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  • #31
    Originally posted by crumja View Post
    bridgman is right. Nvidia's 71xx series of proprietary drivers have long since stopped support for the latest Xservers. This means old cards circa Geforce 2 don't work. If it weren't for nouveau, these cards would be nigh useless with the latest distros. Now the same slow/dropped support is happening with the 96xx series of drivers.

    At least with ATI, OSS drivers will ensure that your card doesn't turn into a useless brick. Gallium3D and KMS support means that your card will take advantage of hardware acceleration on video, SVG, OpenCL, and other yet undefined future standards. I'm very satisfied with everything ATI has done.
    You do? What if your card is older than R300? There seems to be 'uncertain' support in older ATI cards. I thought Ubuntu was one of the 'supported' distros. How come you can't boot up in 9.10 with a Radeon 9000 (RV250) card? You have to become a developer and edit xorg.conf to obtain 3D. Else, you have to disable 3D (Desktop Effects). Karmic is the latest release so the choices are: 1) edit xorg.conf and hope you can figure out what settings are needed; 2)install latest Ubuntu version (Alpha) and deal with any bugs; 3)switch to a different distro and pray it works; 4)Install an older release

    Is that supposed to indicate support? That you could try a bunch of configurations until you find one that works?!?

    At least, the comparative Nvidia cards work when the driver is installed correctly and the support is consistent.

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    • #32
      Originally posted by Panix View Post
      You do? What if your card is older than R300? There seems to be 'uncertain' support in older ATI cards. I thought Ubuntu was one of the 'supported' distros. How come you can't boot up in 9.10 with a Radeon 9000 (RV250) card?
      because that is a bug in Ubuntu 9.10, smart ass? As you might have found out instead of complaining, the OSS driver stack is being rewritten right now. And rewriting stuff always itroduces bugs. I think Ubuntu 8.04 was the last version which had purley the old school stack, so try that...

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      • #33
        Originally posted by bridgman View Post
        DirtyHairy; you mentioned DynamicClocks, I think that was replaced a while ago with three new options :

        ClockGating (new name for DynamicClocks)
        ForceLowPowerMode (reduces engine clock and restrices PCIE lanes)
        DynamicPM (further reduces engine clock when display blanked via DPMS)

        Are you using all three of these options ? It's possible the driver is rejecting the DynamicClocks option - check your log.
        Hi Bridgman!

        Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try those options when I find time. The log indicates that DynamicGating is active:
        Code:
        Static power management enable success
        Dynamic clock gating enable success
        However, if those options exist, then it would be wise to document them in the radeon manpage; the current one (I'm on 6.12.4) still only lists DynamicClocks.

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        • #34
          Debian Lenny

          Another thread, same story: I use Debian Lenny, catalyst still works for my X1600 mobility, temperature and fan are a lot better than any recent linux distribution with open source drivers. I wouldn't need any performance for my driver, only low power usage. I'm sure one day I'll get it from the open source driver, but until then it's Lenny for me! Not everybody needs the newest and greatest (and most unstable )

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          • #35
            Originally posted by DirtyHairy View Post
            However, if those options exist, then it would be wise to document them in the radeon manpage; the current one (I'm on 6.12.4) still only lists DynamicClocks.
            well actually thats not so important as with kms you will get dynamic power management: http://www.rojtberg.net/366/power-ma...eon-on-ubuntu/

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            • #36
              Originally posted by DirtyHairy View Post
              Hi Bridgman!

              Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try those options when I find time. The log indicates that DynamicGating is active:
              Code:
              Static power management enable success
              Dynamic clock gating enable success
              However, if those options exist, then it would be wise to document them in the radeon manpage; the current one (I'm on 6.12.4) still only lists DynamicClocks.
              The man page usually matches the driver pretty well, so it's likely that your driver code is too old to have the newer power saving features.
              Test signature

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              • #37
                Originally posted by madman2k View Post
                well actually thats not so important as with kms you will get dynamic power management: http://www.rojtberg.net/366/power-ma...eon-on-ubuntu/
                I'd like to see some benchmark results. On my NC8430 laptop I could use as a temperature proxy the ACPI fan speed, which was 55% on fglrx, 70% on "old" open driver (with DynamicClocks) and 80% on first KMS efforts, after which I have stayed away from new distributions...

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                • #38
                  Looks like the power management code went in after the 6.12 branch was created (the branch is based on 6.12.2), so you won't have that code in 6.12.4 either. Check to see if your distro has a package available to give you a newer version of the driver built from master rather than the 6.12 branch.
                  Test signature

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                  • #39
                    bridgman, I have 2 questions:

                    1. Does KMS-based power saving apply to desktop cards or is it a feature just for mobile cards?

                    2. Will the amount of power saved match fglrx's powerplay?

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by crumja View Post
                      1. Does KMS-based power saving apply to desktop cards or is it a feature just for mobile cards?
                      Both are supported, however, older desktop cards tended to only have one power state.

                      Originally posted by crumja View Post
                      2. Will the amount of power saved match fglrx's powerplay?
                      At the moment it does not match, but eventually we hope to match the proprietary driver.

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