Features Still Being Sought By Open-Source AMD Users

[klapauzius]

The driver ran in ring0 with UMS as well. Also, the UMS driver had no memory manager and didn't really utilize AGP memory for much at all so it's not surprise that with certain AGP/GPU combinations you have hangs when to start to full utilize AGP memory. Have you tried adjusting the AGP mode, etc.? A lot of AGP/GPU combinations only worked in specific AGP modes (even with UMS).

I tried all available AGP modes + modifying the GART size. No luck. I'll try the latest kernel and see what happens. By the way, if anybody can point me to some technical info about the RV280 i might have a look at the driver code and see what i can do. On first glance, there were a lot of TBD's in the sources.

[DanL]

i wasn't aware that the spirit of Steve Jobs haunts the Phoronix forums.

I'd call that a gross exaggeration, but even that wouldn't do it justice. You act like you bought your radeon a couple years ago and someone is telling you to replace it because it's "unhip" or something. It's 12 year old GPU technology, and expecting to run the latest kernel/software on it forever might be a bit unrealistic. But hey, good luck with your quest, Mr. Quixote...

[agd5f]

I tried all available AGP modes + modifying the GART size. No luck. I'll try the latest kernel and see what happens. By the way, if anybody can point me to some technical info about the RV280 i might have a look at the driver code and see what i can do. On first glance, there were a lot of TBD's in the sources.

You can also use the on-chip gart rather than the AGP gart by setting radeon.agpmode=-1. It's hard to say whether the issue on your particular system is in the gpu driver or the AGP driver. A lot of AGP northbridges were buggy. Another option would be to use both the AGP gart and the on chip gart. Treat them as two pools and then have the various userspace accel drivers use the appropriate pool depending on what it wants to do (e.g., on chip gart could be set up as a cache coherent pool and the AGP pool would be uncached write combined). Other than buggy AGP chipsets, I think a lot of the problems with AGP stem from caching.

[klapauzius]

expecting to run the latest kernel/software on it forever might be a bit unrealistic.

Believe it or not, that's what i've been doing the last couple of years. Believe it or not, i don't see a huge difference compared to today's latest and greatest technology other than hyper-realistic graphics in otherwise completely boring, often disgusting computer games. And 3d-bubble-gum GUI's, of course.

But that's just me.

[DanL]

Read it again. I didn't say it couldn't work. Plenty of hardware older than yours still works with the latest kernel.

[smitty3268]

Believe it or not, that's what i've been doing the last couple of years. Believe it or not, i don't see a huge difference compared to today's latest and greatest technology other than hyper-realistic graphics in otherwise completely boring, often disgusting computer games. And 3d-bubble-gum GUI's, of course.

But that's just me.

And what difference, exactly, do you see by upgrading to newer X server, kernel, etc.? If you are fine with old hardware because you don't see a difference, why aren't you fine with old software too?

I'm just not sure i see the point, here.

[javum]

The open source radeon driver has an option to enable underscan, but it's off by default so you don't have to do anything once the driver loads.

Is there any way to turn underscan on and adjust border parameters for KMS (in console)?