Gaming with Open Source ATI drivers?

[Deagleson]

Edit: The Fedora games spin failed to boot and so i tried running Ubuntu 9.10b with "http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu".
Now i can finally boot up some games and even got WoW 3.2.x to run.
(But its severly corrupted )
Thanks to everyone who posted here, i learned allot.

Hi, i was wondering how good the drivers for open source ATI drivers are now, when i used Ubuntu 9.04 i was not that impressed but hey, that was some months ago.
And its not too long until Ubuntu 9.10 gets released so i was thinking of giving linux a new chance.
(Since ATI moved DirectX 9.0 cards to legacy Windows 7 has not been that good of an experience. )

I was thinking of games like World of Warcraft or Counter-Strike 1.6 and if the preformance is good enough maybe even Counter-Strike Source.

My notebooks specs are:

HP Compaq nw8440
Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 @ 2,16 GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 256mb
4096mb ram
320gb 5400rpm hdd

Anyone got some tips how to get started, i can isntall and test myself but i may need some help or a simple how to since im not that good with linux yet.
I have managed to set up a Atom / Ion media nettop successfully, but that was purely luck i guess.

Thanks in advance,
Deagleson

[bridgman]

If you want the newest open source driver stack including Kernel Modesetting, GEM/TTM, DRI2, and the highest level of OpenGL support then you might want to try the latest Fedora builds - they have all the new features included and enabled by default.

I'm not sure about whether the current level of support is sufficient for WOW or CS 1.6, maybe someone else can comment on that.

[Zhick]

CS 1.6 is definitly doable. CS:Source I don't know.
I'm also not 100% sure about WoW. I used to be able to run it with wine and radeon, but that was in pre-WotLK times. But performance wasn't so great, and I think the engine has become more advanced since then.

[Deagleson]

Thanks for the quick replies.
Maybe il give Fedora a go then.
And if all fails i could try setting up a dual boot solution.

[elanthis]

If you want the newest open source driver stack including Kernel Modesetting, GEM/TTM, DRI2, and the highest level of OpenGL support then you might want to try the latest Fedora builds - they have all the new features included and enabled by default.

I'm not sure about whether the current level of support is sufficient for WOW or CS 1.6, maybe someone else can comment on that.

I'm on Fedora rawhide and I'm not seeing any OpenGL support at all. I get KMS, but no OpenGL support at all. Not on either the HD4770 or HD3200 IGP.

[bridgman]

Not sure if all of the bits for KMS/DRI2/OpenGL on 6xx/7xx are in yet (although I thought they were) but for 5xx/rs6xx and below everything should be in place for sure.

[agd5f]

KMS/DRI2/OpenGL are working on r6xx/r7xx hardware with drm-next and git master of mesa and xf86-video-ati.

[SolidSteel144]

Which Fedora builds in paticular would have most of these features (guessing a snapshot of F12)? Links please.

[pvtcupcakes]

If you want the newest open source driver stack including Kernel Modesetting, GEM/TTM, DRI2, and the highest level of OpenGL support then you might want to try the latest Fedora builds - they have all the new features included and enabled by default.

I'm not sure about whether the current level of support is sufficient for WOW or CS 1.6, maybe someone else can comment on that.

I had CS1.6 running on my 4850, so it should run even better on an R500.

[Erikina]

Daily Builds

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/

Choose between "desktop" (gnome) and "kde". (or just grab the alpha on the site, and yum update)