"Ask ATI" dev thread

[Linuxhippy]

Is XRender accaleration planned for the proprietary driver?
The current version is based on XAA and only accalerates a small subset of render operations.

NVidia is currently working on enhanced XRender acceleration, and also Intel/Via/Nouveau drivers are capable of accalerating it - so the proprietary ATI driver will soon be the only driver not offering hw accaleration.

Maybe the 2D part could be thrown out and replaced with RadeonHD sometime soon, at least for HD2/3/4 cars?

Thanks, Clemens

[aragorn55]

will we be getting powereXpress for the desktop any time soon i would really like to be able to get an igp and nice gpu so when not gaming i can use an efficient cool igp but have a nice discret gpu when gaming

[Moustacha]

Oh yeah, are we going to see MPEG-2 acceleration, at the least, with OSS drivers? Or is that all to proprietary to be let out. I'd like to use my old r300 in a media centre, and offload the cpu work to the gpu.

[Dandel]

When will the proper support for the latest mobile graphics chips (HD 3000 and HD 2000 series) be updated/added for linux?

[enzobelmont]

NEVER!

we are still waiting for proper r300 support..

make your own calculations.

[wfeltmate]

Guys, if you are waiting for support on an r300 chipset, then it is time you upgrade. It is long past the r300's life cycle, so I doubt that ATI - or ANY company for that matter - would officially support a product that out of date. And before you go saying NVIDIA this and NVIDIA that, they too have either removed or refused to add support for their chipsets that are way past their life cycle. And if you think ATI is doing that bad of a job, go volunteer your time with them and show them how you think it should be done... see how fast you find out just how hard of a job they have. Otherwise, please stop being so negative, you're only serving as a deterrent for better linux support from companies like ATI and NVIDIA.

As for the mobile chipsets, I actually am using the 3200 now and have no issues. I just bought this HP laptop yesterday from Bestbuy, brought it home, install Ubuntu followed by fglrx and it worked perfectly, no issues installing it. Granted, I am still in the process of transferring files over, so I haven't yet had the chance to test out video playback to check on the tearing(which on my desktop with a HD2400 XT was minor and easily ignored) or the WINE/OpenGL issue(which I assume is there, but I don't really run any 3d games, so I'm not overly concerned).

Moustasha, the OSS drivers are not something that the ATI devs really keep track of - to my knowledge anyways - as they are not being developed in-house by ATI. For that,you would need to get in contact with the devs of the OSS driver(s).

I do have one question, though. This has now happened to me 3 separate times when installing Ubuntu 8.04(it may be related to ubuntu and I will be making a post there as well tomorrow), but after the installation, all the current updates since the iso was made, I can't seem to be able to stream audio over the HDMI connection, after fglrx is installed. The driver installs fine, the sound card for the HDMI connection is recognized, but I fail to get a volume slider or any audio output from the connection.
I am wondering, not how to fix that, I will post in the proper section for help there, but is this a known or common/uncommon issue with the drivers?

This issue has occurred with the HD2400 XT, mobile HD 3200 and the integrated 1250 on the...690? motherboard chipsets. All with Ubuntu and with each fglrx driver version starting with... I know 8.4 for sure, but it could have been earlier... I forget when the official support for this was added. I had no problem getting the audio installed and working on ubuntu 7.10, but again, that is likely something I should take up over at the ubuntu forums.

[enzobelmont]

Guys, if you are waiting for support on an r300 chipset, then it is time you upgrade.

My laptop is 2 yr old and it "features" a r300 variant called xpress200m, There was NEVER a decent driver until october 23 2007. If you know how to upgrade a laptop GFX chipset make us know.

I just bought this HP laptop yesterday from Bestbuy,

Welcome to the nightmare known as "ATI never listen their customers"

the OSS drivers are not something that the ATI devs really keep track of - to my knowledge anyways - as they are not being developed in-house by ATI.

Shame on ATI; someone doing reverse eng. because ATI guys are not doing their job.


you can read desperated post here on phoronix about users crying for tearin issues; the new driver model is almost a year old (october 2007), and the issues are still there.

no offense, i'm just a desperated ati user tired of slow improvements on FGLRX driver.

[bridgman]

Oh yeah, are we going to see MPEG-2 acceleration, at the least, with OSS drivers? Or is that all to proprietary to be let out. I'd like to use my old r300 in a media centre, and offload the cpu work to the gpu.

I am hoping to get HW documentation for the IDCT block released later this year. HW information required to implement MC was (hopefully) included in the R5xx accel guide released back in February. MC is usually the biggest consumer of CPU cycles when decoding MPEG-2 and I *think* the XvMC protocol allows the accleeration of MC without IDCT so the first round of decode acceleration is just a matter of devs having the time and interest to try implementing MC.

My laptop is 2 yr old and it "features" a r300 variant called xpress200m, There was NEVER a decent driver until october 23 2007. If you know how to upgrade a laptop GFX chipset make us know.

You might want to try the open source radeon driver -- Alex and others have made a lot of improvements there over the last 6 months.

Welcome to the nightmare known as "ATI never listen their customers"

Um... hi

Shame on ATI; someone doing reverse eng. because ATI guys are not doing their job.

There are ATI engineers working as part of the community (along with developers from Novell, Red Hat, IBM and a number of independent developers) on the open source drivers - it's just a different team from the folks working on fglrx. Not sure where your comment on reverse engineering came from - have you looked at the documentation sites ?

you can read desperated post here on phoronix about users crying for tearin issues; the new driver model is almost a year old (october 2007), and the issues are still there. no offense, i'm just a desperated ati user tired of slow improvements on FGLRX driver.

I haven't tried it on an RS480 but you might want to try playback through OpenGL with sync-to-vblank enabled.

[suacy]

Here's a less technical question:

In a time when AMD has been reporting net losses for a few quarters, how did they justify this linux initiative?

How does this fit into the business plan? (Or is there simply a super-charismatic linux advocate in senior management?)

Just curious - thanks.

[mitch074]

worky, but buggy

I haven't tried it on an RS480 but you might want to try playback through OpenGL with sync-to-vblank enabled.

Well, this actually work - but there are a few problems:
- not all players implement a good OpenGL renderer: mplayer's gl2 driver results into an image that looks a bit wahsed out. Degradation could be caused by texture compression, I don't know, but depending on how grainy the original picture is, it can be very noticeable;
- on HD48xx cards, enabling this mode may trigger the 'checkerboard of doom' bug, if only when switching from/to full screen.

Is this bug known, and a fix underway? Thanks!