Goodbye ATI

[johnc]

Congrats on your nvidia purchase. I'm sure you'll be pretty happy... and if you intend to watch video, yes, VDPAU is awesome and even puts DXVA to shame IMO.

The binary driver isn't free from bugs and annoying gotchas... and they have scaled some functionality out recently, and excluded some other things (e.g., overclocking in Fermi)... but for the most part it's a win.

[crazycheese]

your writing here is just a joke! because: NTFS IS A CLOSED PROTOCOL!

And tuxera is going to destroy ... closed protocol? There is danger only if closed source implementation introduces OWN standard and becomes WIDESPREAD. Because no alternative can exist, if communication path is proprietary and there is no chance to ditch it out.

i use it in this way??? and no i give a shit about video acceleration because: i buy a faster cpu if my system is to slow for videos. power managment? i give a shit about power managment i buy passiv cooled cards and i don'T use notebooks.

in fact you can life with the radeon driver but not with the catalyst.

You can do that, or you can push manufacturer into producing something efficient instead.
You can buy 6970 to achieve speeds that of 6550, which means your software is bottlenecking like no tomorrow. Manufacturers are responsible for software - they are. First manufacturer who gets job done gets money. First who does that in opensource gets 9 out of 10 preference.

I already do this on a private basis i spend money to oibaf,michael,marek there is no need for any official project. Just open your pocket and send the money to your favor dev.
...
you can send money on a private basis.

You surpise me sometimes. Are you going to say you want to finance whole radeon project from private pocket money? Or you apply as new xorg radeon financial manager - so for every AMD card I buy or recommend, I tell people to route 1/10 of cost to your bank so that you can distribute?
Because AMD 8itches the whole time - there is not enought manpower, yet the manpower is ONLY limited by financial situation. There ARE people who would pay for opendrivers, I KNOW it. As long as money does not disappear. It wonders me people donate 3k$ on BS distros like Sabayon just for 1/3 of them to sit on fglrx.

So where is official Xorg Radeon compaign, Q.? Or should we sit still wait for AMD "All-in-Wonder"?

[b3nn0]

I really don't get you guys sometimes.
RealNC: I can really feel with you. I used NVidia until last summer when I bought my new PC. I thought "This time I'm going to buy AMD. They support open source driver development".
Open source drivers my ***. When I pay a lot of money for a product, I want it to work.
The OSS drivers from AMD are mostly unusable (using Oibafs PPA for latest MESA). Until now I was not able to run Oil rush or any other Ungine-based software with the radeon driver (usually resulted in X crashes).
So I used fglrx, which is faster, but sucks in every other way (buggy installations, bugs everywhere, also X crashes. For a while I always had some artifacts on the screen after boot and always had to restart X twice until it worked, etc).
AMD has some nice ideas, but it's just so buggy (and OpenGL drivers are crap, compared to NVidia. AMD works much better with DirectX on Windows).
Now just as you, RealNC, I also ordered a new Nvidia card which will arrive in 1-2 days (GTX 570). Can't wait for it...

And about Intel: Compared to the radeon driver, this worked _really_ good. Even Oil Rush worked with it. Never had crashes, good Power Management, etc.
It works perfectly with my Sandy Bridge machine (Now using Intel until I get my new NVidia, because radeon/fglrx is just pain).
Also I'm very happy with my intel based netbook. It's not fast, but it works just perfectly and stable.

I can't wait for the day when Intel releases a fast GPU (maybe Ivy + 1?).
As soon as they do, I will probably never buy something else again...

[crazycheese]

you don't get it... they support a closed protocol to destroy real free alternatives.

there is nothing good about NTFS. really nothing.

How is NTFS is going to destroy free alternatives? Wtf? I have like 30 people who cannot access broken NAS (ext3 mdraid), so I used ntfs-3g to copy the data onto other USB drive that needs NTFS so they can copy all on their crappy windows. They know their windows is crappy, but I have to give them the data somehow. I don?t use NTFS for years already, but its question of interoperability.

tell me : why not?
you don't need a company like microsoft to manage your money.
just read the phoronix forum and if a dev do something useful just ask for the paypal email address oder bank account number to make a donation.

Because doing something professionally requires to have a company. This is why companies were required to register themself as companies in the first place. Or you go Freiberufer which would mean "Ich AG".

just ask yourself : " is this right or is this wrong" if you chose the answer : "This is right" then you can start sending money
...
i'm one of them
...
sure (ironic) they need better propaganda maybe they should watch more Adolf Hitler speeches-(ironic off)

Having you as financial manager for xorg radeon is RIGHT as long as you do your job.
But I have fears this ends in (ironic off) ironie.
Can you do a checklist what is to do to implement this model? I can assist you. My offer is:
[ ] Having really trusted and accepted person (among x-crew)
[ ] Put up roadmap and assign critical places - not for distant future, but for next 6 months.
[ ] Redo this roadmap hierarchically
[ ] Based upon current progress, calculate amount of work required to implement parts of that roadmap and from that ? amount of money for EACH segment
[ ] Set that into table, publish online on Xorg
[ ] Set minimal goal for each month
[ ] Attract crowd
[ ] Control incoming payment and distribution

Of course, this can be eV, in fact this SHOULD be eV, since the-commercial-AMD refuses to do their homework.

[ninez]

But there IS software which falls upon your criteria - if opensource amd driver would be supported and work for new and old cards like you would expect from a driver to do, many would not use nvidia.

Speak for yourself.

I wouldn't trade the Nvidia binary driver for nouveau, let alone switching to AMD hardware and using an open-source AMD driver.

Now i say this, fully knowing that the radeon driver is better than nouveau ~ but the point is - i wouldn't use either at this point, as they have no where near the performance or features of their binary counter-parts. And personally, i also think that Nvidia makes better hardware than AMD ~ which is another reason to NOT use AMD for graphics.

just my 2 cents

[b3nn0]

i think your knowelege is outdated in the past nvidia do have better hardware for AF filtering but this is just an old storry.

the hd7950 for example do have perfect AF filtering.

for the hd7900 series of hardware there isn't any logical argument against amd hardware.

Yes there is.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Radeon-HD-7970-Mit-2048-Kernen-an-die-Leistungsspitze-1399905.html

True, the HD 7970 is an absolute high-end GPU.
It even beats the GTX 580. Well, if there wasn't openGL.
DirectX: 7970 > GTX 580
OpenGL: GTX580 > 7970

I give you 2 seconds to think about what is more needed on Linux.
And the GTX 580 is still ~30-40? cheaper than the 7970.
Choice is simple from a hardware perspective for a Linux user.

[hal2k1]

I'll believe it when it works :-)


No one cares about that. H.264 is where battery power goes.


Again, I'll believe it when it works. And what do you expect anyway? Someone asks me what laptop to buy and I tell them one with AMD graphics? When they put Linux on it and wonder why stuff doesn't work, they're going to kill me. I'm suggesting what works *now*. That is what's important. Intel is a very safe bet right now. And if they want to run 3D games on it, I'm recommending NVidia. Under no circumstance can I truly recommend AMD as of this moment. If I did, they would come back 3 days later and throw their problematic laptop at my face.

Excuse me? It works just fine now. Here is a laptop I ordered just recently, with Ubuntu only pre-installed (no Windows), thereby saving myself $350AUD compared to what an equivalent model is currently selling for in local stores.

http://pioneercomputers.com.au/products/configure.asp?c1=3&c2=148&id=3093

Intel? Core i5-460M 2.53 Ghz Turbo 2.80 G Dual Core 3 MB Cache 1066 MHz Processor
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5470 1GB GDDR3 PCIe Directx 11

When it arrives I will wipe Ubuntu and install Linux Mint KDE 12. It will be sweet. I know this because it is meant to replace my desktop (Athlon64x2 2GHz with ATI HD 4350 graphics), which is getting a bit long in the tooth now, and yet it runs KDE4 very nicely indeed with the open source AMD/ATI graphics drivers. Extremely snappy and responsive.

On Windows. This is a Linux forum and we're talking about the open source driver. The open source AMD driver is slow.

And here is the beauty of that ... because of the power of the underlying hardware it is at the very least no slower right now than the equivalent-price Intel graphics, but it is about to go ahead in leaps and bounds.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1MjY

By your own argument there is no room for improvement in a machine with Intel graphics, the underlying hardware constrains it.

I don't see how this is important. Not a single person where I installed Linux on his/her machine even cared about the license of the driver. The only thing they care is that it works.

You have never heard a complaint that in their Linux binary driver nVidia dropped support for legacy GPUs? You have never heard a complaint that the closed video driver broke after a kernel update and they could no longer boot their machine to a graphical desktop? You have never heard a complaint that people had to jump through hoops to install a closed video driver why didn't it come with the Linux distro?

You must lead a very sheltered life.

[hal2k1]

Yes there is.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Radeon-HD-7970-Mit-2048-Kernen-an-die-Leistungsspitze-1399905.html

True, the HD 7970 is an absolute high-end GPU.
It even beats the GTX 580. Well, if there wasn't openGL.
DirectX: 7970 > GTX 580
OpenGL: GTX580 > 7970

I give you 2 seconds to think about what is more needed on Linux.
And the GTX 580 is still ~30-40€ cheaper than the 7970.
Choice is simple from a hardware perspective for a Linux user.

And the choice is clearly ATI. Why?

Here is a Graphics card hierarchy chart from Nov 2011. The cards listed at each level are roughly the same performance, one wouldn't normally be able to pick the difference in use.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fastest-graphics-card-radeon-geforce,3067-7.html

At every level there are choices between nVidia and AMD/ATI. Only when one gets to the lower levels are there also Intel choices.

At the bottom of the page are listed some of the best value buys at different levels. Radeon choices predominate the listing.

So from purely a hardware perspective, the best performance-for-money at many tiers of performance is an ATI card. From a driver perspective, for reasons of just-works-out-of-the-box with no hassles, one would want an open source driver. The Intel drivers right now are better at getting what performance there is out of the hardware, but they are constrained by the hardware. The open source drivers for AMD/ATI cards are yet to be as well tuned, but they are generally running on better hardware for equivalent price to Intel GPUs, so they currently perform at least as well.

When in the near future the open source drivers for AMD/ATI cards do receive tuning for performance, such as this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1MjY

"the R600 2D color tiling support is designed to deliver major performance boosts when it works correctly, but the initial support published last month was rather buggy. Since then, Glisse has worked a great deal on improving the 2D color tiling support.

Announced on the mailing list yesterday was completing the R600 2D color tiling support."

... they will clearly be the best option for Linux users, without a shadow of doubt.

[hal2k1]

When in the near future the open source drivers for AMD/ATI cards do receive tuning for performance, such as this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1MjY

... they will clearly be the best option for Linux users, without a shadow of doubt.

After the R600 2D tiling patches land in the open source Radeon driver, the next major performance boost should be coming from HiZ.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1NTE

The AMD Catalyst driver on Linux obviously supports Hyper Z's full capabilities, but the R600+ open-source support hasn't been mainlined. There's been R600+ Hierarchical Z patches floating in this FreeDesktop.org BugZilla bug for more than a year along with some patches in Alex Deucher's HTTP repository, but nothing that's worked its way mainline yet. Hierarchical Z support requires kernel DRM and Mesa (R600g) patches.

This afternoon updated Mesa/kernel patches arrived from Jerome Glisse in the aforelinked bug posting for open-source Hierarchical Z support on the GPUs from the Radeon HD 2000 series through the Radeon HD 6900 series. These patches were re-based to work atop the recent R600 tiling work.

The Hierarchical Z support for modern Radeon GPUs has been baking for about a year and we can only hope it's merged soon (assuming all issues are worked out) so that its performance can be more competitive with the proprietary Catalyst driver. This support would likely end up in the Linux 3.4 kernel and Mesa 8.1 releases.

There are a number of significant performance boosts coming for the r600g open source driver for later models of AMD/ATI cards.

the Hierarchical Z support does make the performance go up a fair amount. There's also the 2D tiling, PCI Express 2.0 support, and other not-yet-enabled-by-default features to up the frame-rates.

Finally, it may yet happen that the open source driver does come to support video decode acceleration via UVD.

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

Christian writes to the developers, "to support multiple compute rings, async DMA engines and UVD we need to teach the radeon kernel module how to sync buffers between different rings and make some changes to the command submission ioctls."

The German open-source developer acknowledges, "we can't release any documentation about async DMA or UVD (yet)." Yet is the keyword. John Bridgman and others have long acknowledged they would be looking in ways to possibly provide open-source video support.

The groundwork is being done in preparation for this. There wouldn't be any point if it was never going to happen.

[Kano]

Your postings are completely pointless until you OWN+USED the hardware you always talk about. I had/have those ati cards for fglrx:

radeon 9000 mobile agp (used) -> unsupported by fglrx since 8.28.8
radeon 9700 pro agp (dead) -> unsupported by fglrx since 9-3
radeon 9800 pro agp (used by a friend) -> unsupported by fglrx since 9-3
radeon x700 (pro) pci-e (2 cards dead) -> unsupported by fglrx since 9-3, lived at least long enough to fix radeon oss issues
radeon x1600 pci-e (available) -> unsupported by fglrx since 9-3
radeon hd 3450 pci-e (sold) -> supported by fglrx, but xvba crashed too often, therefore i got rid of it
radeon hd 4550 pci-e (available) -> supported by fglrx, seems to work
radeon hd 5670 pci-e (used) -> supported by fglrx, problems with xvba/gl2benchmark since 11-12

so how many cards did YOU test with fglrx? if somebody has got spare ati cards from series 6 and 7 feel free to send em to me.