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How Old ATI GPUs Can Be Faster On Open Drivers

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  • #11
    Originally posted by bridgman View Post
    Crazycheese, same answer as the last few times you asked...
    Yes, I understand you put a lot of resources into workstation segment. But it is not related to desktop at all - workstation cards are too expensive, the software using this cards is barely good or affordable for any consumer. What I mean is desktop market.

    Right now we have:
    Intel with more than working HTPC/Office market, opensource.
    Nvidia with more than working Gaming/GPGPU market, HTPC to some extent via ION, closed source.
    Additionally there is noveau hack, backing up some very basic server/office usage.

    And AMD, that provides closed source drivers that are inferior to nvidia in Gaming/GPGPU/HTPC:
    - no video accel
    - much much shorter hardware support window
    - longer reaction to new hardware
    - much less kernel/xorg version support
    - more issues on desktop
    - GPGPU is prefered on Nvidia (asked at overclockers.com)
    The only frame for AMD in this segment is multi-monitor office configurations or 3D software solutions that must be developed together with AMD.

    Opensource drivers, that are inferior to Intel in HTPC/Office:
    - Intel CPU includes GPU and is also opensource
    - AMD performance cards run inefficient with opensource drivers
    - Intel CPUs/GPUs run more energy efficient than AMD currently
    The only frame for AMD in this segment are laptops with basic graphics(and there aren't many due to less efficient energy design; which should hopefully corrected with nextgen AMD APUs) or desktops with IGP(no factors affect AMD or Intel selection here).

    Correct me, if Im wrong please, but not being able to use 4 year old card and its capabilities - the reason it was purchased, is anything but acceptable.

    Looking at overall situation, you are not interested in improving anything related to non-workstation segment, but you do support hardware specifications, from which only corporate entities are able to develop solutions for your cards that are acceptable to THEM. Redhat and Novell want basic support (for servers I guess) and their crew does it finely(no more, no less).

    So there is zero point to any entity not affiliated with Redhat or Novell to purchase your hardware to use on Linux.

    As you mentioned, lets take 24k sold cards in simulated calculation, assume that they were registered via manual or kernel-based SN reporting and this provided mapping for:
    - card type
    - estimated purchase time graph
    - overall variability (20k highend cards/4k IGP - bring more calculated profit than 20k IGP/4k highend) factor
    Everything else is not needed and does provide anonymity.

    The missing components are:
    - real-world feedback in form of quateryear financial report & user reactions on internet. And
    - task prioritization - the customer should be able to choose the GPU software/driver infrastructure part he wishes/prioritizes AMD to work on next. This feedback can be done at time of manual registration.

    Another point is to provide support window for legacy hardware - users of such hardware should be able to fix it themselves and upload patches to AMD; or to pay AMD additionally to fix the issues. Both mechanisms should run as transparent and understandable to the users as possible.

    The very rough calculated amounts may be 12k cards for 300$ resulting in 40$ for driver team each card and 12k cards for 50$ with 8$ for driver team. The segment includes only linux or opensource segment.12k*40 + 12k*8= ~600,000$ for projected period.

    This does not include dynamics which MAY happen depending on company steps/intensity. The hype of having opensource for-ever-supported hardware may shift the desktop market segment, claiming market shares from competition. Intel is not providing performance hardware, Nvidia only provides closed source drivers. Both of them do not provide the described mechanism. This may boost the 0,6 Mln a bit further.

    The weak point of the calculation is maybe absence of gaming (to some degree compensated due to Wine, Steam via Wine, planned Desura client, OpenCL, BOINC), but there is good tendency. DRM market is not affected as most people using linux are using it for reason opposing DRM itself and being treated as conscious people.

    Patented technologies are not problem, unless they are closed source(look at Google and VP8 - copyleft patent is realistic). These way they could be implemented as optional attachable modules and may be replaced over time. Protecting IP maybe possible this way as well - impossiblity to close down the implementation for what AMD holds a patent. If all legal stuff is cleared that way, the only thing left will be work and money for that work from consumers.

    Technologies requiring whole path shutdown are conflicting with opensource in their nature. If AMD supports viruses, people will decide if to follow. Currently Nvidia supports viruses, except this (and Optimus case) it performs fairly well, which may be seen as good attack vector for AMD. And if AMD follows Nvidia strategy, as I mentioned, there will be no sense for people to prefer AMD except fanatism. 0,024% will join Nvidia.

    And if AMD does not change the current approach, usable opensource drivers will actually disappear, (rather small) userbase shrink even further and people still won't be able to repay AMD for effort it does on opensource. AMD will look just as Ubuntu then - 99,9% talks, 0.1% input.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by MostAwesomeDude View Post
      VMWare already uses Gallium for their drivers on all platforms. At least one incarnation of the Poulsbo driver uses Gallium on Windows and Linux. If the appropriate kernel piece and winsys were written, all nouveau drivers, r300g, and r600g, could be ported to Windows. Nobody cares about Windows enough to make it happen.
      the foos dev community couldn't care less about win but is there something that could stop a manufacturer from moving all driver development (and resources) on gallium on all 3 major desktop environments??? (ie licensing, cost)

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      • #13
        bridgman: As above, the problem with ATI is not really its open-source strategy, but its colossal failure in the proprietary driver. I've had nothing but problems with it and it's always way behind X; people have to grab the patched Ubuntu-exclusive version on new Ubuntu releases to get support for current X servers basically every time a new X server comes out. It's just silly.

        If I were a systems OEM, I would go nvidia without a second thought. I appreciate AMD's open-source strategy, but without additional support from AMD like actually devoting some developer resources or code, it's not an adequate replacement for a good proprietary driver. As such, until I am confident that AMD can produce a functional, reliable, and updated driver for *nix that is well-maintained, or until AMD can boost the OSS devs so that things can proceed reasonably, AMD is out of the picture, no matter how good the cards are.

        nvidia even has things like VDPAU, made especially for Linux users. AMD half implements several broken standards and still doesn't really have good video acceleration.

        The open-source drivers are rad, but they are just too far behind to be usable for any 3D purposes. If you don't want to worry about supporting Linux, give the open-source guys a boost by hiring 3-4 of them full time for 1-2 years to really get your support up to par there, and then maybe AMD will be worth considering. For now, the progress is just too slow for AMD to ever be a good choice; it takes 5-8 years for a GPU to be well-supported end-to-end in the open drivers.

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        • #14
          Also, the argument about insufficient marketshare is wrong. AMD has to look at this as an investment, as the only Linux users that use AMD are those that don't know any better or don't have any other option. nvidia has been king of Linux forever and no one buys ATI cards for general use on a Linux workstation because they are so far behind. The effort nvidia pours into Linux should show you that there's some potential in this space if you can only establish yourselves as a reliable Linux vendor. In the meantime, I've been buying nvidia for years and telling everyone else to do so, too, as are almost all other *nix users. The marketshare to justify it doesn't exist yet and it won't exist until AMD invests in making the platform competitive and viable.

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          • #15
            Originally posted by cookiecaper View Post
            Also, the argument about insufficient marketshare is wrong. AMD has to look at this as an investment, as the only Linux users that use AMD are those that don't know any better or don't have any other option.
            This is wrong. I switched from Nvidia to AMD because of OSS drivers, as did many other people.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by The Article
              A few days ago when publishing the results of benchmarking a lot of graphics cards on their Gallium3D drivers (about a dozen graphics cards) this left a...
              (Emphasis mine)

              Looks like something was lost in editing, or it was moved and the original sentence wasn't fixed.

              Originally posted by 89c51
              What would seem like a "feasible" thing to do is, for a manufacturer, to move its driver development to G3D on all operating systems (it is portable afaik).
              That would be cool, but I'm not confident that it will ever happen, for the following reasons:
              • If they did it using their proprietary driver, they'd probably have to modify a lot of code.
              • If they used the open source driver as a base, they'd have to implement all the missing features for their up-coming cards, and maybe older ones too.
              • In addition to making the (open source) driver feature complete, they'd have (well, want) to optimize and maybe implement those features which couldn't be implemented before (for whatever reason).
              • Possibly other reasons.


              That's not to say that there aren't advantages, but it's a big hill to walk over before you see them.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                This is wrong. I switched from Nvidia to AMD because of OSS drivers, as did many other people.
                Some of us jumped to intel ;-) I'll be back to Ati once R600g solidifies. I hope my next htpc/sever can be a fully open source bulldozer/Ati on board graphics combination.

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                • #18
                  R600g coming along nicely from my perspective

                  I run an AMD Althlon X4 with integrated HD4290 and Gallium3d

                  Graphics: Card ATI RS880 [Radeon HD 4290] X.Org 1.9.2.901 Res: [email protected]
                  GLX Renderer Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS880 GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.11-devel Direct Rendering Yes

                  I run Linux Mint 10 and activated Ubuntu ppas for kernel and xorg-edgers and updated to a 2.6.38 kernel and manually created an xorg.conf to activate the r600g driver. Nothing too difficult to achieve.

                  I do not play games so that side of things has no relevance to me. Desktop effects are smooth and laggless, much better than using Mesa. Video acceleation is only via xv but it works well with hardly ever any tearing that I have noticed. I now have WebGL and it loads quickly and runs smoothly and all the demos work. With Mesa there is no WebGL on ATI (my notebook running Intel has a half working WebGL on Mesa). I tried an Nvidia card and 32bit accelerated flash and found the actual video was not that good full screen (for my system). Hardware flash is in it's infancy so i should not be too hard on it yet. On the same system running the HD4290 and gallium3d un-accelerated full screen flash is a better viewing experience, albeit with a harder working CPU.

                  It might be my imagination but everything seems sharper and clearer, jpg photos seem more vivid - or maybe that is just wishful thinking.

                  So now I have a system that is running open source drivers and does everything I need and can only get better and better as it develops. Add a working OpenGL 3 and I cannot see me ever using fglrx again.

                  So far Gallium is rock solid with no crashes or issues. Keep up the good work and I am very thankful for the efforts of AMD to open the specs and the devs for creating the drivers. And finally, unlike fglrx, I can just update my system with new kernels without ever considering that I might break my video driver.

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                  • #19
                    Another thing to keep in mind is that you have to compare apples to apples. An X1950 has more memory bandwidth and shader resources than an HD2400 for example. You need to compare comparable families (e.g., an X1950 and an HD3850).

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                      This is wrong. I switched from Nvidia to AMD because of OSS drivers, as did many other people.
                      I was on ATI in my Windows days, but I have stayed with it in subsequent hardware purchases because of the OSS drivers.

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