"Ask ATI" dev thread

[AdrenalineJunky]

at current development rate i would actually expect more then basic 3d...

[bridgman]

Yep. It's always hard to predict the future, but we're getting close to basic 3D now and by next year I would expect quite a bit more than basic 3D.

[Xavier]

OK, one very pragmatic question: I'm gonna build a new pc, I want it to do 3D with OSS drivers, what gfx card do I buy ? Do I buy an r700, and I'll have to wait just a bit, or do I wait for the r800, and if yes what's the expected timeline for basic 3D ?

[CNCFarraday]

OK, one very pragmatic question: I'm gonna build a new pc, I want it to do 3D with OSS drivers, what gfx card do I buy ? Do I buy an r700, and I'll have to wait just a bit, or do I wait for the r800, and if yes what's the expected timeline for basic 3D ?

Here's an account of my experiences with current generation hardware:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18578&page=13

The thing is I always update the drivers "by hand", not by the distribution's package manager.

I'd like to point out I tested dual monitors (LCD+CRT) and it works fine on the 3870 and 4850

For some reason, if I attach a CRT next to a LCD to the integrated radeon 3200 i can't get the correct resolution and refresh rates on the CRT - even with hand-tuned xorg.conf and aticonfig options. However, using another LCD with DVI works almost out of the box (you have to fiddle a little bit with aticonfig)

[CNCFarraday]

Well, depends...

I can use current generation ATi cards with the fglrx blob just fine until OSS Drivers mature enough.

Also, video acceleration is not an issue. I can see 1080p mkv-s (x264/ac-3) on a 2.5 Ghz dual core Athlon 5050e with 4GB DDR2 and integrated radeon 3200 with VLC on a AMD64 kernel linux. Of course, you can't do anything else while watcing the movie, but it's doable.

On the 9850 quad core with 8GB RAM i can watch 1080p, transcode flac, run samba, apache2, boinc client with rosseta and climateprediction and browse with firefox (AMD64 kernel > .25)

I think ATi's blobs are horrible if you have an pre radeon 2xxx card, but with newer cards it is ok. As I've said, provided you don't run boinc, azureus, eclipse with a 800 sources tree, you CAN view 1080p video encoded with x264 on a ~50E X2 at 2.5Ghz... (45W cpu)

[Xavier]

if you want 100% features OSS you will wait for the R900...
[...]
the DHCP/DRM will also be in the R900 chip but in an extra part of the chip.

on R700/r800 you only can use 3D part and 2D part no Viedeo Acceleration.

Thanks for the hint. But I'd rather not wait too long, my current pc is well past its duty period now.
So my question remains: is there an ETA for r800 3D ?

[CNCFarraday]

Xavier, are you "religious" about oss drivers ? Because current generation ATi cards work more-or-less out of the box. I use 4 different models (3870, 4850, 4830 and integrated 3200) on AMD64 kernel and all work ok. I can see 1080p videos with no tearing or crap, I have dual screen capabilities, 3D acceleration...

You *can* buy a 48** card today and it will work with the current binary blob from ATi and, when the good people of radeonhd make it to a stable release with 3d support, you could switch to oss drivers.

However, if you use FreeBSD & co or you are religious about oss drivers, you should wait some until radeonhd people reach a milestone.

[Xavier]

Xavier, are you "religious" about oss drivers ?

Yes I am. Proprietary software developement is my day job, I want that nowhere near my home computer.

[CNCFarraday]

Yes I am. Proprietary software developement is my day job, I want that nowhere near my home computer.

Well... you'll have to wait some time unless you go fore some intel integrated crap...

I hope you are the patient kinda guy, because there's no oss drivers for any decent video card out there. Nvidia doesn't look like it is opening up soon and the radeonhd people have A LOT of work to do. Don't kid yourself that they are anywhere near a full oss driver. Parts of the driver might work and some 3D support, but it's a far cry from full features support.

This is one of those things that works against you. I'm all for 100% oss stack but it is not realistic. Maybe if there were 5-6 vendors making 3D GPUs, but with only two players and virtually zero support for linux from game developers, it's not going to happen soon.

The blobs from ATi work fine with new radeon models for most stuff someone uses linux for anyway. You can always use the blob and switch to radeonhd when they reach the same level of features support.

[energyman]

luckily, we don't have to depend on radeonhd and the radeon/overall deelopment did some nice jumps in the last couple of weeks, as can be seen here:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18072