ATI Catalyst 10.8 For Linux Brings OpenGL ES 2.0

[smitty3268]

I believe AMD treats anything that is happening with their binary driver like a trade secret, and fears that even the slightest news getting out would help nvidia somehow. i really don't see how, but that seems to be the view of the very upper management so i doubt it's going to change anytime soon. fglrx development == brick wall as far as anyone outside of ati is concerned. a lot of their own employees don't even know what's going on, because they can quit and then start working for nvidia.

[mirv]

AMD are probably more than happy to have open fglrx code, except for one slight problem: third party code and/or information. Licensing, IP, etc etc, prevent any such code opening (if you want an example, take s3tc).
For similar reasons nvidia can't open their binary blob (and yet why is nobody here complaining about that?), although in their case I'm not so sure they would even if they could.

[smitty3268]

AMD are probably more than happy to have open fglrx code, except for one slight problem: third party code and/or information.

AMD has already said their binary drivers contain optimizations and other code they don't want to share with nvidia because it would help their competition. The 3rd party code is just another level of problems on top of that. I'm sure there's large chunks of fglrx they wouldn't mind opening up, but they wouldn't release all of it even if they could.

[mirv]

AMD has already said their binary drivers contain optimizations and other code they don't want to share with nvidia because it would help their competition. The 3rd party code is just another level of problems on top of that. I'm sure there's large chunks of fglrx they wouldn't mind opening up, but they wouldn't release all of it even if they could.

Yes, I had forgotten that. Quite true.

[NomadDemon]

Bridgman, the opendrivers are ok, but they are extremly slow for 4850. cant even play starcraft 1 on them :<

on fglrx i set renderer to opengl, and speed is ok

age of wonders works ok, but without DX, all rendering is software then

please, dont multiply binary drivers crappness :<

can you tell me when i will be able to play starcraft on my 4850 with open drivers? or other games? and sites wont struggle while scrolling, same flash ?

[bridgman]

What sort of relative speed are you seeing on Starcraft between the open source and Catalyst drivers ?

If the Catalyst drivers are 2x or 3x as fast you should see that gradually improve over time, but if the difference is greater than that there may be something Starcraft is doing that is not HW accelerated on the open source drivers, in which case (a) there may be a game option you can use to take code paths which run faster on the open drivers, (b) the chances of having that one function go faster "soon" are better, particularly if you can identify what it is.

[NomadDemon]

opendrivers + opengl renderer in wine = very very choopy graphic, unplayable
opendrivers + GDI = almost ok, but still choppy, cant play on battlenet..

catalyst + GDI = slow, same as open+gdi
cat + opengl = very good performance, almost like native version

[NomadDemon]

so last option is only playable


next game
quake live, on opendrivers from edgers repo = 50-60 fps
catalist = 125 fps with no drops not even single drops

[kernelOfTruth]

gpu-acceleration partly works with the 7 dev-builds:

https://sites.google.com/a/chromium....ting-in-chrome

and: http://www.satine.org/research/webki...snowstack.html

(you should see GPU in the task manager of chromium)

http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms/ didn't work for me

[Pfanne]

did anybody have a slow wakeup from suspend with the new driver?
didn't have one yet.