How Old ATI GPUs Can Be Faster On Open Drivers

[crazycheese]

I've never had it crash on me. It's reliable. No worry about FS corruption. Responsive desktop. Fastest 3D graphics. No tearing. The interface is fancier than Gnome but less blingy that KDE or OSX, i find it to be a good balance. Firefox runs better on it. I don't have to worry about whether WINE will run something or not, because most things already run natively.

Windows user. With AMD card. Which is unusable in Linux in proprietary official driver and has no future with opensource driver. Opensource driver on AMD with current policy is nothing but "legacy driver". Let people who desire opensource driver choose it and pay for it within your product. The answer is NO.
AMD card cost can be subdivided into:
VATs + B2C Shop Profit + B2C Running costs + Logistics + Manufacturing cost + Support + AMD Profit.

Support is: Drivers + RMA

Drivers are: Windows drivers. Fullstop.

You admire how good AMD opensource driver progresses, yet you prefer to conceal the fact it is not supported in any way in desktop direction. It is supported by generous donations from RH and Novell into server market and AMD as legacy driver.

And one more thing, windows user. Not all windows programs run "without need for wine". Many old programs refuse to run, there is NO source and windows users run WINE in WINDOWS to run WINDOWS programs.

Now, there are also plenty of things i don't like about it. I'm not going to argue about whether it's the best OS out there or not, I just think it deserves to be called a good one. The days of Windows being a total embarrassment are over, at least for now.

[ ] No virus / no need for antivirus?
[ ] No need for firewall?
[ ] No need for defragmentation?
[ ] The system belongs you rather than being rented?
[ ] EULA is all of the sudden FOSS compatible?
[ ] You can modify the kernel, remove explorer; both technically and legally?
[ ] Windows is no longer preinstalled, but offered as option?
[ ] Windows is free and comes with source code?

But you are very happy! You have bought a video card for gfx effects! Which run buggy / slow / without feature support on linux and you have zero wish they are even slightly improved.

Why?

Because you use windows for games and productivity. And linux on server.

Now, this is not discussion about linux on server and no one needs graphics card on server. With exception for GPGPU server which you CANNOT use with opensource drivers, but with catalyst blob/nvidia blob - where catalyst blob is by far less stable.

So please, spare yourself the smiles and come with ideas to improve "How Old ATI GPUs Can Be Faster On Open Drivers".

You claimed my business model will not work. Why? Are 600,000 STARTING MONEY too small? Four additional developers is too small? People that see they can actually get linux team supported directly on AMD site is too insignificant? If this model starts kicking, Nvidia will loose 40% of its desktop segment, with 20% every hop in opensource driver! And when Opensource drivers will support proper Eyefinity, UVD3 and OpenGL4 (with complete WINE support, on par to nvidia blob) Nvidia will loose ALL of its users (95%) on linux desktop! But wait! There is more! More people will join from windows desktop, which they do not do because their only choice is feature reduced nvidia+wine.

How much you payed for your Windows? 300$? How about 300$ card instead with some cash to opensource team that will not stock your money on SHELVES or use it for BULLYING (bye, Nokia!), but instead will DEVELOP DRIVERS with INFINITE timeline support for your harware! On 3D framework which WORKS EVERYWHERE(OpenGL)? Big skin, but whats with mind? Too egoistic? Works for me, and I do not care about everyone else? You are good suited with Windows!

[bridgman]

You claimed my business model will not work. Why? Are 600,000 STARTING MONEY too small? Four additional developers is too small? People that see they can actually get linux team supported directly on AMD site is too insignificant? If this model starts kicking, Nvidia will loose 40% of its desktop segment, with 20% every hop in opensource driver! And when Opensource drivers will support proper Eyefinity, UVD3 and OpenGL4 (with complete WINE support, on par to nvidia blob) Nvidia will loose ALL of its users (95%) on linux desktop! But wait! There is more! More people will join from windows desktop, which they do not do because their only choice is feature reduced nvidia+wine.

crazycheese, I don't think anyone understands what your proposed business model *is* yet.

I understand you want some kind of user feedback form that you think will somehow convince us that Linux customers (and open source driver users in particular) make up a much larger portion of our market than we believe today, although you haven't answered any of our questions w.r.t. how the information would actually be used for decision making.

I understand that you then expect this "new knowledge" to cause us to dump a lot more funding into the development of open source drivers, allowing them to quickly pick up all of the features and performance of our code-shared proprietary drivers, but you are also talking about "4 developers" getting us there.

I'm sorry, but that's not even close - code sharing with other OSes means the proprietary drivers are able to benefit from the work of hundreds of developers and that's what you need to get the kind of performance and features you want on a schedule you seem willing to accept. More developers would definitely help, but the developer-to-benefit ratio isn't as high as you seem to believe.

You seem to feel we are ignoring you, but when I ask questions you answer with insults.

[crazycheese]

crazycheese, I don't think anyone understands what your proposed business model *is* yet.
...
You seem to feel we are ignoring you, but when I ask questions you answer with insults.

Mr. Bridgeman, I don't see where I insulted you or anybody else.
The only insulter in the thread was smitty3268, I don't see anything that I've posted in the thread to be offensive.
The only reason I share my thoughts here on phoronix in opensource amd section (and this means time as well) is possiblity to improve AMD opensource drivers quality and AMD influence on linux desktop.

I understand you want some kind of user feedback form that you think will somehow convince us that Linux customers (and open source driver users in particular) make up a much larger portion of our market than we believe today, although you haven't answered any of our questions w.r.t. how the information would actually be used for decision making.

Much better and more advanced than that.
I propose a small voluntary(as in free will) program (HTML form) on official AMD web-site to allow AMD buyers, using their card on linux with opensource driver, to attract AMD attention by providing
1) their Purchased Product Serial Number and
2) magically indirectly the Registering Time.

Using this two values over _certain_ period of time will give following information:
- type of card
-- (derived here of) average card cost
--- (derived here of) money that should belong to opensource driver team, in each case*
*if you have questions why - I can answer
-- (derived here of) sold card diversity, statically weighted in each classes and each generations.
--- (derived here of) purchase tendencies and
--- (after applying the financial flow from this program to foss team) success of program in form of register feedback.

AMD will get these information using basic statistical formulas over the database:
- how many cards are sold for (used with) opensource driver over specific period of time
- what cards were sold for (are used) over specific period of time
- what are purchase dynamics for each class and whole; correlated to opensource driver development progress
- what potentual is possible with opensource program
- which technologies and chips in opensource driver need more attention
- how opensource driver compares to proprietary driver or windows proprietary driver

It will help customers select themself what is right for them and give money for implementation.

I'm sorry, but that's not even close - code sharing with other OSes means the proprietary drivers are able to benefit from the work of hundreds of developers and that's what you need to get the kind of performance and features you want on a schedule you seem willing to accept. More developers would definitely help, but the developer-to-benefit ratio isn't as high as you seem to believe.

I have an expectation that overwhelming majority of household and small&midrange business users value opensource driver WAY higher over proprietary, given both posess same features, same chip support and same performance. This means people will buy/prefer hardware with opensource driver to hardware with closed source driver.

Again this is something that can (and should, if AMD is dynamic company) only be confirmed in the "wild".

This program will:
- deliver more exact picture of what market really prefers
- help rebalance the moneyflow more precisely within current driver dev teams
- help AMD gain advantage over Nvidia (in longer term) resulting in more customers purchasing AMD cards over Nvidia.

I do not expect that all the moneyflow will suddenly vanish from windows team because there is balance between nvidia and amd there as well.

If this rather simple program is blocked, this may only mean that AMD opensource drivers are not meant to be used as "drivers" at all, as it does not view this strategy as official, but more of "hobby"/educative. Of course, there ARE people that would purchase AMD hardware to use for hobby or educative experiments, but it is not something to be called "driver". This, it turn, will lead the rest of auditory to catalyst and its current state vs nvidia blob. But at least people will be sure and have understood what opensource from AMD is for/targeted at/meant to be.

The execution of such program will require:
- secure submit form
- storage for database
- cpu power for updating, looking up and checking validity of each given SN

Offline statistical analysis will require similar hardware and comparison software, very similar to that of phoromatic.

[smitty3268]

crazycheese:

Please explain how this would actually accomplish anything more than the yearly surveys Phoronix already does.

I understand that you would have the additional check of matching up a serial # to avoid people spamming with fakes, but other than that safety check doesn't AMD already have a decent idea of what the results would be based on other surveys?

If the distros had a way of recording what all their users were doing and sending that back upstream that might actually be more useful, but that seems unlikely to ever happen, at least by default, because of privacy concerns.

[smitty3268]

last month i try to play on an lan party just 3 players 2 on linux and 1 on windows7 and win7 crash on battlefield1942. on linux you can play the game without a crash in wine.
on the same system firefox crash also.

Interesting. I suppose it may be different drivers we have. I use Win2008 for development at work and routinely leave it running for a month at a time with no problems. Actually, the fact that i have to reboot once per month because of the monthly security updates is one of the annoying things i don't like about it.

because why? i know 2 friends 'woman?s' they need to format and reinstall win7 because of spyware/Trojans/viruses.
in my 6 years of Linux history i never ever had any problems like that.

There's really not any inherent reason Linux can't be hit with spyware anymore - you get prompted in windows before you can install anything just like you would in linux. However, since most malware targets windows you are correct that Linux and OSX tend to be much safer for less advanced users. More advanced users are smart enough to avoid malware on any OS.

i think this shows like old story?s. 3,6 is faster on windows 4.0 works good in linux. in general google chrome is the state of the art browser.

I haven't tried 4.0 in linux yet, so maybe it does improve things. However, OpenGL acceleration is disabled on the OSS drivers, which is at least one thing that is disappointing. I know you can override that with an environment variable, though, so maybe some testing will show that it works on my system. Chrome probably is more state of the art, but I still like Firefox better and don't want to switch unless i really have to.

wine runs more dos/windows games on windows7 than windows7 natively
but yes this is only true if you count all games for windows back to the windows3.11 versions and windows95 and so one.

I've never used WINE on windows, although DosBox is pretty useful. Another good thing is the 32-bit compatibility Windows has. That probably lines up with a downside about how much disk space the OS requires, a lot of that is probably old 32bit libs.

[darkbasic]

I'm sorry but the vast majority of peoples do use windows, and the vast majority of the few linux users do buy nvidia because "Amd linux support sucks" or use catalyst because "open drivers suck". When peoples will understand the meaning of freedom they will care about open drivers, in the meantime it's a lost battle.

[monraaf]

I don't think the open drivers are a lost battle. For 2D and video playback it's still miles ahead of fglrx in my experience. And look how far r600g has come in the past couple of months. With the work done mostly by only 2 devs (airlied and glisse) it's now fully capable of running doom3 at acceptable frame rates.

Now there are still bugs left and performance enhancements are needed but those can be resolved over time. Of course rather sooner than later, and that's why it's such a shame that AMD does not contribute to r600g, but prefers throwing money in the bottomless pit called fglrx.

LOL, they were all singing kumbaya over at the fglrx shed when fglrx finally got tear-free video playback, something that has been in the open drivers for a long time. I doubt that they leveraged much Windows code for this, IMHO this is just wasted money that AMD could have spent on the open source drivers.

But alas AMD doesn't really seem to believe in open drivers so we have to rely on Red Hat employees and community benefactors who unlike AMD do not owe us anything.

[darkbasic]

The lost battle is against the users who don't care about having open drivers or not.
The developers already did a wonderful job with R300g and R600g. Keep up the good work.

[entropy]

The lost battle is against the users who don't care about having open drivers or not.
The developers already did a wonderful job with R300g and R600g. Keep up the good work.

I tend to say this sums it up perfectly.
This topic polarizing forever is just stupid - "haters gonna hate"...

Keep up the excellent work!

[crazycheese]

crazycheese:

Hey, you can be human.

Please explain how this would actually accomplish anything more than the yearly surveys Phoronix already does.

Gladly.
Lets see Phoronix survey from 2010 - the brand, the driver

1.Look at brand. I will write here the numbers for major three, just for comfort.
Intel: 2639
AMD: 3794
Nvidia:4272

What can we conclude - major player is nvidia, with amd following closely and intel having 3/5 of nvidia marketshare.
1.1) Note that everyone: intel, nvidia and amd, do have opensource drivers; but all are only good for 2D, maybe basic weak composite. We will return here to nvidia later.
1.2) Also note within all that values are IGP/HTPC and performance discrete cards scattered.

1.3) Now remember you "do NOT buy 300$ discrete amd card for opensource drivers", keep it in mind please. Even if AMD opensource drivers currently have most attention, barely anyone want to use opensource for playing quake4. He want, but cannot - he will use catalyst. Lets bind him to the brand (he will install windows for this, choiceless, but still)

2.Now look at particular driver. Again I write down values for major three.
Intel: 2514
AMD-cat: 1645
AMD-oss: 2074
AMD-rhd: 495
Nv-blob: 3923
Nv-nv: less than 80

Lets combine the driver+brand as well, to get real card usage, not someone using vesa:
I also have no idea who uses radeonhd, but lets include it too.
Intel: 2514
AMD: 4214*
Nvidia: ~4003

2.1) Note, AMD driver is used on non-AMD cards. Yeah, driver total is HIGHER than brand itself. Either incorrect data, incorrect voter behavior or someone using several drivers - at same time. I doubt radeonhd and radeon are used at same time, probably someone switches between catalyst and radeon/radeonhd. Lets cut the value of total use to real number of real cards: 3794
2.2) Also note, someone uses nvidia with.. vesa or even vmware or similar. Outdated cards? May be. But lets cut the real number of cards to match amount in drivers, so we get 4003 of nvidia users that actually use nvidia driver.
2.3) Note the amount of nvidia-noveau(nv-nv) cases is minor. Since nvidia sells chipset IGP much lower currently, primary discrete, probably single exception is ION; and mobile usage is not included in this test - lets assume almost all cases with nvidia are discrete cards with small added percentage of nvidia blob on ION(and others, like 6200/300) IGP for purpose of VDPAU.

So the corrected values of real cards, backed up by with real drivers are:
Intel: 2514
AMD: 3794
Nvidia:4003

Now Intel is close and AMD - Nvidia are nearly equal.

3.1) Note Intel is not suitable for anything gaming, performance or other things you occasionally find on linux desktop. Yes linux gaming lives and there are commercial windows games bought and played on linux. However intel is not suitable for it at all - intel "cards" are probably laptops and htpc or similar 2D. That was 2514.

3.2) Lets move to AMD - 3794 cases. Look at amount of intel "cards".Remember AMD also has various IGP northbridge motherboards(4200 etc). AMD also sells laptops. This will spread IGP and discrete to roughly 50/50 - around 1800/1800
AMD video decoding is hardly present(windows omitted from survey), so barely anyone use AMD for HTPC - Laptop or Desktop should dominate. Catalyst is not help for video decoding either. Lets cut HTPC AMD use. Will not affect current values, but may affect driver choices further.
So we are left with Laptop and Desktop. Technology-dependent (from my observations) current intel laptop solutions go more preferable over AMD due to energy drain. The optimus case however did "positively" influenced that. Also, remember quality of Catalyst, add driver switchers and people that cannot use open drivers for gaming and also do not buy $300 card to use with open drivers. Because 100% of laptops users will use opensource driver - thats 1800 for laptop, 1800 are projected discrete cards. Look at amount of catalyst users - its confirmed.

3.2.1) Now why people still use catalyst? Only lastest hardware is supported. Error rate is .. biger than competition. You cannot really game with catalyst. At least not WINE(choice given - people take nvidia for that). Barely any opensource (except xonotic) will require anything past (current) opensource drivers.
Humble Indie bundles players maybe? People that (like in 1.3) stuck with discrete AMD card? No, they will just get nvidia. But take a look.
Intel dual head? No.
Nvidia dualhead? Very painful, but possible(2d).
Noveau - possible.
Catalyst dualhead - possible, but buggy.
Radeon dualhead - possible.

If we remove rough proportion of opensource radeon to catalyst users, from that amount as well as cut minor usable noveau from that value we will land on almost exactly 1600. Maybe it would be less. Maybe people just lied in the survey and less of them use it with catalyst, lets assume 1200 only and 400 are not - using catalyst for other purposes than gaming on modern discrete cards.

3.3) I guess you understand why opensource driver has so much more use in AMD,it is used on outdated discrete cards as well. But outdated cards means people do not buy amd hardware and use old hardware(how does amd survive? No wonder it is pessimistic about linux.) Or they have no choice, but to use Linux+Windows combo (for gaming)? <<This would be a good question for survey 2011. Some may still hesitate and just use Catalyst for some titles (that 400 in 3.2.1).

3.4) Now nvidia. noveau is so extremely small - it takes almost no impact. Almost everyone use nvidia blob. What can nvidia blob do?
Gaming - yes
Gaming via wine - yes
Video acceleration - yes
GPGPU - yes
Multimonitor - almost complete fail
There are estimated 4003 people with nvidia hardware, 90% of which are discrete cards.
Those 90% make nearly the equal amount of people that use AMD solutions for various reasons.

Now look here at this "barely survey".

This is OpenGL. How much people have we calculated are "stuck" to catalyst for OpenGL reasons? 400.
Remember, its catalyst. If people just get catalyst debugged to nvidia state, the number will not increase past that of nvidia. Barely anyone will just go sell nvidia card and get amd card, because amd all of the sudden has achieved same driver state. There will be a internal fight ("shelf fight" if I recon correctly) between AMD catalyst and AMD radeon. AMD will gain nothing from it.

And if opensource driver is updated instead? How about 400 become 3800 (4000 minus ten percent for HTPC(see 2.3) minus five percent for GPGPU plus 400)? No internal fight. Almost tenfold increase in card sales. If they manage some video acceleration without getting into that always annoying, always cracked DRM/HDCP swamp or OpenCL (which are combinable if UVD cannot be touched(still what a shame) )?

See, it is normal world practice for someone who desires the product(in AMD case - discrete card) to buy that product.
Currently (based on my rought unprecise calculations) barely any consumer buys modern amd card for catalyst if he wants gaming, gpgpu or vidaccel(htpc).
There is no chance to support opensource driver developers with money, by normal practice, and if you do do that, they recieve nothing as they are ignored by sales team.

So people with desktop, representing more than third of total graphical build, just go buy nvidia card. Maybe still with a tear in the eye (remembering =( AMD opensource "attempt"). AMD allows this to happen.
Or they buy AMD card because they dual boot, looking at linux every time with a tear in eye (and remembering >=( AMD opensource "attempt"). People allow this to happen.
Either proprietary driver and linux, or proprietary OS and linux. No linux standalone.

The last thing I want to conclude is that my whole this article, whole calculations are ... garbage.
We need real world data, precision, acceptance from people, readiness to vote, readiness to take actions.

Until then, we will have regimen of Kazakhstan or Egypt.
Current phoronix(or any other, phoronix has nothing to do with it) surveys are of exact use.
You want democracy? YES!!!
What do you do? Uhhh...
You deserve what you do.
People should be allowed to vote, directly. With some money.

If the distros had a way of recording what all their users were doing and sending that back upstream that might actually be more useful, but that seems unlikely to ever happen, at least by default, because of privacy concerns.

Implementing the hardware registering via distros seem very foreign idea to me.
Why should they, if it is AMD cards. If AMD does this:
- AMD will become a moral medal from purchasers, not distros.
- the data would be secure, way more reliable
- the votes will be distro-agnostic
- since it is centralized, it will be much easier and hence quicker to accomplish
- everyone has a browser, regardless of OS. Why make it complex?
- it is actually not related to kernel, since its not bug report. It is related to AMD stat, marketing and sales team only.
- yes, privacy concerns. Would you personally be happy to register your card using only its SN(without any other data) on official AMD site?

I hope this happens. I will devote any of my time I can squeeze to this idea, so it can receive enough kicks, punches, beatings from everyone till it is formed into the acceptable state. Beaten up enough to carry AMD tag, hehe. If they won't find it ugly in the end, hehe. But if so, reasoning (hence more beating) would be also nice, not "Yr ugly, get lost"- type.

And a small remark. Dear Steve, if you read this, you can sanely ignore it. You leak lots of information back home(and not only) anyway, so you miss nothing.