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Nouveau's OpenGL Performance Approaches The NVIDIA Driver

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  • #41
    Cannot edit... Why?

    Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
    Or are you thinking about Amnesia: Dark Descent? That used to be broken, but is working now, according to the RadeonProgram wiki.
    Kind of works.
    Light effects are a bit broken, flickering from nothing to full brightness but sometimes rendering correctly for a longer time...


    And you should have a second PC with a ssh client because you never know when your graphics card goes http://pastebin.com/iQGkRkJk (happened not in the game but after going back to the menu) and you need to kill penumbra because your graphics card only provides the screen with 1 frame every 5 seconds.

    But then I'm not using the "stable" driver anyway but git versions from xf86-video-ati, mesa and kernel26-drm-radeon-testing.

    But performance is pretty good. So as good as nouveau probably.

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    • #42
      I haven't tried Amnesia yet (planning to buy it when I finally have the time to play a game again), but Penumbra worked perfectly, except for motion blur -- which was completely broken.

      FWIW, I played Penumbra stuff at 1080p on an HD4550

      Comment


      • #43
        Originally posted by Drago View Post
        I don't understand you, bug77.
        My point is pretty clear: with all the advancements, open source drivers are still years behind binary blobs. Worse, there is no timeline indicating they will ever catch up.

        Meanwhile, the blind push for the open drivers already hurts linux. AMD dumps (scarce?) documentation on developers and does little to improve their own driver which is behind nvidia anyway. I don't know how much good that did, but I believe nouveau is still the better open source driver.
        The outcome? Firefox can only enable acceleration when it detects nvidia's blob, Unigine Heaven is delayed for months waiting for a proper Catalyst release. And the examples probably don't stop there.

        I would love to see open source drivers being 5 years behind this year, 4 years behind the next and so on. But it just doesn't happen. I'm convinced the developers behind those drivers are very, very talented. But if you look at the results, it is pretty clear )to me at least) that a change in direction is in order. Otherwise in 2016 we'll read Michael's article about nouveau finally achieving passable support for the GTX460.

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        • #44
          3dfx Voodoo3 Amigamerlin Drivers for Windows XP.

          Sorry for hijacking this thread with those incoherent blasts from the past, but let's remember a little.

          There was a little company called 3dfx, who went belly-up after Windows 2000 was launched, but before Windows XP was even announced. So, no Windows XP drivers for me. There were Microsoft drivers, but they didn't do 3D. What were my options, as a proud 3dfx user?

          1. Try to hijack an .INF file to install the 2K driver in XP. Fail.
          2. Try to install the MS W2K driver. Milkdrop worked, but 3D games failed. Fail.

          So, what did you think I do? Change a perfectly working Voodoo3 for a then crappy souped-up GeForce 2? I installed the Windows XP "Amigamerlin" driver, it worked like a charm, and kept me up until I did an upgrade, several years later.

          What's the catch, and why am I talking about a Windows XP driver for an outdated video card in Phoronix? The Amigamerlin driver was a backport of the MesaGL 3dfx Glide Linux driver to Windows XP. When 3dfx support ceased, and nothing was left, my Voodoo3 was spared, because the Linux support for 3dfx was top-notch. Sure, there's no KMS, but we're talking about a 11-year old card versus a 2-year old technology. At the time (XFree86 4.3, for you to remember), the Linux 3dfx support was simply the best. And that support paid off in the long run.

          Lesson: always buy a card with good open source drivers. Always. You'll be able to switch it when you want. You'll keep it, and it will work for you.

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          • #45
            Originally posted by bug77 View Post
            My point is pretty clear: with all the advancements, open source drivers are still years behind binary blobs. Worse, there is no timeline indicating they will ever catch up.
            They will probably never reach full parity, but will be close. The gap is closing very rapidly.

            Meanwhile, the blind push for the open drivers already hurts linux.
            Bullshit.

            The people developing the blobs and people developing the open drivers are different people.

            AMD dumps (scarce?) documentation on developers and does little to improve their own driver which is behind nvidia anyway.
            COMPLETE documentation.

            And they are funding 2 full-time open source driver developers, and about 100 closed-source driver developers.

            I don't know how much good that did, but I believe nouveau is still the better open source driver.
            You believe this although you haven't tried either. Awesome.

            The outcome? Firefox can only enable acceleration when it detects nvidia's blob, Unigine Heaven is delayed for months waiting for a proper Catalyst release. And the examples probably don't stop there.
            Wow, Unigine Heaven was delayed. Let's give up on Free Software forever.

            The point of Free software is not to develop stuff sooner. That's not the point of Linux, of GCC, of the GNU project, of KDE, of GNOME, or LibreOffice, or any other project. And it is not the point of free drivers.

            The Free drivers are awesome, that's all there is to it. I can't imagine going back to the nvidia blob again. I got better FPS, and that's it. Plus the occasional lockup and a big FU when my chip was no longer supported. No decent xrandr, laggy 2d (using Xvideo bogged down the CPU on my laptop). No thanks.

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            • #46
              Originally posted by bug77 View Post
              I don't know how much good that did, but I believe nouveau is still the better open source driver.
              LOL. You haven't actually tried either driver, but clearly anything associated with radeon's must suck, right?

              I give the nouveau devs a lot of credit for the impressive work they've done, but it's definitely not (and never has been) on par with the radeon OSS driver.

              For proof, just look at this very article. Michael mentions wanting to test on more cards, but that these were the only ones that actually ran correctly. There's been a lot of effort put into the r300g and r600g drivers to ensure they work on the widest array of hardware possible. Stability and features like power management are ahead there.

              Comment


              • #47
                Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                It doesn't run Heaven, but since Heaven is just a demo, it's not a big deal.

                Here, I run the following using a low-end HD4550 and r600g:

                SweetHome3d
                OpenArena
                Nexuiz
                Compiz
                KWin
                Doom3 + RoE
                Quake4
                Warsow
                Penumbra games
                World of Goo
                Gish
                Aquaria
                LugaruHD
                Quake Live


                and they are fine. But I'm not much of a gamer, other people run more stuff. Pretty much everything I've tried, works.

                Also power saving is OK, Xvideo and xrandr are excellent (nvidia blob still doesn't support this), and the thing is stable.

                I'm very glad that you refuse to look at open drivers because of your serious need for "Heaven" but please do not intentionally spread lies to confuse users, OK?

                "VESA", what an idiot
                Adding to your list, for r600g + HD5970:

                Imprudence / Second Life viewers (great performance; perfect rendering)
                Savage 2 (great performance; non-game-breaking rendering issues)
                Heroes of Newerth (great performance; non-game-breaking rendering issues)

                Comment


                • #48
                  Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
                  I give the nouveau devs a lot of credit for the impressive work they've done, but it's definitely not (and never has been) on par with the radeon OSS driver.
                  Sigh.

                  The radeon OSS driver is the biggest pile of trash I've ever had the misfortune to use. And, unfortunately, I'm stuck using it because my laptop has an older ATI chipset that ATI no longer supports in their proprietary driver.

                  Words can't begin to describe my hatred for the radeon driver. KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off. And lest the apologists start to blame KDE, I also can't run the citrix client (Motif based) without major issues.

                  The radeon driver has rendered my laptop barely usable. It's a HUGE regression from RadeonHD, which worked. Why that driver was abandoned, I'll never understand.

                  OTHO, my laptop has an Nvidia card in it. NVidia's driver support is flawless.

                  So, basically, to hell with ATI. I'll stick with NVidia, and I'll stick with their closed driver, because it just works.

                  Comment


                  • #49
                    Originally posted by jonnycat26 View Post
                    Sigh.

                    The radeon OSS driver is the biggest pile of trash I've ever had the misfortune to use. And, unfortunately, I'm stuck using it because my laptop has an older ATI chipset that ATI no longer supports in their proprietary driver.

                    Words can't begin to describe my hatred for the radeon driver. KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off. And lest the apologists start to blame KDE, I also can't run the citrix client (Motif based) without major issues.

                    The radeon driver has rendered my laptop barely usable. It's a HUGE regression from RadeonHD, which worked. Why that driver was abandoned, I'll never understand.

                    OTHO, my laptop has an Nvidia card in it. NVidia's driver support is flawless.

                    So, basically, to hell with ATI. I'll stick with NVidia, and I'll stick with their closed driver, because it just works.
                    I guess I must be using a different driver then. R300g works much, MUCH better than fglrx ever did.

                    Comment


                    • #50
                      Originally posted by jonnycat26 View Post
                      Words can't begin to describe my hatred for the radeon driver. KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off. And lest the apologists start to blame KDE, I also can't run the citrix client (Motif based) without major issues.
                      You should really try to debug it, since KDE4 should work fine. It does here, and most other places.

                      You'll save yourself a lot of grief.

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