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  • #11
    Originally posted by Michael View Post
    For pre-9200 hardware, I believe David (of Phoronix) uses some Radeon 7500's and/or 8500's with the open-source drivers. Personally I haven't touched any pre-9200 stuff in a long while.
    Out of the R200 era cards (8500-9250 I beleive) the 8500 should be the fastest. Faster then the 9200. It had higher clocks on memory and gpu if I remember correctly. Back in the day 'The Weather Channel' actually paid to help get 3d drivers for these things.

    edit:

    The 8500 had 275mhz clock on Memory and GPU. The 9200 had 240mhz clock and 200mhz ram. Also it had a more complex pipeline arrangement (4/2:2 for the 8500 vs 4/1:1 for the 9200.. whatever that means) and the 128meg version had it's memory interweaved which probably did a slight performance boost.)


    With 7500 I donno. I expect their would be 3d acceleration from Free drivers, but it's probably been a long time since anybody tried to use them for gaming so I don't know of the stability.

    ATI was somewhat helpfull with 3d drivers in Linux up until the time right around they won the contract to start developing a GPU for the Xbox 360. It is probably a coincidence, but maybe not. It's the same time frame anyways. Now a X developer has made 2D drivers for the r500 series cards and ATI has him under NDA because of what he does for a living and they are refusing to let him release code for those, even though they are very basic drivers.

    It's probably just normal corporate BS. Everybody is too chicken to actually say 'yes' to anything.

    Well, opensource drivers don't normally influence me of my next purchase. Competent drivers do influence my decisions. So if the Intel 965G can outpace my X800 Pro 256... then I'd gladly buy one mobo from Intel.
    That would take magic, not extra special drivers. There is no way in hell that the 965G X3000 will come close to the ATI X800 with both having decent drivers.
    (anyways.. If it was raw speed your after both your ATI card and the majority of your games would run much better under Windows, so why bother with Linux? (we both know it's more then just speed))

    I am doubting that the X3000 will even been that much better then the GMA 950 at this point. It'll probably help in those games that take advantage of the extra hardware features that X3000, but otherwise I'd bet it's a incremental increase in performance, not a huge one.
    Last edited by drag; 28 September 2006, 11:34 PM.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by drag View Post
      ATI was somewhat helpfull with 3d drivers in Linux up until the time right around they won the contract to start developing a GPU for the Xbox 360. It is probably a coincidence, but maybe not. It's the same time frame anyways. Now a X developer has made 2D drivers for the r500 series cards and ATI has him under NDA because of what he does for a living and they are refusing to let him release code for those, even though they are very basic drivers.
      David was under NDA with R200/300/400 generation GPUs -- not R500. By running the program that he did on an R500 component, he technically violated his NDA. Thus since he was not authorized to do so, ATI will not permit the release of his code at this time.

      That there is the basic answer.
      Michael Larabel
      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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      • #13
        Originally posted by Michael View Post
        David was under NDA with R200/300/400 generation GPUs -- not R500. By running the program that he did on an R500 component, he technically violated his NDA. Thus since he was not authorized to do so, ATI will not permit the release of his code at this time.

        That there is the basic answer.
        It's a possible answer, but he still went through ATI to get permission. It's very likely that if he broke his NDA there would be more ramifactions then ATI simply ignoring his request with no explaination. They didn't tell him no or yes or slap him on the hand or anything. Doesn't sound like it to me that he did anything wrong. He is just being ignored.

        If he violated the NDA I would expect _something_ to happen.

        Anyways there is only 2 groups of people who would know about weither or not he violated his NDA and that would be either ATI or Airle. Did you talk to either one of them about it?

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        • #14
          Originally posted by drag View Post
          It's a possible answer, but he still went through ATI to get permission. It's very likely that if he broke his NDA there would be more ramifactions then ATI simply ignoring his request with no explaination. They didn't tell him no or yes or slap him on the hand or anything. Doesn't sound like it to me that he did anything wrong. He is just being ignored.

          If he violated the NDA I would expect _something_ to happen.

          Anyways there is only 2 groups of people who would know about weither or not he violated his NDA and that would be either ATI or Airle. Did you talk to either one of them about it?
          Yes, actually I had briefly discussed the situation with a representative from ATI after David's blog post.
          Michael Larabel
          https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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          • #15
            That's too bad. I was hoping that someday I'd be able to purchase a r500 card.

            But unless ATI cleans up it's act, it's just not going to happen. The only reason I have the ATI cards I have is because I can get 3d going without binary-only modules. Ultimately if I am forced to choose between to bads then Nvidia + propriatory drivers is far far superior then ATI + propriatory drivers. There is just no contest.

            If AMD-ATI thing doesn't work out well and Intel doesn't produce a decent card.. then it's Nvidia or bust. Too bad, ATI stuff is generally pretty good.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by niniendowarrior View Post
              Just a note... has anyone actually tried to Opensource drivers for ATi cards pre-9200? 3D hardware acceleration is working out of the box, I believe.
              Yes, I currently own an ati 9000 128MB pro, a 9200 128mb, and in my main computer I have a firegl 8800 128MB. I have these cards specifically because of the OSS r200 drivers.

              Yes, I know they are written based off of partial specs. They work very well IMHO. And being as I'm using an FGL 8800, it's pretty fast. And it's great that everything works "out of the box".

              Having OSS drivers influences my purchase, I'll probably have intel next time around.

              It'd be nice if Mike would pick something like the FGL8800 to use as a reference due to it's OSS drivers and run with it in all benches.(for comparison purposes) That is, until something new comes out with OSS drivers. Then that would become the reference for comparison. But even if he doesn't, I still really like this website.

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              • #17
                Just so you know cards that do have open source drivers that are usable for games and stuff like GL desktops.

                For the R200 DRI drivers...
                ATI r200 series

                8500-9250 ATI cards
                For the consumer cards the 'ATI 8500' with 128 megs of RAM would be the fastest.
                These are probably the best supported ATI cards. Maybe better supported then the Intel stuff.
                Supported well out of the box.


                For the R300 DRI drivers...
                ATI r300 series

                and
                ATI r400 (or r420) series

                Probably would want to aim for the X800
                They provide decent speed, work well with AIGLX, but feature support isn't all there.
                I have to use CVS versions of the DRM (Linux kernel portion), DRI, and Mesa for best stability and performance.



                The 915 DRI drivers...
                Intel GMA 900 and GMA 950 IGP.

                They are featurefull (for the limited hardware), stable, and supported out of the box on recent distros. (anything using Xorg 7.1 especially).

                There are a few variations. The GMA 900 comes with 915 chipsets and comes in a veriaty of core speeds from 166 for the very low voltage chipsets to 333mhz.

                The best performing currently is the GMA 950 IGP chipset which comes in two variations.. The regular 400mhz and then a 200mhz one for very low voltage chipsets.


                Then there is the GMA X3000 and the GMA 3000 which are a unknown quantity right now.




                For 'real' gaming, obviously the best choice is going to go with Nvidia software and propriatory drivers. Best performance and best compatability with products like Cedega and propriatory games.

                I'd be willing to buy a Nvidia card if I was still realy into FPS games, but now not so much..

                But I will NEVER EVER buy a motherboard or audio card or network card or drive controller or ANYTHING with propriatory drivers. With Video cards you have little choice, You have to choose nvidia if you want best performance.. But for motherboards and everything else there are much much better selection of aviable hardware with some of the best stuff supported by Open source drivers. There is no point in having to put with crappy propriatory drivers if you don't have to.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by drag View Post
                  Just so you know cards that do have open source drivers that are usable for games and stuff like GL desktops.

                  For the R200 DRI drivers...
                  ATI r200 series

                  8500-9250 ATI cards
                  For the consumer cards the 'ATI 8500' with 128 megs of RAM would be the fastest.
                  These are probably the best supported ATI cards. Maybe better supported then the Intel stuff.
                  Supported well out of the box.


                  For the R300 DRI drivers...
                  ATI r300 series

                  and
                  ATI r400 (or r420) series

                  Probably would want to aim for the X800
                  They provide decent speed, work well with AIGLX, but feature support isn't all there.
                  I have to use CVS versions of the DRM (Linux kernel portion), DRI, and Mesa for best stability and performance.



                  The 915 DRI drivers...
                  Intel GMA 900 and GMA 950 IGP.

                  They are featurefull (for the limited hardware), stable, and supported out of the box on recent distros. (anything using Xorg 7.1 especially).

                  There are a few variations. The GMA 900 comes with 915 chipsets and comes in a veriaty of core speeds from 166 for the very low voltage chipsets to 333mhz.

                  The best performing currently is the GMA 950 IGP chipset which comes in two variations.. The regular 400mhz and then a 200mhz one for very low voltage chipsets.


                  Then there is the GMA X3000 and the GMA 3000 which are a unknown quantity right now.




                  For 'real' gaming, obviously the best choice is going to go with Nvidia software and propriatory drivers. Best performance and best compatability with products like Cedega and propriatory games.

                  I'd be willing to buy a Nvidia card if I was still realy into FPS games, but now not so much..

                  But I will NEVER EVER buy a motherboard or audio card or network card or drive controller or ANYTHING with propriatory drivers. With Video cards you have little choice, You have to choose nvidia if you want best performance.. But for motherboards and everything else there are much much better selection of aviable hardware with some of the best stuff supported by Open source drivers. There is no point in having to put with crappy propriatory drivers if you don't have to.
                  New R300 Open / Closed driver tests were just completed by Phoronix. More information can be found @ http://www.phoronix.net/forums/showt...=1518#post1518 (Please discuss the information in the appropriate threads).
                  Michael Larabel
                  https://www.michaellarabel.com/

                  Comment


                  • #19
                    Originally posted by Michael View Post
                    New R300 Open / Closed driver tests were just completed by Phoronix. More information can be found @ http://www.phoronix.net/forums/showt...=1518#post1518 (Please discuss the information in the appropriate threads).
                    Yeah, and the performance is dismal, for either the OpenSourced drivers or the ATI ones, though the ATI ones are much more performant. It remains to be seen how things play out, but I've got it on good authority that ATI's been listening- the silence has been for a reason on the drivers we DO have. I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude (for several reasons, actually...) with them- but if they were to Open Source things right now or at least give us real technical data, I'd be convinced on the spot.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
                      Yeah, and the performance is dismal, for either the OpenSourced drivers or the ATI ones, though the ATI ones are much more performant. It remains to be seen how things play out, but I've got it on good authority that ATI's been listening- the silence has been for a reason on the drivers we DO have. I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude (for several reasons, actually...) with them- but if they were to Open Source things right now or at least give us real technical data, I'd be convinced on the spot.
                      Svartalf:

                      What silence are you referring to from ATI?
                      Michael Larabel
                      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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