Radeon Linux Driver Has A Huge Optimization Two Decades Later For ATI R300~R500 GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon Linux Driver Has A Huge Optimization Two Decades Later For ATI R300~R500 GPUs

While earlier this year AMD dropped pre-Polaris support from their mainline Radeon Software Windows driver, under Linux with open-source software older GPUs can live on much longer with superior driver support... Pending for Mesa 22.0 and as a surprise Christmas gift for those with nearly two decade old GPUs, a big optimization is pending for those with ATI Radeon R300/R400/R500 series graphics cards still in operation...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ATI-R300g-Faster-2021

[You-]

It will be interesting to see what the performance improvement on actual games and software is.

Even if there isnt much of an improvement overall (and the merge request does say there are regressions, )AFAIK this and other similar moves may eventually allow dropping TGSI from gallium, which is the end goal motivating porting drivers away from it so developers will benefit with having to worry about less code paths.

[richardnpaul]

I have two of these cards (9500s) in the loft still. Both would unlock with softmods to 9700s. I have one of the asrock core 2 boards which have an AGP slot but I never ended up playing about with them too much. Maybe I should change that.

Edit: this board is limited to 4GB DDR2 or 2GB DDR if I remember correctly.

[tarceri]

I'm pretty sure the temp increase refers to an increase in temporary register use not GPU temperatures.

[Michael]

I'm pretty sure the temp increase refers to an increase in temporary register use not GPU temperatures.

Whoops, yep, I see the other reference now about temp register use.... Was originally g oing off one of the comments where the context was left out but just mentioning "I didn't look too much at temp increase in r300"

Thanks

[tuxd3v]

Nice!
I have a mobile Graphics from ATI, a x700, I think will also benefit from this.

[ezst036]

And that's why we want open source drivers.

Support kinda never ends.

[PackRat]

That's cool. Just found an old 20 inch imac 5,1with Radeon X1600 (r500).

[GreenReaper]

I just converted an old Inspiron 6400/E1500 to Debian. Looking forward to using this when it comes into backports!

[coder]

I had/have an old X1300 Pro AGP card that was nice & well-mannered. First time I ever wrote GLSL shaders, in fact.

Then, I thought I'd do a little upgrade and got an X1600 or X1650 Pro ...I forget. Damn thing sounded like a hair drier and didn't perform well enough to justify it, so I put the old card back in.

Eventually, I upgraded to a HD 4650. Good move, except I couldn't find an AGP version with GDDR memory. I think mine had regular 128-bit DDR3.
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