AMD's Hiring Open-Source Graphics Developers Still

[V!NCENT]

There was a very good reason to port linux drivers to windows with the Voodoo 3 (I think it was that card). No official support anymore, and they were more stable and faster

People even made a Doom3 hack for these cards. Even a Windows 98 cracked executable. I don't understand that with the availability of $25 cards and a Linux port. Must have been diehard fanboys?

[DaemonFC]

People even made a Doom3 hack for these cards. Even a Windows 98 cracked executable. I don't understand that with the availability of $25 cards and a Linux port. Must have been diehard fanboys?

Or wards of the state.

[deanjo]

-Intel is not friend with MS anymore, also because of Meamo;

Well truth be known that MS has never been a real "friend" with intel. You just have to take a look at what 64-bit standard they chose, or how intel forced MS to drop the system requirements to have their products "Vista Capable" to see that (both items that really pissed off intel at the time).

[crazycheese]

Just got nvidia gtx 260 sp 216 / 1792mb of g'ram.
Your opendrivers are weak, your closed source drivers are weak, your marketing is strong. Rock on AMD.

[pingufunkybeat]

It really depends on what you're using it for.

I have a GTX 460 at work with binary drivers, and an HD4550 with open drivers at home. For regular desktop usage, AMD wins hands down. 2d is faster, desktop effects are smoother. That's quite impressive considering the difference between the cards.

For gaming and hi-performance 3d, there's obviously no comparison. The AMD open drivers work perfectly, but are slow.

A lot of this nvidia fanboyism is based on 4-year old experiences and perpetuated myths.

[crazycheese]

It really depends on what you're using it for.

I have a GTX 460 at work with binary drivers, and an HD4550 with open drivers at home. For regular desktop usage, AMD wins hands down. 2d is faster, desktop effects are smoother. That's quite impressive considering the difference between the cards.

For gaming and hi-performance 3d, there's obviously no comparison. The AMD open drivers work perfectly, but are slow.

A lot of this nvidia fanboyism is based on 4-year old experiences and perpetuated myths.

Faster 2d and kms root-less xorg is the only positive thing about R700 opensource.

What do you use your home machine for? Videoaccel - absent, 3d - slow and unstable, no hope for advanced features that are in catalyst - opensource is destined to low-end. Well, gtx 260 and 460 are not low-end cards.

Everywhere else nvidia wins hands down. Because their drivers is not programmed by bunch of semi-external developers and army of students, but paid inhouse developers. You buy card and they do drivers - same as on windows that amd actively polishes for free.

2 year 9800, 1 year 4770 and now back to 260 gtx. Desktop effects are smoother than on 4770, if you throw some options into xorg.conf.d

[pingufunkybeat]

What do you use your home machine for?

Internet, music, watching movies, programming, occasional casual gaming.

The OSS drivers are great for all but the last one, where they are OK.

Hardware acceleration for 1080 would be nice, I agree, but my machine has no problem doing it on the CPU, so it's not a big deal.

Now that the drivers are not bleeding-edge-experimental anymore, I find them easier to upgrade too. Getting the Nvidia drivers installed on Debian was quite painful, and I couldn't boot half of the time.

There is no argument when it comes to pure 3d performance, but when OK 3d performance is good enough, the AMD OSS drivers are better, hands down. Plus look at the cool stuff that's coming relatively soon: OpenGL 3, Hyper-Z, video decoding. And it's all open.

If people are willing to use a huge black box for added performance, it's up to them, but I don't agree with the meme that the AMD OSS drivers are not good. They are very much excellent, but unoptimised.

[pingufunkybeat]

I also don't know what you find unstable about the drivers. This will also depend on your hardware, but I get as many crashes with the nvidia binary as I do with the AMD OSS drivers -- that is: very few.

[crazycheese]

I also don't know what you find unstable about the drivers. This will also depend on your hardware, but I get as many crashes with the nvidia binary as I do with the AMD OSS drivers -- that is: very few.

The activities you mentioned have very little in common with gpu itself. Video is not accelerated, which is sad cause part of the chip that you payed for is unused, but its ok. But rest of the features is scarce too, corresponding to amount of developers.
Also, I do not understand this patent crap - if you buy amd card, you pay for those patents already, regardless where this driver is coming from. But yes, closedgl (trademark as well as patents belong to silicon graphics) plays role too.

I find the 2D actually very on par with opensource driver, to tell the truth.

I also never experienced any crashes with nvidia yet unlike xf86-radeon freezing desktop sometimes (very probably cause I evade anything 4xx+ now for various reasons).

[crazycheese]

The current big three problems with AMD opensource are:
- low amount of developers and absence of any engagement from AMD to somehow grow their amount by decent degree (we speak of several hundred).
- opengl3+ blocks, videochip decode blocks, opencl on opensource framework absence.
- performance

If you buy any card of 150$+, you really looking for absence of that problems.
20$+ card or IGP is irrelevant as the amount of investment is minor.
This is what AMD should really learn. If they are interested in selling cards to linux users. As for me, I'm not their customer anymore - I dont need windows, which they enthusiastically polish.