AMD drivers still make for slothsome Penguin

[Michael]

AMD MAY have released new Vista and XP Catalyst drivers today, fixing a whole host of Wintel problems - but Linux support is still woeful, according to some fansites.

Phoronix is a well known hangout for GNU geeks, and the chaps there have put a number of ATI cards to the test, up against a 7800 GTX. ATI's Linux drivers are so bad, they suggest, that an X1800 will perform almost identically to an X1950, despite the large delta in Windows performance.

On test was Quake 4, UT2004 and Doom 3 - stalwarts of OpenGL gaming, since Direct3D games obviously won't work on Linux (at least, not without Windows hackery). ATI has come in for a lot of stick for the alleged poor quality of its OpenGL driver, and that appears to be its undoing here.

Whilst a new Linux update was indeed pushed out today, there appear to be no significant performance enhancements detailed in the release notes. By contrast, NVIDIA has been working very hard, behind the scenes, to make sure that Penguin fanatics get their dose of OGLing, and this is borne out by the fact that the 7800 GTX trounces the X1950 in every Linux benchmark performed by the Phoronix gang.

Clearly, the guys need to get thinking about what they are going to do about fixing open sauce performance, if indeed they decide to do anything.

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38589

[Svartalf]

Heh... I wonder if AMD's listening... I think it's cool that The Inqwell mentioned Phoronix- but it's a might bit embarrassing for AMD, especially in light of the fact that we've been telling them this for a while now. [Edited for the site in question- not enough caffeine and I was up late last night catching poetry slams over at the Cantab Lounge (In Cambridge, MA...) last night and I was up until 4-ish... ]

[SnowZero]

Link to article?

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I can't find the article/thread the Inq is referring to. Can someone give me a title or link? The Inq left out those details...

[Michael]

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=9306

[SnowZero]

Thank you. Hopefully I wasn't the only one wondering that.

[drag]

interest thing. Apparently end users are the only ones wanting better drivers now:
Micheal Dell's blog entry titled: "Linux: Driver Support is Key"
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archi...3/28/9655.aspx

Currently Dell won't buy and sell hardware for it's Linux servers unless it has full open source driver support...

[mukiex]

I think what would be fantastic would be if Phoronix went above and beyond (tho I'm not sure if they have access to the hardware needed to do this) and added benchmark results for the GeForce 7600 as well.

It would really drive the point home if Nvidia's midrange card performed better than Ati's flagship in OpenGL.

[Michael]

I think what would be fantastic would be if Phoronix went above and beyond (tho I'm not sure if they have access to the hardware needed to do this) and added benchmark results for the GeForce 7600 as well.

It would really drive the point home if Nvidia's midrange card performed better than Ati's flagship in OpenGL.

Even the GeForce 6600 performs the same or better from our most recent tests.

[Svartalf]

interest thing. Apparently end users are the only ones wanting better drivers now:
Micheal Dell's blog entry titled: "Linux: Driver Support is Key"
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archi...3/28/9655.aspx

Currently Dell won't buy and sell hardware for it's Linux servers unless it has full open source driver support...

Heh... I don't think AMD is even offering an M9 part for sale anymore- I could be mistaken on that though. If so, then Dell's got it's server parts- and they'd be decent enough performers in the OpenGL space for them. Desktop parts though- they'd have to stick with Intel's offerings for right now.

[yoshi314]

the only reasonable solution i see right now

ati is said to be to releasing rewritten opengl core in their drivers soon.

it is planned to come to linux as well - so the developers are not going to mess around with the current codebase apart from usual bugfixing.

that's the way i see it now - we cannot expect new features nor performance gains in fglrx until that new opengl core hits fglrx.