Radeon Driver Gets Tear-Free X-Video

[bridgman]

To get the tear-prevention code, though, you would need to build the radeon driver (xf86-video-ati) from git, because it's just been added.

Yep, that's definitely worth mentioning

I wouldn't expect Ubuntu packagers to create an update until the next formal release of the driver, so in the meantime you would need to build from source or pick up one of the "edgers" packages -- I don't remember the URL but maybe Tormod or someone else could help.

[bridgman]

I believe you will get updates through the update manager but there are three driver components involved (the X driver, ie radeon/radeonhd), the drm (kernel) driver and the mesa (3d) driver) but I don't remember seeing updates for the drm or mesa drivers. Maybe someone who knows Ubuntu better can jump in.

The open source drivers (assuming you have all three components) currently support 3d on everything up to r5xx and rs690. 3D support for r6xx and r7xx (ie HD2xxx and higher) is being worked on now.

If you have a 5xx or earlier card then Ubuntu 8.10 comes up with 3d already enabled, so you can just turn on visual effects under "preferences" and enjoy the eye candy.

[TechMage89]

To get the tear-prevention code, though, you would need to build the radeon driver (xf86-video-ati) from git, because it's just been added.

[bluefiberoptics]

Okay, so I'm assuming the driver that is used on a default install of Ubuntu on my notebook would be the "- radeon (aka -ati)" drivers. If they are updated, how do I get those updates? Will I receive updates through the update manager or do I need to enable backports or anything?

Also, do these open source drivers support 3D acceleration or is that reserved for the binary drivers? Thanks!

[bridgman]

I think the most recent work was actually done on an r300 so you should be in good shape, although the code was only pushed yesterday so it could have problems even on another r300-family card

There are three commonly used drivers for ATI/AMD graphics these days :

- fglrx (aka Catalyst) is the closed source driver we publish - supports from R3xx and up last time I checked

- radeon (aka -ati) is the original open source driver for Radeon family GPUs - supports from R100 up.

(The "ati" driver is actually a wrapper around mach64, r128 and radeon drivers which loads the appropriate driver depending on what hardware it finds. The wrapper is not really required these days but the -ati name sticks around because the "radeon" driver source is in the xf86-video-ati project)

- radeonhd is a more recent open source driver project, supporting r5xx and up, source in xf86-video-radeonhd

Most distros include both radeon and radeonhd drivers, although you need to check which versions are included to make sure you don't have something really old.

[bluefiberoptics]

What does this mean for someone with a R300 card? I have a Mobility Radeon X600 and I run Ubuntu. I'm fairly new using Linux, so I get confused between the names of different sets of drivers. The binary ATI drivers are fglx I think. What are the drivers we are talking about and how can I get them? Thanks!



Nice to meet everyone!

[Zhick]

My experience so far: On r500 cards you will get corruption in windowed video with the current git-version when you're using compositing. Even without there will be some corruption, though less notable (see the bugreport oibaf linked). But Alex Deucher already created a patch which fix this issue (attached to the same bugreport), but it seems not to be in git yet.
With the patch there's no tearing on videos without compositing, but still with compositing enabled.

[yoshi314]

if only using post-6.9.0-git snapshots of this driver didn't end up with blank, black screen on my box.

oh well, i'll try again and i guess i'll finally file a bug on it.

[oibaf]

Being an eager beaver, I've given this new driver a try. Tear-free accel def works on my FireGL V5200, but only in fullscreen mode. Xv video doesn't seem to work in windowed mode with composite enabled. Anyone else experience this issue? If so, can someone point me to the bug tracker?

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18542#c39

[mintcoffee]

Being an eager beaver, I've given this new driver a try. Tear-free accel def works on my FireGL V5200, but only in fullscreen mode. Xv video doesn't seem to work in windowed mode with composite enabled. Anyone else experience this issue? If so, can someone point me to the bug tracker?