ATI dropping support for <R600 - wtf!?

[val-gaav]

You may find this move alarming, but the truth is that you won't be affected by it at all.

He will be .. I mean with less things to support in fglrx his card can only work better then worse with it.

So it is a good situation for him ...

[bridgman]

I just bought an MSI GT725 notebook specifically because I wanted to try an ATI card again, but seeing the proprietary X11 [EDIT] AND WIndows(!)[/EDIT] driver dumping parts so fast makes me feel even more queasy than I already do looking at the overall lack of adequate ATI X11 support.

On the good side for me, I'm at the latest and greatest mobile radeon part (4850) so I'm good for a bit. (But I get the feeling that I'd better start looking for a good deal on an 9800M GT MXM part before long at this rate of dropping support...)

It's kind of funny how nVidia supports GPUs way way way back to what the 5XXX series now? Not to mention their proprietary X11 drivers work peachily. I just can't see myself with another ATI card again given their rapid dropping of support v. their only real competitor, and you'd think that ATI would be bending over backwards to at least appear to be giving better support given their lower customer base, but I guess this just goes to show how much ATI/AMD are hurting.

Just to be clear here; for Windows we are doing exactly the same as NVidia; shifting to a legacy branch and then updating the drivers on a slower schedule. For Linux, we have already decent open source drivers (an option not available to NVidia today) and most people switching to the open source drivers have ended up preferring them, so we're focusing on continuing to improve the open source drivers rather than maintaining a legacy branch of fglrx.

[lucky_]

Just to be clear here; for Windows we are doing exactly the same as NVidia; shifting to a legacy branch and then updating the drivers on a slower schedule. For Linux, we have already decent open source drivers (an option not available to NVidia today) and most people switching to the open source drivers have ended up preferring them, so we're focusing on continuing to improve the open source drivers rather than maintaining a legacy branch of fglrx.

Moreover, it might even be a good thing for people working on the radeonhd driver, as their user base will substantially grow (judging by the number of angry people here).
It will be profitable for the people who were already using radeonhd for political or practical reason.

I wish I would benefit from an open source driver for my 2400 and my 3470.
(I know it will eventually happen, but still)

[bridgman]

You probably already know the status of open source support for your GPUs, but just in case...

- EXA and Xv are working in both radeonhd and radeon

- code has been merged to master in X drivers, but you still need drm code from the 6xx-7xx branch of mesa/drm or from airlied's drm-next tree

- mesa driver support is "limping" in house; gears is running with some artifacts, working on textures now, will push to public repo soon

[Mr_Ed]

seconding that.
right now I'd say look around for the HD 3870. Okay, Crossfire support isn't enabled yet, so I personally am a bit of a litter box on that, but they still pack a punch as a single card. They also have a wide driver support range, so if something's screwy on the bleeding edge 9.x set, you can still drop back some drivers.

What about the Sapphire HD3850?

On my P4 I am stuck with AGP so the Sapphire HD3850 is as close as I can get.

From what I read of this card it's performance is impressive (the best for what is possible on AGP).

Is it suitable for Linux?

Regards,

E.

[Saist]

What about the Sapphire HD3850?

On my P4 I am stuck with AGP so the Sapphire HD3850 is as close as I can get.

From what I read of this card it's performance is impressive (the best for what is possible on AGP).

Is it suitable for Linux?

Regards,

E.

I honestly wouldn't know. I can't get over the price difference AGP cards carry over their PCI-E cousins... I would "presume" it would work fine, but somebody else who actually has a card would be better suited to answer.

[bridgman]

I guess I'll be the first to suggest you at least think about upgrading to PCIE if your power supply has enough 12v output (older systems needed lots of +5V, newer systems need lots of +12V). You could start with something like a 780-based mobo and still have higher performance than your 9600, although not a *lot* faster.

[Saist]

I guess I'll be the first to suggest you at least think about upgrading to PCIE if your power supply has enough 12v output (older systems needed lots of +5V, newer systems need lots of +12V). You could start with something like a 780-based mobo and still have higher performance than your 9600, although not a *lot* faster.

also gonna make a point here... I just went to Newegg and the cheapest PCI-E HD 3850 is around $65 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814140103

The cheapest AGP 3850 is around $115: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131141

That's a $50 price-tag difference.

That's also just $6 off the difference of getting a well rated Asus budget brand AsRock Socket AM2+ motherboard : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157149 : with a price of $56

So, for the price of buying a single high-end AGP card (which is using a now medium low gpu), you could get the same exact chip, AND a new motherboard, for literally the same price.

It's your money, but if you have $120 to shell out for upgrades, I wouldn't spend it on buyin an AGP card.

***

I also just realized you said P4. I'm presuming here that you are using DDR2 memory on that, so you'll probably be set for memory.

For just $40 you could pick up a Brisbane 4400+ on Socket AM2 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103221

So, for LESS than the price of a new AGP card for your system you could pick up a motherboard with integrated graphics that are just as fast AND a processor with much better performance. ($56 + $40 = $96).

[BlackStar]

P4 == DDR1. Add $20 for 2GB of memory and you get a whole new system ($116, or the price of the AGP 3850).

AGP parts are not a good buy at this day and time.

[Svartalf]

So, glxgears actually doesn't fully utilize GPU?

In a word, NO. glxgears is so far removed from a benchmark it's tragic. I believe the people associated with 3D drivers on Linux have been saying that it wasn't a very good benchmark for performance since I kind of quit maintaining the Utah-GLX source tree years ago.