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  • r700 status?

    So, I ordered a HD4350 to replace my dying X1300.

    How's the low-end r700 working (on the open stack)?

    Please share your experiences.

  • #2
    hi,

    Have you reviewed ati 5570??

    Ati 4350, power 10-30W, fanless
    Ati 5570, power 10-40W, fan (fanless models soon), 2x-3x performance of 4350

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    • #3
      Since you put r700 in the title, I just want to make sure you understand that r600 and r700 are essentially the same with regard to the open source driver. So anytime you see r600 in a Phoronix article, it applies to r700 as well. If you already knew that, I'm not trying to insult your intelligence.

      The open drivers work great if you don't care about games. Since you're getting a really low end model, I assume you don't care that much about games. But composting window managers like Compiz or Kwin do work really well.

      For video playback, only Xv acceleration is supported so far. No Xvmc or vdpau yet. And power management is coming in the next kernel release, 2.6.34. General 2d drawing has good performance; much better than the proprietary driver fglrx.

      For general desktop use, the open driver is much more transparent to your system than fglrx. It doesn't require you to work around it's bugginess, or use a 6 month old kernel and a year old X server.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Jimbo View Post
        hi,

        Have you reviewed ati 5570??

        Ati 4350, power 10-30W, fanless
        Ati 5570, power 10-40W, fan (fanless models soon), 2x-3x performance of 4350
        .... except that 5570 still has ZERO acceleration (just basic KMS support).

        @OP: 4350 works great under open source. I'm using one here right now (though my drivers are a touch out of date). You can expect that with up-to-date open source drivers (such as those that ship with Fedora 12+), you will get decent 2D **AS WELL AS** 3D support. Since you're aiming at the low end model card, you clearly aren't a hardcore gamer, so the performance of the open source drivers with that low end card will definitely satisfy you.

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        • #5
          What they said.

          I have a low-end r700 (HD4550) and I've been using the open source drivers ever since EXA acceleration started working.

          Nowadays, video is great (obviously no decoding, just Xv, which means scaling, colour conversion), 2d is great, you get KMS and redirected direct rendering.

          3d is stable and up to OpenGL 2.0 (with GLSL 1.1), but slower than fglrx/windows. I play OpenArena with the drivers, and Nexuiz works just fine, you just don't get 100% max performance. These two are playable if you're not a hardcore gamer, though.

          3d desktop effects are smooth as butter and stable as a rock.

          You will get dynamic powersaving with the latest kernel release candidates too. I've tested it and it was stable, but I did experience stutter during games, so there is still some optimisation work ahead. You won't notice problems during desktop usage. Keep in mind that there are literally dozens of patches already written waiting to get included in the kernel, so expect things to improve very rapidly.

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          • #6
            Thanks.

            Yeah, I did consider a 5570 for the power; however, it's 3.5x the price of a 4350. And add to that no passive models available, yet at least.
            Also, since r700 is known to have good 2d -now- (this is my main comp, I need it to work) unlike Evergreen, I couldn't wait any longer.

            My X1300 has gone worse recently: at first it would just throw a black screen hang on any 3d (a couple weeks ago), then I got random corruption in 2d usage, now also random crashes and hangs. Nothing in the logs, and the few times I managed to SSH in X was taking 100% cpu, unkillable, and showed 0 used ram in top.

            My usage - well it's pretty much 2d, with some light gaming. My X1300 was powerful enough, so a 2 generations newer card should be nice.

            Some oldies in Wine, some natives like Scorched3d and OpenArena. Also would like to try HoN, but I guess it doesn't work yet fully?

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            • #7
              I recently upgraded from an X1950 to a 5770, and one thing that really surprised me was that 2d is actually faster on the 5770 than it was on the X1950, even though the X1950 had acceleration and the 5770 doesn't.

              The only thing I can think of to explain this is that the 5770 has a lower latency path from the CPU to the framebuffer.

              Obviously I can't guarantee anything about your setup, but snubbing an evergreen because its 2d accel isn't in place yet may not yield you the expected results.

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              • #8
                If you were happy with the performance of the X1300 with the OSS drivers, then you will be happy with the performance of a HD4350 with the OSS drivers.

                If you get recent enough stuff and use classic Mesa (r600g is still ways off), the OSS drivers should behave just like they did on your old car. I don't think that the r600/r700 are lagging behind in functionality anymore.

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                • #9
                  I recently upgraded from an X1950 to a 5770, and one thing that really surprised me was that 2d is actually faster on the 5770 than it was on the X1950, even though the X1950 had acceleration and the 5770 doesn't.
                  I would be shocked if this also holds while playing a full-screen DVD.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                    I would be shocked if this also holds while playing a full-screen DVD.
                    Exactly. ShadowFB is good enough for basic 2D usage. But you really need Xv acceleration for full-screen tear-free video playback.

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