Is ATI really on par with NVIDIA now?

[Kano]

Yes, in one point you are right, NV does not provide 3d support in OSS drivers. Maybe they could add basic support to run at least Compiz sooner or later - you can not really say that OSS drivers are first choice when you want to play games. Also do you think that your OSS developers are unable to fix fglrx kernel problems? I guess they would not really require so much time to do so.

[some-guy]

the reason for fglrx (technically) being able to perform better is that it has access to parts of the hardware that amd can't give specs on

[bridgman]

That actually hasn't been an issue yet. Most of the info we need to hold back is in DRM-related areas. There are a couple of things we left out of the r5xx doc because they were hugely complicated to document and support but only gave a couple of % performance difference. If the open source driver gets to the point where all the pre-requisite support is there we will try to find a way to get that information out too, either by writing a big honkin' document or (more likely) adding the code ourselves.

Right now the main reason for the performance delta is that the open source driver architecture is relatively old, but that is improving rapidly. The fglrx 3d driver stack has literally hundreds of man-years of accumulated effort in performance tuning and optimization, and was re-written from scratch (millions of lines of code) in order to deal with the remaining architectural issues in our previous OpenGL stack.

I expect to see big improvements in open source driver performance over the next year as initiatives like kernel memory management and Gallium start to kick in. If you follow the IRC channels (#radeon and #dri-devel mostly) you can see some of that work happening right before your eyes. If you're into the technical stuff, take a look at the work nha is doing in Mesa to improve the shader compiler logic and get ready for the transition to Gallium.

[Kano]

You are always referring to the future, don't you get that? You build an idealitic picture of what it will be. But today, now the things are really different - and you have to look at today when you want to buy a good supported card - until you are willing to test every little improvement youself to see the progress.

[bridgman]

I'm the open source project manager, it's my job to talk about the future

Seriously though, everyone knows the current state; 5xx, 690 and earlier have pretty good open source support but run 30-50% as fast on average for things like gaming, GL support is just shy of 1.4, which is a problem for some games, and support is only just starting to make its way into distributions. Closed source runs real fast but you will have trouble running on unreleased kernels and distros, and there are still improvements to be made in both open and closed drivers, with 6xx/7xx open 3d being the biggest hole today.

I am also talking about what we *don't* do, ie we are not making an attempt to support closed source driver use on unreleased kernels or distros other than for testing purposes, and are not likely to do so in the future.

The question was whether open source performance was limited by information we had held back from the development community. I guess I could have just said "is not !!" and not said what *would* have to change to improve open source performance but let's be blunt, serious open source gaming still *is* in the future on integrated and low end discrete graphics. Fortunately we also make reasonably high end cards.

[RobbieAB]

[snip]... let's be blunt, serious open source gaming still *is* in the future on integrated and low end discrete graphics. Fortunately we also make reasonably high end cards.

I know many wargames fans who would take issue with not being classified as "serious" gamers. Indeed, I would place myself in that group...

[bridgman]

I know many wargames fans who would take issue with not being classified as "serious" gamers. Indeed, I would place myself in that group...

OK, let's make that "graphically demanding"

EDIT -- in hindsight, the whole performance vs hardware vs game vs resolution vs driver vs settings thing is too complex for a one-line comment. For any given GPU family the high end product is typically between 5x and 10x as fast as the low end parts, and with the same hardware and display you can easily get a 4:1 range or better by changing resolution or eye candy. Maybe serious open source gaming is no longer the future, except for games which demand a higher level of GL support than the drivers have today.

[bnolsen]

Yes, in fact ATI is probably beyond nvidia at this point.

A week ago the 7600GS in my system burnt up. Bad fan & melt city.
Just replaced it with a 3650 I got at microcenter for $49.

Really night & day.
The RainSlicked demo on the 7600GS ran painfully choppy at low quality 1280x768
The 3650 ran the same demo 1680x1050 high quality absolutely smoothly.

Actually now I don't even have any nvidia cards left in any of my machines, neither work nor home.

[Ellipsys]

Let me be the first to say I'm a Linux noob - I've messed around with a few distributions in my time. Debian (Thanks Kano!), *buntu, and I'm looking forward to trying Arch soon, when I can devote an entire hard drive to Linux use!

I'm trying to decide on a new, high performance video card for my uses. Pretty much, I know I'm going to be dual booting, but I'd like to spend as much time in Linux as possible. That means I, for lack of a better phrase "want it all".

I plan to game both under Windows when required, but would like to play as many of my games as possible (with eye candy) in Linux. In many cases this will require the use of WINE, I am sure. Aside from gaming, I plan to mess around with Compiz-Fusion, watch full screen HD video etc.. and all those other graphically demanding issues. I have no use nor need for DRM, so that's not a consideration for me. I don't purchase DRMed media.

Would it be wise, for me to buy an ATI card at this point? I applaud ATI's open source efforts and hope they continue and expand, but I need functionality, so I don't mind using a closed-source driver if need be. I'm also a little concerned about ATI's answer to CUDA, NVidia's PhysX implementation.

I really want to support ATI, but I really can't spend my money on an expensive video card only to find that its a couple of years ago again, and I'm shouting at my Mobility x600 trying to get 3D support with fglrx, while everyone around cries out "ATI = your problem. Should have bought Nvidia".

Trust me, I really want to support ATI's efforts and I realize that I "want a lot" from my cards, compared to those who are going to primarily use 2d apps.

Bridgman - Thanks for coming onto a forum like this. Its cool to see a direct rep from AMD/ATI here. Please know that there are a number of us (and that number is growing, I think) who want high powered 3d gaming on an Open Source operating system, would we have the cards and drivers that support it. Are there plans to get proper and up to date OpenGL support into the drivers?

[some-guy]

Let me be the first to say I'm a Linux noob - I've messed around with a few distributions in my time. Debian (Thanks Kano!), *buntu, and I'm looking forward to trying Arch soon, when I can devote an entire hard drive to Linux use!

I'm trying to decide on a new, high performance video card for my uses. Pretty much, I know I'm going to be dual booting, but I'd like to spend as much time in Linux as possible. That means I, for lack of a better phrase "want it all".

I plan to game both under Windows when required, but would like to play as many of my games as possible (with eye candy) in Linux. In many cases this will require the use of WINE, I am sure. Aside from gaming, I plan to mess around with Compiz-Fusion, watch full screen HD video etc.. and all those other graphically demanding issues. I have no use nor need for DRM, so that's not a consideration for me. I don't purchase DRMed media.

Would it be wise, for me to buy an ATI card at this point? I applaud ATI's open source efforts and hope they continue and expand, but I need functionality, so I don't mind using a closed-source driver if need be. I'm also a little concerned about ATI's answer to CUDA, NVidia's PhysX implementation.

I really want to support ATI, but I really can't spend my money on an expensive video card only to find that its a couple of years ago again, and I'm shouting at my Mobility x600 trying to get 3D support with fglrx, while everyone around cries out "ATI = your problem. Should have bought Nvidia".

Trust me, I really want to support ATI's efforts and I realize that I "want a lot" from my cards, compared to those who are going to primarily use 2d apps.

Bridgman - Thanks for coming onto a forum like this. Its cool to see a direct rep from AMD/ATI here. Please know that there are a number of us (and that number is growing, I think) who want high powered 3d gaming on an Open Source operating system, would we have the cards and drivers that support it. Are there plans to get proper and up to date OpenGL support into the drivers?

Nvidia, it isn't limited by DRI, will give you good performance.

Replace it with an ATi one in a few years