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Does the R700 drivers provide enough performance for a 2560x1440 Gnome 3 desktop

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  • Does the R700 drivers provide enough performance for a 2560x1440 Gnome 3 desktop

    I was thinking about buying a new screen, and it would be nice to get some more screen-estate, so I'm tempted to get a 27".

    I'm currently running an AMD Radeon 4850 using the Mesa R700 drivers, which work well on a Gnome 3 desktop, running at a resolution of 1680x1050. To my knowledge (based on old Phoronix articles), the 2D desktop performance of the FOSS drivers is even better than the Catalyst performance, but now that most of the desktop is "3D" (OpenGL accelerated) I'm not sure what the status is. I initially bought an ATI/AMD card to support their FOSS initiative, so I'm reluctant to change to the Catalyst driver.

    So what's your experience: Is the Mesa R600/700 driver performance good enough for a 2560x1440 resolution on a Gnome 3 desktop?

    I would think about buying a new graphics card if it was necessary, but since the performance of the driver is best for R600/700 (also according to Phoronix performance testing), it just feels like a waste of money.

  • #2
    It's only 1.77 times the pixels of fullhd, and your card has enough VRAM + memory bandwidth. Should work just fine.

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    • #3
      If you are talking about the performance of the GNOME 3 desktop, it should fly.

      Desktop effects do not really tax modern graphics cards much. Performance problems only appear when running demanding games at high resolutions.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
        If you are talking about the performance of the GNOME 3 desktop, it should fly.
        Desktop effects do not really tax modern graphics cards much. Performance problems only appear when running demanding games at high resolutions.
        Yes, I was mainly thinking about general desktop performance. I was a bit afraid that the card (especially with the FOSS drivers) wouldn't even be able to render a Gnome 3 desktop at 2560x1440@60hz. I've already given up regarding demanding games at 1680x1050
        I tried playing Team Fortress 2 and it was running at an acceptable speed up until players started spawning and shooting, then it was completely unplayable at a frame-rate of perhaps 0.5-10 FPS.

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        • #5
          That slowdown *might* not be the graphics drivers... I seem to remember a couple of the recent Steam games needing tweaks to the CPU PM settings in order to get consistent performance. I did a quick search and didn't turn up anything but I don't really remember enough of the context for a quick search to be successful.
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