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R600 Open-Source Driver WIth GLSL, OpenGL 2.0

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  • #51
    Originally posted by jntesteves View Post
    Compared to Intel, AMD came late in the OSS.
    Not exactly true. In the r1xx-r4xx days (and even mach32, mach64, and rage 128 before that) ATI was probably the best supported display hardware in OSS. ATI actively contributed code and documentation to developers at the time while intel support was pretty limited. ATI OSS support faded during the r3xx-r5xx 3D period due to a lack of resources internally (which was when intel support started to pick up) and then picked up again after the AMD acquisition.

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    • #52
      Apart from that: Of course AMD urges its users to upgrade. They make money that way, as every business does.
      The civilized way to do that is AFTER giving the user proper support, convincing the user about the advantages of the new hardware, not like this.

      And about nvidia not supporting old hardware take a look at ati. My gpu (X1950XT) is built in late 2006 and ati dropped support for it in early 2009. Same class hardware (geforce 7 series) are still perfectly supported in their drivers and they have proper VDPAU video acceleration too.

      @bridgman: Thanks for your suggestion to test gallium3d drivers but as Edgar Allan Poe once said: "never more". Gallium3d has a long way ahead of it to be in mainstream usage.

      And I should add that I have no objection to the work done by people on the free drivers and I appreciate it much.
      Last edited by barbarbaron; 22 December 2009, 03:28 PM.

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      • #53
        Originally posted by barbarbaron View Post
        ...GARBAGE...
        Um, yeah. Okay. Then just go and buy your nvidia card. Be happy with it and then please just leave us alone.
        I have a comparison of nvidia cards, ATI chips and cards as well as via chips. And I must say: Nvidia is no better in anything. They only really care for their binary blob and this blob knows the word "legacy" very well. One is completely at their mercy.
        Noveau team is reverse engineering for maybe 5 to 7 years now and it's just getting aflot over the water surface and not drowning.
        I heard of noveau when I had a nv20 as my main chip. That one is sooo legacy now. Still it is not supported.
        With VIA it is a horror most times, you can be happy to have modesetting and basic 2d acceleration.
        With AMD-ATI I'm best off at the moment. There is a partially good partially mediocre fglrx and we have 2 free drivers. And I can see and experience the progress in them. And AMD is giving specs so there is a real chance for anything to happen. Older chip, recent chips, all of them.

        I do not see any "proper support" for my nv11 and nv20 anywhere. And no, I am not convinced by empty shells that are presented at booths and I cannot be convinced with Wattage monsters that need their own fission plant and cooling towers.
        Nvidia may have a decent binary only driver for their current stuff but that's it.

        If one want's to have something on the long term support side then it is neccessary to have specs or a completely working free driver. And I only see this happening on intel's (let out poulsbo) and AMD-ATI's side.
        Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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        • #54
          Originally posted by barbarbaron View Post
          And about nvidia not supporting old hardware take a look at ati. My gpu (X1950XT) is built in late 2006 and ati dropped support for it in early 2009.
          And the Card stopped sorking? My Radeon 9500 (r300) work without problems on my Ubuntu 8.10 with the fglrx.

          Originally posted by barbarbaron View Post
          Same class hardware (geforce 7 series) are still perfectly supported in their drivers and they have proper VDPAU video acceleration too.
          Geforce 7 has no VDPAU support.

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          • #55
            to me it simply seems as though the honeymoon period with the open source drivers is gradually coming to an end, as more and more people forget about the caveats of fglrx and keep running into the limitations of the radeon drivers.

            i have had my laptop for about 2 years now, and it's still quite capable in my opinion, and i don't think my budget will allow me to get a new one and get my money's worth for perhaps another 2 years. i think my r500 card is more than enough for most of my needs at the moment, however i feel cheated to not be able to use it to it's total potential.

            i don't think anyone is really impressed anymore by the open source driver's hability to run compiz or do accelerated video .. being able to use our hardware up to it's specificated capacities really isn't too much to ask for.

            so anyway, keep up the good work, but never forget that actual people paid actual money for your hardware.

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            • #56
              Originally posted by pedepy View Post
              to me it simply seems as though the honeymoon period with the open source drivers is gradually coming to an end, as more and more people forget about the caveats of fglrx and keep running into the limitations of the radeon drivers.
              Sure, but (a) those limitations are continuing to be reduced/removed, and (b) if you are one of the users who needs all the capabilties of fglrx then you probably should still be using fglrx and a supported distro release. I know it seems like a lifetime but we only dropped support for 3xx-5xx from Catalyst 8 months ago.

              Originally posted by pedepy View Post
              i have had my laptop for about 2 years now, and it's still quite capable in my opinion, and i don't think my budget will allow me to get a new one and get my money's worth for perhaps another 2 years. i think my r500 card is more than enough for most of my needs at the moment, however i feel cheated to not be able to use it to it's total potential.
              With respect, we only stopped adding support for new OS releases; it's not like we drove to your house and took your working driver away.

              Originally posted by pedepy View Post
              i don't think anyone is really impressed anymore by the open source driver's hability to run compiz or do accelerated video ..
              Nor should they be - that was the big deal for 2008. In 2009 the drivers picked up kernel modesetting, GEM/TTM memory management, GL 1.5, and a lot of progress on a Gallium3D-based driver with higher levels of GL support. I know that the architectural rework required for higher levels of GL support and overall user experience doesn't give you the kind of immediate feel-good that adding a new feature to an existing code base would, but for the features you want this work has to be done first.

              Originally posted by pedepy View Post
              being able to use our hardware up to it's specificated capacities really isn't too much to ask for.
              The "specified capabilities" are only specified for Windows (read the box), so you can do that today.

              What I think you're asking for is "the ability to use your hardware up to its specified capabilities on a different operating system from what the specs say, and not just any version of that operating system but any new distro version of your choice at any time in the future", which is a somewhat bigger thing to ask for.

              If you make heavy use of 3D then today you should be using fglrx and a supported distro version such as Ubuntu 8.10. Going forward, the open source drivers are making huge progress and should be able to offer a similar experience on newer distro versions -- better in some ways, not quite as good in others.
              Last edited by bridgman; 22 December 2009, 04:42 PM.
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              • #57
                btw, Bridgman, Alex, do you have plans for improving performance of OSS driver?
                cuz it's not great right now.

                maybe after finishing gl2.0 support(and fixnig bugs) ?

                or only after moving to gallium3d driver ?

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                • #58
                  I really think you should be more concerned about the possibility that AMD will announce in the not too distant future that they've done what they promised...delivered as much documentation as they think they get away with and still be clean with regard to their other obligations, delivered a working example of a more or less fully functioned driver for each of their reasonably current hardware families, and are now turning over responsibility for the continuing development of the open source driver to the "community" so they can redirect their resources to development of the workstation market, where they actually make some money.

                  Be afraid. Be very afraid.
                  Last edited by rbmorse; 22 December 2009, 09:08 PM.

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                  • #59
                    Originally posted by netkas View Post
                    btw, Bridgman, Alex, do you have plans for improving performance of OSS driver? cuz it's not great right now.

                    maybe after finishing gl2.0 support(and fixnig bugs) ? or only after moving to gallium3d driver ?
                    I don't think there are any specific plans to improve performance but that's primarily because the focus right now is entirely on adding functionality and completing all of the architectural rework. The DRI2 stack is not real fast right now, for a variety of reasons -- a brand new, unoptimized memory manager, a new lockless DRI protocol whose first implementation involves sending a lot of redundant state, and probably a few other things along the way.

                    Best guess is that performance work will happen after moving to Gallium3D, at least for 3xx-5xx -- partly because it makes more sense to look at the final implementation, partly because the workload running GL 2.x apps is likely to be different from running older apps, and partly because there are only so many things the dev community can work on at the same time.

                    It's probably safe to say that any performance work will be done on the DRI2 paths, not DRI1, and that the first step will be figuring out where the time is going
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                    • #60
                      Originally posted by rbmorse View Post
                      I really think you should be more concerned about the possibility that AMD will announce in the not too distant future that they've done what they promised...delivered as much documentation as they think they get away with and still be clean with regard to their other obligations, delivered a working example of a more or less fully functioned driver for each of their reasonably current hardware families, and are now turning over responsibility for the continuing development of the open source driver to the "community" so they can redirect their resources to development of the workstation market, where they actually make some money.

                      Be afraid. Be very afraid.
                      I think that's what we are doing today. We focus on documentation, developer support, and implementing sample code in areas where even having documentation may not be enough to work efficiently, eg initial support for new GPUs. What you are describing is really what we are doing today -- we're not really driving things like KMS (although Alex did most if the implementation for pre-5xx).
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