Open-Source 2D, 3D For ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series GPUs

[Svartalf]

I find all the exclamations of "finally" to be somewhat harsh.

I don't.

Think about the time its taken for previous generations to get supported by open source -- this is the fastest one yet by FAR.

How many YEARS did it take for R300? And then again for R600 (but not AS long)? This one was LESS THAN ONE YEAR!!!

Here's a reason for you to ponder.

The R300 original support was obtained mostly without their help- reverse engineered.

The R600 was delayed because of the learning curve actually involved with driving a modern GPU properly, coupled with trying to get the right infrastructure in the framework in place to do it "right" to begin with- something that we'd not seen with the earlier efforts on GPUs, mainly because we'd dealt more with OpenGL v 1.3 capable hardware instead of 1.5/2.X capable stuff.

And now they're already starting to look at the next gen that isn't even out yet? They are almost on top of it! At this rate, the HD7000 series will be supported same day or even before that.

Yes... Finally. It's not being ugly to say that. It is actually probably more a remark of enthusiasm. We now can finally have something remotely performing in hand for things like Games (and will get more there as they remove the bottlenecks in the framework...) and not have to rely on sub-par Intel hardware to have a FOSS only system configuration to do that with.

[curaga]

So, Q was right, and Phoronix is getting the feel of being slashdotted.

Great news!

[Otus]

Great! Now I'll just give it a month or two to stabilize and then buy an Evergreen.

[DuSTman]

This is brilliant news . I'd like to express my profound appreciation to the AMD team for this work.

[MaestroMaus]

This is brilliant news . I'd like to express my profound appreciation to the AMD team for this work.

QFT

(character limit)

[etnlWings]

I'm torn between posting either:

OMGOMGOMG

or:

thankyouthankyouthankyou

[DuSTman]

Finally!

First impressions:

- 2D is very slow!
- Some small corruption around mouse pointer and sometimes scrollbars.
- Xv is working
- I got kicked out of X two times with message:

ps const buffer map failed
ps const buffer map failed

Fatal server error:
failed to map pixmap -12

I can concur with the above assessment. I notice, though, that when I test the speed it starts off quick and slows down after a couple of seconds (cairogears game me 130fps for te first few seconds and then slowed down to 30fps).. Similarly, the more complex scenes have a ~1sec lag, whereby simple-to-draw scenes don't exhibit any noticeable lag, so I'm guessing this speed problem has to do with the synchronisation primitives.

[d2kx]

Good things come to those who wait :-)

[nanonyme]

Please people, make sure to report bugs on those first impressions if they are negative. Just to be sure.

[FunkyRider]

Good, I will wait for 3 years and THEN buy an Evergreen!