Intel Atom N270 Still Sees Some Gains On Linux

[smitty3268]

Yeah it's already been tested and saved for a future article... i915 classic is still faster though.

Is LLVM enabled by default yet, or is that still why your results are always slow?

[Gusar]

If it was stuck in what looked like an infinite loop, you might want to check that you have flex/bison installed on your system.

I was indeed missing flex/bison at first, but that caused the compilation to directly error-out. Which I still consider a bug, it should error-out at the ./configure stage, but at least I knew what to do. So I installed them and fired off a new compile, which then hung. The same git-snapshot compiled fine on the laptop.

[Veerappan]

LOL! Sounds about right though . After compilation hung there at "running /usr/bin/makedepend" for like half an hour, I terminated it. Didn't bother to investigate what went wrong, if something really hung or if the processor was just taking it's sweet time. I now compiled on a laptop, Pentium-M 1.73GHz, took a bit more than 15 minutes.

If it was stuck in what looked like an infinite loop, you might want to check that you have flex/bison installed on your system. I ran into that a few weeks ago on a fairly new Mint install. Mesa didn't say that it was required, and got itself stuck in an infinite loop as it silently swallowed the failures (redirected the output of the failing command to /dev/null).

[randomizer]

Amazing improvements in C-Ray. Maybe I should recommission my netbook as a rendering node It's not like it does anything else other than gather dust...

[Gusar]

I recall my E-350 built mesa in about ~15min. Translating that to an older single core atom, maybe 5 days

LOL! Sounds about right though . After compilation hung there at "running /usr/bin/makedepend" for like half an hour, I terminated it. Didn't bother to investigate what went wrong, if something really hung or if the processor was just taking it's sweet time. I now compiled on a laptop, Pentium-M 1.73GHz, took a bit more than 15 minutes.

Before:

OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 8.0.3

After:

OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on i915 (chipset: 945GME)
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.1-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

To see if it works, I started EDuke32 with the Polymost HRP, launched a game and just stood there. Classic driver 48-49fps, gallium driver 44-45fps. So the gallium driver is indeed a bit slower. Of course what I'm doing here is not a proper test, but it's something.

Next step, Need for Speed 4 in wine. Didn't even start with the gallium driver, just threw an error. So I guess I'll be sticking with the classic driver, no matter how cool "OpenGL version string: 2.1" looks


ZootNerper: You have a CedarView machine with PowerVR graphics, while what's being tested here is Diamondville, with Intel graphics. Your issues have nothing to do with the Atom processor, it's all about graphics. And the next architecture, ValleyView, won't have PowerVR graphics anymore.

[curaga]

I've just started a mesa-git compile to get i915g. But since the Atom N270 is not exactly fast (understatement of the century ), it'll take a while.

I recall my E-350 built mesa in about ~15min. Translating that to an older single core atom, maybe 5 days

[atcl]

How about a comparison of the 330 and N570 ? It would be nice to see how they do...

[ZootNerper]

You got it to run?

Hi,

I have one of these crappy little Atoms in an ASUS 1101HA. Even running XP it couldn't do video. I can install Ubuntu 12.04 if I put up with half the screen missing and then it won't boot. Back to 10.10 for me till 12.10. (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/944929)

I use it as a server/downloading machine and that's it. Naff all use to man nor beast.

Except I'll never buy an Atom again whatever the future brings.

-- Zoot

[Michael]

You should test Gallium3D as well on this netbook given the recent improvements in i915g.

Yeah it's already been tested and saved for a future article... i915 classic is still faster though.

[Gusar]

You should test Gallium3D as well on this netbook given the recent improvements in i915g.

Yeah, that'll definitely be the most interesting. It's probably part of the "There are some other more interesting results to share once further into July" mentioned at the end of the article.

I've just started a mesa-git compile to get i915g. But since the Atom N270 is not exactly fast (understatement of the century ), it'll take a while.