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Intel Next-Gen OSS Drivers Out!

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  • #11
    Originally posted by Michael
    No benchmarks in this article (ET was also laggy), but a few thoughts were shared, and AIGLX was tested... http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=7148

    If there are any specific items you would like more information on or tests, just post.
    It's worth noting that the board you're using isn't the one you want to attempt doing gaming performance testing on- the i915 chipset has the GMA 900 GPU core integrated into the chipset.

    The i965G chipset has the first potentially usable integrated GPU, the GMA x3000. Here's the from the 10000 foot level scoop on both GPUs...


    GMA 900

    - 256 bit architechture
    - 1.3 Gpixel/1.3 Gtexel fill rate
    - No T&L support on chip
    - OpenGL 1.4 support
    - Vertex Shader model 2.0
    - Single unified graphics pipeline

    GMA X3000

    - 256 bit architechture
    - ~5 Gpixel/5 Gtexel fill rate
    - Hardware T&L
    - OpenGL 2.0 support
    - Pixel Shader model 3.0
    - Vertex Shader model 3.0
    - 8 unified graphics pipelines


    Very big difference between the two. While still not a barn burner, it's largely on a parity with the low-to-middle end GPUs that are typically fielded in laptops and most of the UMA motherboards out there. You probably want to see if they carry through on the promise that the x3000 offers by getting a G965 based motherboard.

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    • #12
      We will have access to 965 Express motherboards for testing, though we have not had the time yet to run through our array of tests. We hope to report some results soon.
      Michael Larabel
      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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      • #13
        Originally posted by Michael
        We will have access to 965 Express motherboards for testing, though we have not had the time yet to run through our array of tests. We hope to report some results soon.
        Cool. I can tell you that I can only hope there's something compelling in the drivers they just released- well, with the GMA X3000, that is. It would be nice to see AMD turn around and step up to the plate like Intel has and do the same sort of thing. The performance with the x300 GPU on my Athlon64 laptop has been nothing short of disappointing under Linux- I largely can't do any 3D game porting work with it (Thankfully for me, I'm on Disciples 2 right now, the prior project I was on is just being beaten on one last time before it goes officially Gold...) What's sad is that it works reasonably well under Windows- so it's not the GPU itself.

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        • #14
          so are they truly opensource?

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          • #15
            Originally posted by Licaon View Post
            so are they truly opensource?
            Apparently not... <*SIGH*> One would have hoped for more from them- but I guess it's still time to kowtow to the media companies- never mind that they're much, much smaller than the other industries they keep screwing up just to prop up their own business model. What's so disappointing is that the electronics industry keeps letting them call the shots.

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            • #16
              That's unfortunate, but is there any downside to not having Macrovision code in the drivers (as mentioned in the link)?

              I'd rather not have Macrovision enabled.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by James View Post
                That's unfortunate, but is there any downside to not having Macrovision code in the drivers (as mentioned in the link)?

                I'd rather not have Macrovision enabled.
                Without it, you also don't get any hardware accelerated MPEG2/MPEG4 playback either- the technical info has to be "tied together" per the deals all these jokers made with the media companies back a while back. And if you've got control of the Macrovision pieces, you can turn them off, which the media companies don't want. It's all about their control of your use of the content in question- they don't want any "uncontrolled" use, period.

                To be sure, it's not a real loss, per se- but it would have been nice to say, have the headroom to display effortlessly as you're capturing a video feed (i.e. make a MythTV box just that little bit better...), but then we're still going to have to deal with another decade or so of obnoxious media company influence in this area.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
                  Without it, you also don't get any hardware accelerated MPEG2/MPEG4 playback either- the technical info has to be "tied together" per the deals all these jokers made with the media companies back a while back. And if you've got control of the Macrovision pieces, you can turn them off, which the media companies don't want. It's all about their control of your use of the content in question- they don't want any "uncontrolled" use, period.
                  Well that and then there is the legal software patent restrictions that into the use of mpeg* decoding functions. With that Intel's hands are tied as much as anybody's elses out there. They very simply cannot call the shots on weither or not to release open source drivers on that, (or at least they are not willing to absorb the costs of buying licenses for every single OSS user that may want to use the code.)

                  But personally I couldn't give a crap less. If their mpeg decoding support is that great it will be a simple matter of reverse engineering the binary for it. You couldn't do that in the U.S., but other countries it would be fine legally. Since it's userspace it should be pretty simple.

                  They did that with OpenBSD driver's for Intel's newer wifi stuff. Intel released code for the wifi kernel portion, but stuck the binary portion in user space. So it was fine according to the Linux kernel developers. The OBSD developer setup Linux and wrote a program to intercept calls to that binary. that way he was able to figure out to write OBSD drivers without having to actually violate the license by examining the intel binary directly.

                  But if it's like the VIA onboard 'mpeg2 accelerator' or whatever.. then the Free software stuff software-only decoders used less cpu time then their 'accelerated' drivers.

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