R500 Mesa Is Still No Match To An Old Catalyst Driver

[yotambien]

Ah, only now I saw the screenshots. I wouldn't bet my life on it not happening to me. I wouldn't say "useless" either.

[yotambien]

That benchmark used Xv and only looked at CPU usage, not picture quality. This is where radeon is far superior to fglrx. Basiclly Xv is useless with fglrx. Sure with fglrx you can get similar picture quality to radeon if you use GL but that also restricts you in your choice of video player.

Perhaps I watched a lot of movies with the wrong colours or something, but I used to have installed both drivers and switched very often between them. It's almost sure that I watched a number of the very same videos with both Radeon and Fglrx. I think I would have realised it if it was obvious. Is this something you get with compositing or what?

[rohcQaH]

Basiclly Xv is useless with fglrx.

The colors are slightly off and there's no vsync. Not good, but not "useless" either.

I'm using xv on fglrx for all my movies, neither me nor anyone else watching with me ever had a problem with that.


but yeah, I'd switch to the OS drivers if there was basic evergreen acceleration.

[monraaf]

The same goes for video playback, I had no problems with Fglrx or Radeon, and the same benchmarks suggest a difference in CPU usage of ~2%. "Far superior" to Fgrlx is not how I would define the state of the open driver in these areas.

That benchmark used Xv and only looked at CPU usage, not picture quality. This is where radeon is far superior to fglrx. Basiclly Xv is useless with fglrx. Sure with fglrx you can get similar picture quality to radeon if you use GL but that also restricts you in your choice of video player.

[smitty3268]

Note that 10.04 uses KMS by default whereas 9.10 didn't, which probably accounts for the difference. Try booting 10.04 with "nomodeset" to run the old non-KMS path.

BTW, suspend is broken for me in 10.04 (RV515/M26) unless I upgrade to a 2.6.34 kernel.

Note that having KMS support enables the DRI2 paths, which are known to cut gears framerate in half due to the extra memory copy it requires. This is expected behavior, and won't affect any "real" application, or at least not anything running under 2000 fps. Before concluding that the new driver is slower (and it might very well be), please try using it on something else. Like you said, glxgears IS NOT A BENCHMARK.

[yotambien]

2D and video is FAR superior in open drivers. They are also ALOT more stable. And they are free (libre).

Already better IMO.

Yes, in your opinion. Faster 2D in the open source drivers is in everybody's mouths, but I'm yet to see it, empirically by myself or from synthetic benchmarks. Speaking of which, in the "Catalyst vs Mesa" round from barely two weeks ago, Catalyst was well ahead of Radeon in 2 out of 4 GtkPerf tests, loosing in one of them and tying in the other. The same goes for video playback, I had no problems with Fglrx or Radeon, and the same benchmarks suggest a difference in CPU usage of ~2%. "Far superior" to Fgrlx is not how I would define the state of the open driver in these areas. Stability is difficult to measure; it's true that by installing Radeon I had suspend back (yay), and I can switch to VTs without experiencing lockups. On the other hand, I do get random lockups with the newest driver, while I used Fgrlx for over a year without any issues (as long as I didn't try to suspend).

Add to this the still being worked out but not ready yet power management features and the 3D performance differences, and one finds it difficult to qualify Radeon as already better than Fgrlx. In the not-so-distant future? I hope so.

[yesterday]

It's 2010.

Here in lies the same arguments/excuses:

1. Volunteer developers.
2. Not enough time outside day job.
3. It's only a matter of time.

I think we should quit buying into the hysterical belief that OSS versions of the drivers will ever be as good as the Paid Development Versions.

There are patented algorithms. I remember wasting a lot of time waiting for the Intel crew to get their act together. 2006-2010. For three years I waited for a marginal increase in 3D performance on my I945GM.

N/M

2D and video is FAR superior in open drivers. They are also ALOT more stable. And they are free (libre).

Already better IMO.

[tormod]

Recently I upgrade to the latest 10.04 beta and I've noticed that the OSS radeon driver is slower than it was with 9.10 /w xorg-edgers updates. I'm just happy the suspend is working correctly. I know that glxgear is not a bench, but I went from 5500 to 2500.

Note that 10.04 uses KMS by default whereas 9.10 didn't, which probably accounts for the difference. Try booting 10.04 with "nomodeset" to run the old non-KMS path.

BTW, suspend is broken for me in 10.04 (RV515/M26) unless I upgrade to a 2.6.34 kernel.

[bridgman]

It's not "paid development" that makes the difference - there are paid developers working on the open source drivers as well.

The difference is "proprietary code sharing across 100% of the PC market where the number of paid developers is a function of the size of the entire PC market" vs "Linux-specific development where the number of paid resources is roughly tied to Linux market share".

Bottom line is that the 3D stack is larger and more complicated than the 2D/video stack, so even though the same developers have manged to give a 2D/video experience that is often *better* than what you get from the proprietary drivers that won't be so easy on the 3D side. Right now open source 3D performance averages maybe 30% of what the proprietary drivers give - it seems likely that can get to maybe 60-70% on average which you'll probably find to be fast enough.

Note that the Intel open source devs went through all the same rearchitecture efforts, and were leading the way on some of them, so they were dealing with all the same constraints I described above.

There is no proprietary Linux driver to use as a reference on the Intel side, but my understanding was that the Intel open source devs were coming pretty close to Windows performance already on the same hardware (minus any slowdowns that happened during the move to KMS, which I think are being addressed or have been already).

I guess the key point is that none of the open source devs have been doing much performance work in the last few years since any work they did would have been thrown away after moving to the new stack. Now the transition is more or less finished I think you'll see performance work happening this year.

[squirrl]

Actually

It's 2010.

Here in lies the same arguments/excuses:

1. Volunteer developers.
2. Not enough time outside day job.
3. It's only a matter of time.

I think we should quit buying into the hysterical belief that OSS versions of the drivers will ever be as good as the Paid Development Versions.

There are patented algorithms. I remember wasting a lot of time waiting for the Intel crew to get their act together. 2006-2010. For three years I waited for a marginal increase in 3D performance on my I945GM.

N/M