the suggestions to upgrade my motherboard and processor. Since I've gotten so many, let me just say that I appreciate that very thoughtful feedback, but it doesn't serve my present purposes. My hardware does everything that I need it to do, and I expect that to remain the case for quite a while.

It's precisely because I'm thinking that a major upgrade is a while off that I'm messing around with this graphics card upgrade: Since I'm not going to do a fundamental system upgrade for quite a while, I want the system that I'm going to use for the foreseeable future to be as good as possible. For me, getting more performance by upgrading the graphics card is a luxury feature and the pursuit of a hobby.

So, thanks for all the very thoughtful suggestions about hardware upgrades. I agree completely that upgrading the motherboard and processor are the best way to increase my overall system performance, but I'm not asking how best to upgrade my system performance. I'm asking about software support for specific hardware.

[BlackPak]

I would recommend that you return the card while you can. The sluggishness and bottlenecks you are experiencing aren't something that can be properly solved by a new video card; it may relieve or hide them some, but the cause of these issues is the age of the other parts.

I don't think that the issue is my motherboard and processor: Note that my complaints are about issues that I did not have using my geForce 3 card. Yes, the incredibly minor hitch in window manipulations is present under both cards, and I expected that to improve. However, why does Mandriva 2009 system in general stutter under the Radeon 3650 but run smoothly with the geForce 3? Should I expect that to improve?

Here's the source of my disappointment with the Radeon 3650: I was expecting the Radeon 3650 to be a major upgrade for several reasons: Lots more processing power, eight times the RAM, and running in 8x mode on the AGP bus (instead of 2x or 4x - I can't recall which the geForce 3 was running). What I got was the similar or much worse performance in terms of general system smoothness. I'm thinking of that as an ATI driver support issue, since it surely cannot be that the geForce 3 card is faster than the Radeon 3650! Should I expect that to improve?

[BlackPak]

I'm no expert and I can only attest to my own experience, but I would venture to say that the 3650 will have better support in the near future. I myself am using an athlon64 on a 754 mobo with a sapphire 3850 and I have had problems in the past where the card just would not work. Fortunately the card started working around 8.6 and things have only gotten better.

That's encouraging - thanks for the input!

As for the stuttering you have with compiz effects you may try running a "lighter" window manager or see if there are some services running that you dont need. Like Ubuntu running bluetooth by default even if you don't have a bluetooth device...

Well, that's a really minor cosmetic issue. I only mention it because the Radeon 3650 is giving me the same performance with respect to that issue as I was getting from the geForce 3. I was expecting improvement in all phases. I'm puzzled as to how there could not be improvement in all phases. That's what makes me wonder if this upgrade was worth making at all.

Best of luck and don't upgrade it until it dies!

Thanks!

[BlackStar]

I was expecting improvement in all phases. I'm puzzled as to how there could not be improvement in all phases. That's what makes me wonder if this upgrade was worth making at all.

The reason why you don't experience any significant improvements is that your video card is being held back by the CPU (and possibly a lack of system RAM) Unfortunately the 512MB of video RAM will *only* impact 3d applications. If you don't use any 3d applications, the new card will not make an impact (despite it being 20-30x faster than the old one).

You should probably had upgraded your RAM and hard disk. Both of these would have had a significant impact on your overall system performance.

[hybridr6]

Well, that's a really minor cosmetic issue. I only mention it because the Radeon 3650 is giving me the same performance with respect to that issue as I was getting from the geForce 3. I was expecting improvement in all phases. I'm puzzled as to how there could not be improvement in all phases. That's what makes me wonder if this upgrade was worth making at all

I know exactly what you mean, the performance I get in compiz is only slightly better than what I had with my 7600gs which I upgraded to my 3850. As others have stated elsewhere on this forum the way compiz makes calls to the video card has some issues with ati drivers . The exact method and issue I can't recall atm (again I'm no expert). However most opengl applications do run smoothly. If you run an opengl based benchmark such as Lightsmark and compare the two cards I'm sure you will notice a rather significant difference in fps.


I must address the comments about bottlenecks. There most likely is one, but I think every one will agree that you should get the same if not improved performance.