ATi Radeon (Open Source) - 3D Hardware Acceleration for r500 Series

[fermulator]

Hey there!

I've been a little busy in the last few months, and haven't been keeping in the loop here on the phoronix forums.

I know a few months ago there was a lot of activity (work) on the open source ATI Radeon driver for all of those "legacy" cards.

I myself in particular have the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro (rv570 chip).

Currently running:
* Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 2.6.28-13-server
* xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.12.1-0ubuntu2

I've got dual monitors w/ compiz running great. But I'm wondering if anyone has any information (rumors) when the Radeon driver will include 3D acceleration support for my card?

Is there a place I can go to see the current "status" for the driver? Also, I realize I'm only running the "stable" packages from Ubuntu, so perhaps there's a later stable driver PPA I can add to get the latest stable releases from the developers?

Also, where do we go to report bugs against the driver?

Thanks!

[agd5f]

Hey there!

I've been a little busy in the last few months, and haven't been keeping in the loop here on the phoronix forums.

I know a few months ago there was a lot of activity (work) on the open source ATI Radeon driver for all of those "legacy" cards.

I myself in particular have the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro (rv570 chip).

Currently running:
* Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 2.6.28-13-server
* xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.12.1-0ubuntu2

I've got dual monitors w/ compiz running great. But I'm wondering if anyone has any information (rumors) when the Radeon driver will include 3D acceleration support for my card?

3D has been supported on your card for over a year now. Jaunty contains 3D support out of the box. Compiz requires 3D support.

Is there a place I can go to see the current "status" for the driver? Also, I realize I'm only running the "stable" packages from Ubuntu, so perhaps there's a later stable driver PPA I can add to get the latest stable releases from the developers?

Also, where do we go to report bugs against the driver?

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

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

[fermulator]

Oh right, you're so right.

I asked completely the wrong question. This is what I get for going on "holiday" ..

I guess what I mean to ask about is OpenGL 2.0 support. There's a new game (as an example) called Heroes of Newerth. I try opening it up on my system and it just craps out. System requirements: http://beta.heroesofnewerth.com/specs_pop.html talk about GL 2.0 support.

I'm guessing this is why it's crashing? -- because there's no GL 2.0 support yet?

[pvtcupcakes]

Oh right, you're so right.

I asked completely the wrong question. This is what I get for going on "holiday" ..

I guess what I mean to ask about is OpenGL 2.0 support. There's a new game (as an example) called Heroes of Newerth. I try opening it up on my system and it just craps out. System requirements: http://beta.heroesofnewerth.com/specs_pop.html talk about GL 2.0 support.

I'm guessing this is why it's crashing? -- because there's no GL 2.0 support yet?

Ha, HoN doesn't work for me either on my Intel GMA X4500HD.

What is the output you get when the game craps out? From what I've seen, if it was an OpenGL problem, it'll say that.

The problem I'm having is that the menu screen is a black and white checkerboard, and from what I've found out is that HoN uses a proprietary texture compression that open source drivers don't support. But I don't know if that true as I've seen people using Nvidia have the same problem.

If that isn't your problem, try disabling compiz when you play.

[bridgman]

I guess what I mean to ask about is OpenGL 2.0 support.

A couple of important events have happened recently :

1. All of the code for kernel modesetting and GEM/TTM memory management has been merged upstream in the kernel (June), mesa (June) and radeon (July) drivers. The memory management code is a pre-requisite for a decent implementation of GL 2.0.

2. Nicolai H. has been working on the r3xx-r5xx shader compiler from the "classic mesa" HW driver to get it in a form where it can also be used in the Gallium3D driver :

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzQxMA

I don't think the current r3xx-r5xx shader compiler implements all of the IR opcodes needed for GLSL, but it's probably 2/3 of the way there.

[nhaehnle]

Indeed certain opcodes are missing for GLSL, and I would be a bit careful about a statement like 2/3 of the way. We could enable some additional opcodes right now and claim to support GLSL, but for *honest* support of GLSL we should support loops and branches, which requires some deeper reaching changes. Nothing too bad, but don't expect instant gratification

Of course there is the option of just rejecting shaders that require branches. Perhaps we should investigate this as a stopgap measure in the meantime.