Open-Source R500 Driver Can Compete With Legacy Catalyst

[Gusar]

hey bridgeman, can you tell the hardware designers and whoever is responsible for designing the end user video cards to stop taking up 2 whole expansion slots.

If you don't want the GPU to fry itself, the cooling solution has to be dual-slot. No other way around it. GPUs nowadays have more transistors than CPUs, and look a the coolers needed to prevent those from frying themselves.

oh, and whats your views on openMAX as a cross platform video acceleration api and will anyone ever care to use it?

According to daniels, openmax is a terrible API: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...191#post266191
So I'd rather we just stick to what's already available and working on the desktop: vdpau and vaapi.

[benjamin545]

maybe GPU's are too powerfull nowadays?
actualy thats really proboobly true, i bought the geforce 6600gt back then for under 200 usd, but now a geforce gtx 660 will proboboly cost 300-350usd. its kinda like naming of the card doesnt realy mean how poerfull the card is in comparison to demand on the card, but only really puts it in a position reletive to other cards in the family. back then, a 6600gt could be maxed out on then current games. i think when the 660 comes out you will be able to really max it out unless you put some sort of huge display size requirments on it or hinder it with something else using it in the background.

and as far as openMAX..... openMAX 2.0??? maybe to fix the problems??? there is 2 parts to openmax, theres a low level api and a high level api and the only one that is comparable to va-api and the like is the low level one, i think the high level one is like a competator to gstreamer. i dunno, but most people would agree its not idea to havea windows video api and a mac video api (which is hidden and only availible internaly for apple from what i remember) and 3-4 linux api's with an adnroid api and whatever consols use and whatnot.

[smitty3268]

and as far as openMAX..... openMAX 2.0??? maybe to fix the problems??? there is 2 parts to openmax, theres a low level api and a high level api and the only one that is comparable to va-api and the like is the low level one, i think the high level one is like a competator to gstreamer. i dunno, but most people would agree its not idea to havea windows video api and a mac video api (which is hidden and only availible internaly for apple from what i remember) and 3-4 linux api's with an adnroid api and whatever consols use and whatnot.

There are only 2 linux API's that matter:

VAAPI and VDPAU.

I don't see anyone ever switching away from those APIs. And really you should only have to support one, because each has a backend outputting into the other one.

[popper]

maybe GPU's are too powerfull nowadays?
actualy thats really proboobly true, i bought the geforce 6600gt back then for under 200 usd, but now a geforce gtx 660 will proboboly cost 300-350usd. its kinda like naming of the card doesnt realy mean how poerfull the card is in comparison to demand on the card, but only really puts it in a position reletive to other cards in the family. back then, a 6600gt could be maxed out on then current games. i think when the 660 comes out you will be able to really max it out unless you put some sort of huge display size requirments on it or hinder it with something else using it in the background.

and as far as openMAX..... openMAX 2.0??? maybe to fix the problems??? there is 2 parts to openmax, theres a low level api and a high level api and the only one that is comparable to va-api and the like is the low level one, i think the high level one is like a competator to gstreamer. i dunno, but most people would agree its not idea to havea windows video api and a mac video api (which is hidden and only availible internaly for apple from what i remember) and 3-4 linux api's with an adnroid api and whatever consols use and whatnot.

regarding "GPU's are too powerfull nowadays?" , not in the slightest even if your just referring to the hardware and not the substandard under performing Software components etc, first acknowledge the problems then address them with real working optimized code (it seems to be ARM and Linaro's stance today).

in fact regarding "openMAX" if you want to see how the Pro ARM Linaro collective companies try to deal with these types of problems just read this generic outline and realize they put time limits on their ARM time to market working sample code usually around 3 months max, no x86 vendor seems wiling to meet that these days for a substantial project like this for instance "OpenMax Integration" on ARM (cortex)

https://wiki.linaro.org/Events/2011-06-MMWG/OpenMaxIntegration

its quite refreshing to see a whole ARM collective industry come together and openly show anyone willing to read and contribute how to make real progress and advance the core upstream Linux code-base as a side benefit to all longer term.

[Hamish Wilson]

bridgeman is my hero

I stillcan't belive people bashing AMD for the huge amounts of effort they put in. Sure, more is always better and I'm sure peopl ealways argue there's more needed. All that said and done, it's remarkable how much AMD _does_ do. Remember, AMD is also the saller 'underdog'. It doesn't have the intel budgets for things. It is still for lack of better word, struggling to keepalive.

So Bridgeman, the messenger, is my hero.

This +1.

[mendieta]

Any hope for R600/700

Does this mean there is hope for R600/R700 FLOSS drivers to also become competitive with the (unfortunately deprecated) Catalyst driver, in the foreseeable future?

[not.sure]

Does this mean there is hope for R600/R700 FLOSS drivers to also become competitive with the (unfortunately deprecated) Catalyst driver, in the foreseeable future?

Yes it does.

And most importantly, it shows that it can be done(tm). It is actually possible to have a FOSS driver in a FOSS graphics stack that can compete with binary drivers of millions of LOC, written and maintained by hundreds of developers. Not too long ago that wasn't clear at all.

[gordboy]

Just read the posts

I'm in a weird mood right now, so I'll indulge in some troll-feeding and let you humor me. So here we go:

Show me your posts where you were saying this stuff about radeon, then show me how exactly they came to pass. Then point out the supposed "lies". Come on, let me see it. Humor me.

Troll-feeding. Classic.

Instead of burying your head in the sand, you could actually read the posts yourself.

The onus is very much on the pro-AMD brigade to show how the radeon driver has progressed, not the other way around. If you think that finally supporting cards that are way past their sell-by date is any sort of progress, then I pity you.

It has been clear for years that there is a virulent campaign to discredit anyone who comments on this disastrous state of affairs. Phoronix has for many years been a fraudulent PR site for ATI/AMD, and it even got to the point that people were making death threats.

All part of a normal debate ? I think not. You should all hang your heads in utter shame.

[oliver]

I tried "ignore" for a while but the threads still filled up with Q's posts and the ignore function doesn't really hide them. This doesn't seem much worse, really...

But yeah, maybe this is a good place to stop. I don't feel like this is heading towards a conclusion although sometimes it does.

All things said and done, it's still a good thing he's trying to accomplish, better OSS drivers! Don't know if Q's ways work though

[Gusar]

The onus is very much on the pro-AMD brigade to show how the radeon driver has progressed

You mean like this: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17429 ?

Dude, you disappoint me. Very much. I asked you to humor me, and instead all I get is this one lame thing.

Also, if you go check my posting history here, you'll see I'm on no way the "pro-AMD brigade".