Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be Crap

[GreatEmerald]

Because it's a blob driver , performance or both ?

The blob driver was a joke. It could only run on certain obsolete distros, and only then with a lot of work.

The OSS driver is much better, but it still is a very basic driver. It can draw things, it can control backlight brightness, but it has no acceleration. So if you want to run something like Unity (the interface) on it, you better like that ~5FPS performance! It's not so bad with Xfce, though. But again, you can't run anything that is 3D or HD videos on it without major performance issues.

That makes AMD the only good choice for Linux on low-end x86 hardware at this point. I recently purchased a Brazos-based EeePC (it was quite a bargain), and while its performance is not amazing, it's leaps and bounds better than on my Oak Trail-based device. Not to mention that with Catalyst, its battery holds up to 8 hours (more than its spec says) and with r600g up to 7 hours.

[AJSB]

@AJSB

Because PowerVR crap, that's why.

Because it's a blob driver , performance or both ?

[curaga]

@AJSB

Because PowerVR crap, that's why.

[AJSB]

...and now for something kinda of different....


Why a ODROID-X when for same around same price (after you add 4GB of RAM !!!) you can get this :

http://www.minipc.de/catalog/il/1412

Intel D2700MUD (Intel Atom 2x 2.13Ghz CPU, TPM, DVI) [FANLESS]


Name D2700MUD
Form Factor Mini-ITX Mainboard (17x17cm)
CPU Intel? Atom™ D2700 (2x 2.13GHz)
1MB Cache, With Hyper-Threading
Chipset Intel NM10 Express
Graphics VGA + DVI-D + LVDS
Memory 2x SO-DDR3 800/1066, 4GB max, Single channel
Power 24 Pin ATX
LAN 1x Intel 10/100/1000 MBit
Connectors (rear) - 4x USB 2.0
- 1x LAN RJ-45
- 3x Audio
- 1x PS/2
- 1x LPT
- 1x DVI-D
- 1x VGA
Audio 5.1 Channel HD Audio
Connectors (internal) - 2x SATA-II (3GB/s)
- 3x USB 2.0
- 1x PCI
- 1x Mini-PCIe
- 2x RS232
- Front Audio
- 1x TPM
- 1x SPDIF
- LVDS (Single 24bit)
Included - D2700MUD Mainboard (with 2x 2.13Ghz Atom CPU)
- I/O ATX rear plate
- 2x SATA cable
- Quickstart-Guide
- Drivers CD



...granted, is bigger, with more power drain , less robotic friendly, but for a budget Desktop PC, you can get a lot of ports, PCI besides integrated graphics (that sucks , i know) with 4GB RAM and fully compatible with x86 witch should make it easy to install ANY regular LINUX distro and run anything for it...

They have a lot of other models....like this one with HDMI:

http://www.minipc.de/catalog/il/1413

[curaga]

It's nice...the USB is fully interrupt driven, the ethernet native, the SATA2 is purely native and full speed like a desktop PC, a "case" for 4USD. Just missing those accelerated MALI drivers!

While all those make it actually usable (unlike the Pi, with its crappy USB and ethernet implemented via USB), the sata driver for a10 is not yet fully stable I hear.

[Pallidus]

google is now selling a complete laptop based on exynos 5 for 250...


now subract the screen, keyboard, touchpad, ssd, 2g of ram...


If someone really wanted I'm sure they would be able to sell an ARM a15 soc with 1 g of ram for around the 50/70 price point.

[KeyJ]

it turned out to be exactly what the foundation said

Unfortunately not - or not completely. In the announcement, the foundation said that there's a fully open source ARM userland now (which is true), but they also boasted that they have the first fully-functional fully open source SoC GPU drivers (which is not true). It's the latter part that stirred up things. If they just went with "Hey guys, here's the userland sources, you may now port your oddball operating systems to the Pi!", nobody would have argued and everybody would be happy about the little, but noticeable progress that had been made. But instead they went on to promise something they didn't deliver. It's just natural that this causes a few raised eyebrows.

[AJSB]

It's nice...the USB is fully interrupt driven, the ethernet native, the SATA2 is purely native and full speed like a desktop PC, a "case" for 4USD. Just missing those accelerated MALI drivers!

With time those drivers will be ready, i hope...Lima project should have some official support from ARM...yeah, i know, i'm a big fan for NVIDIA blob and usually bash Nouveau so how can i say that about Nouveau and this about Lima ?!? Completely different markets and concepts....


A desktop for $ 49 , LOL !!!

The ODROID-X is also VERY VERY nice (with that Exynos 4 Dual SoC and all ) but it's in a different price tag ...

In both cases, excellent "budget" Desktop PCs...

[bnolsen]

I didn't knew about the CubieBoard existence if it wasn't this thread ....it's indeed a very interesting device to make all kind of experiments and seem to have the right punch to do even some "Desktop" stuff at an minimal decent speed....any more devices of this type running Linux and in this price range (up to $50) ?

It's nice...the USB is fully interrupt driven, the ethernet native, the SATA2 is purely native and full speed like a desktop PC, a "case" for 4USD. Just missing those accelerated MALI drivers!

[AJSB]

I didn't knew about the CubieBoard existence if it wasn't this thread ....it's indeed a very interesting device to make all kind of experiments and seem to have the right punch to do even some "Desktop" stuff at an minimal decent speed....any more devices of this type running Linux and in this price range (up to $50) ?