Goodbye ATI

[gradinaruvasile]

For r600, the OS Radeon driver is way better than FGLRX now, IMO. It has superior 2D performance, KMS support, VDPAU with more codec support than XVBA, etc. Fglrx has only two advantages: OpenGL support higher than 3.3, and sometimes higher 3D performance. The OpenGL support isn't really a deal breaker, since only a handful of games (like Metro LL) require it at this point, and most r600 cards can't run it acceptably anyway. The 3D performance advantage for Fglrx isn't really an advantage at all, since while it has technically higher fps sometimes, it suffers from stuttering and lag while the radeon driver is much more consistent.
Of course it's not perfect, and is slower than fglrx on Windows (according to benchmarks). Hopefully performance and capabilities keep on increasing at the pace we've seen recently.

Agreed.
I just wanted to add something:
- the UVD hardware decoding engine's frontend (XVBA) used by fglrx is practically useless because no player supports it (xbmc was the only one that did but they canned support for it since radeon/VDPAU appeared). There are no other video players that use it under Linux AFAIK.
- The OSS Radeon driver on the other hand adopted VDPAU (ironically developed by nvidia) as the frontend for the hardware's UVD decoding engine. Since VDPAU is a long supported method by mplayer, xbmc, xine and other players (vlc just added support for it in 2.1/2.2), you can use it out of the box. Also, it works with the flash plugin on a few sites (youtube and a few more) if set up properly in the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file.

The video playback in fglrx is tearing unless you use opengl for presentation (and that too sometimes). You actually have to enable the "tear-free" option in the driver that increases video memory usage (it triple buffers everything) and sometimes lowers playback framerate.
- Also sometimes the tearing issue appears in games too - the driver's option isnt always respected (this goes for in-game settings too).
- The OSS driver vsyncs by default everything, its much more controllable (prefix the executable with "vblank_mode=1" or 0 to force enable or disable it or set the vblank_mode to 1 or 0 previously by other means).

As per the above, using fglrx you have an advantage in some 3D apps, mainly high end games (others like Source games run perfectly well on radeon, better than on fglrx) and disadvantage in many other areas.

[benmoran]

For r600, the OS Radeon driver is way better than FGLRX now, IMO. It has superior 2D performance, KMS support, VDPAU with more codec support than XVBA, etc. Fglrx has only two advantages: OpenGL support higher than 3.3, and sometimes higher 3D performance. The OpenGL support isn't really a deal breaker, since only a handful of games (like Metro LL) require it at this point, and most r600 cards can't run it acceptably anyway. The 3D performance advantage for Fglrx isn't really an advantage at all, since while it has technically higher fps sometimes, it suffers from stuttering and lag while the radeon driver is much more consistent.

Of course it's not perfect, and is slower than fglrx on Windows (according to benchmarks). Hopefully performance and capabilities keep on increasing at the pace we've seen recently.

[BSDude]

I don't know, they pretty much are on par for everything up to the SI generation. And that's already at about 50% performance and improving rapidly.

Ok, then maybe they will be on par in a year instead of two

[smitty3268]

Oooold thread. So let's see what changed on AMD's side.

People were telling me that the OSS drivers will be up to par with the "real" drivers soon, and that I should wait instead of buying a GTX. Didn't happen.

So, on to a GTX 780 now (don't normally buy highest end cards, but I got an insane deal on it.) Maybe in another 2 years AMD's drivers will be ready and offer high performance for the old cards. For the newly R9 ones, maybe in a decade or so. All I can say is that the GTX 560 Ti has served me well in the last two years and allowed me to actually use my computer in a satisfactory manner. As I'm getting older, I feel like I have much more hair than what I would have had if I still was using the Radeon...

I don't know, they pretty much are on par for everything up to the SI generation. And that's already at about 50% performance and improving rapidly.

[RealNC]

Oooold thread. So let's see what changed on AMD's side.

People were telling me that the OSS drivers will be up to par with the "real" drivers soon, and that I should wait instead of buying a GTX. Didn't happen.

So, on to a GTX 780 now (don't normally buy highest end cards, but I got an insane deal on it.) Maybe in another 2 years AMD's drivers will be ready and offer high performance for the old cards. For the newly R9 ones, maybe in a decade or so. All I can say is that the GTX 560 Ti has served me well in the last two years and allowed me to actually use my computer in a satisfactory manner. As I'm getting older, I feel like I have much more hair than what I would have had if I still was using the Radeon...

[D0pamine]

Loyalty is an admirable quality but let's not get carried away. Debian underpins a *lot* of distros and they fix more bugs than all the other distros.

Where gentoo scores heavily for me is the docu. Along with arch they have raised the bar regarding user guides and stuff. A lot of people will look to arch and gentoo online docu first.

Same source code makes gentoo or debian or whatever you want. Things get fixed because end users can easily recompile things with different cflags, patches and use flags and not just whine on a forum.

you really think i'm some sort of sycophant with loyalty to blah distro - i really dont care - if you can find me something better for development you show me ? on the other hand if you think i'm dicking around for 3 hours setting up my sisters laptop you can forget it - she'll get debian or mint or some crap i wouldn't use personally but just works

is this thread dead yet - its completely off topic anyway


[EDIT] the point was gentoo-gnu/linux isn't exotic, debian-gnu/hurd is exotic in my opinion and you'd be struggling to get your nvidia blob running on it but its still nice

[gordboy]

Facts sometimes trump sectarian tunnel vision

dude seriously, gentoo and the gentoo community are responsible for fixing more bugs than pretty much any other distro, yes you can compile things in different ways - thats how things get fixed you numpty!

Loyalty is an admirable quality but let's not get carried away. Debian underpins a *lot* of distros and they fix more bugs than all the other distros.

Where gentoo scores heavily for me is the docu. Along with arch they have raised the bar regarding user guides and stuff. A lot of people will look to arch and gentoo online docu first.

[D0pamine]

Ahem. There, I replaced what you didn't read (and what you did in bold so it wouldn't confuse you) with Lorem Ipsum. Try again or fail. I don't care how many years you've been using it for... it doesn't change the nature of the distribution.

dude seriously, gentoo and the gentoo community are responsible for fixing more bugs than pretty much any other distro, yes you can compile things in different ways - thats how things get fixed you numpty!

[kazetsukai]

Gentoo ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Gentoo turpis nisl, accumsan quis sodales at, feugiat et mauris. Aliquam ultricies mollis nunc. Vestibulum mattis hendrerit lacus, eu vestibulum magna lacinia eget. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Fusce vulputate nibh quis tellus convallis ac scelerisque dolor facilisis. Nullam eu ullamcorper mi. Nam laoreet semper molestie.

Morbi accumsan rhoncus nisl id interdum. Sed quis rhoncus lectus. Sed et dolor mi. Fusce pretium tempus fermentum. Etiam nec nibh odio. Nulla in velit at enim pharetra consequat.

<= Etiam quis egestas mauris.

dont tell me about gentoo - i've been using it for years and helping others with issues along the way - ask Naib if you dont believe me

anyway i need to find a wikipedia article to back my argument up whatever the fuck my argument is... ahh yeh that was it - i dont like whiners

Ahem. There, I replaced what you didn't read (and what you did in bold so it wouldn't confuse you) with Lorem Ipsum. Try again or fail. I don't care how many years you've been using it for... it doesn't change the nature of the distribution.

[D0pamine]

Gentoo is exotic even in the context of Gentoo... your build can be very different depending on the hardware and compiler flags even with the same hardware. Such distros are known for impossible-to-reproduce bugs and crazy use cases that are impossible to recreate (not to mention, hardly worth the developers' time). That and you have noobs that use "uber compiler flags" that they claim to have 300 times the speed and 9000% win when they produce identical binaries. All of this translates to noise, and that's what RealNC was trying to get at. Don't pretend you didn't know what he was referring to and if you truly didn't catch it then you need to re-read his post a few times.

From a tester's standpoint, "Ubuntu XY.ZA" is an easier target to test for since they're using known binaries. This is why you see the bin/deb/rpm multirelease pattern...

<= Runs Arch quite happily

dont tell me about gentoo - i've been using it for years and helping others with issues along the way - ask Naib if you dont believe me

anyway i need to find a wikipedia article to back my argument up whatever the fuck my argument is... ahh yeh that was it - i dont like whiners