S3 Graphics Releases Linux Driver With OpenGL 3.0, VA-API

[[Knuckles]]

Not that I would buy a S3 graphics card, but hey, at least they have something now.

I just hope they recognize the value that is added to their hardware if the driver is opened up.

[curaga]

Wikipedia has the specs:

Chrome 540 GTX 65nm 800Mhz core
32 unified shaders 1700Mhz ram (850 gDDR3) 64bit bus

[tball]

I haven't seen the drivers but judging by the GL string whether it supports 3.0 is wrong. Officially 3.0 should be reported when a opengl 3.0 capable glx context is created using GLX_ARB_create_context. That's the official way. Unfortunately Nvidia broke with that rule in a recent 180.x release likely for marketing reasons. If S3 supports GLX_ARB_create_context then they have OpenGL 3.0 support.

I just checked their libGL.so and they do have GLX_ARB_create_context / glXCreateContextAttribsARB, so they really support OpenGL 3.0. Please update the article.

@Michael, Thunderbird is right.

My fglrx 9.2 doesn't report opengl 3.0 either with glx:
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8494 Release

But opengl 3.0 is certanly there.

[Extreme Coder]

Quite surprised by this.

I'd like to see an article testing this, comparing performance with similar price-ranged cards from ATi and nVIDIA.

[Thunderbird]

I haven't seen the drivers but judging by the GL string whether it supports 3.0 is wrong. Officially 3.0 should be reported when a opengl 3.0 capable glx context is created using GLX_ARB_create_context. That's the official way. Unfortunately Nvidia broke with that rule in a recent 180.x release likely for marketing reasons. If S3 supports GLX_ARB_create_context then they have OpenGL 3.0 support.

I just checked their libGL.so and they do have GLX_ARB_create_context / glXCreateContextAttribsARB, so they really support OpenGL 3.0. Please update the article.

[hdas]

Lol, to be honest, I am shell-shocked. The fact that they came up with something apparently even remotely working is beyond my wildest imaginations, let alone issues like license, new hardware, amd64 arch, features and quality.

All this time I took it as hoax/vaporware and thought Phoronix was having some cheap fun going after clueless chicken in S3's PR dept.

In any case, since it will head towards nowhere, I just have to say, this is what it called *epic fail*.

(Just a reminder - this is *2009* and if you can't even create a 3d driver with compositing, you shouldn't use the term linux support. Vesa can do better .)

[colo]

Non-free drivers are worthless. I would have bought a Chrome if they'd ship source under an apropriate license, but this way, I'm just not interested. At all.

[damentz]

I hope that soon enough, you'll be able to test the driver, and the hardware on Linux, Michael. I'd really be interested in seeing how well it performs, how does it compare to the earlier tests you ran on cheap hardware and nVidia GFX with VDPAU and how well does it do 3D compared to Intel, nVidia and ATi (on reasonably similar hardware... Do we even know how many stream processors the 500 series pack or if it has a vertex engine? How about memory interface, etc?)

Yes, this would be interesting. S3 has some interesting technologies, especially the ability to use anisotropic filtering without any framerate drop.

Though, it would be cool for them to create some real drivers for linux with up to speed Xorg and kernel support if they decide to continue the proprietary method _completely_. If not, try what AMD is doing and hire someone to work on the open source driver too.

[stan]

S3 is already violating the GPL by distributing the binary without the source. They obviously need to claim it's GPL in order to use Linux's GPL'ed symbols. So now it's up to someone who owns copyright to the Linux kernel to sue their behind.

[Thetargos]

I hope that soon enough, you'll be able to test the driver, and the hardware on Linux, Michael. I'd really be interested in seeing how well it performs, how does it compare to the earlier tests you ran on cheap hardware and nVidia GFX with VDPAU and how well does it do 3D compared to Intel, nVidia and ATi (on reasonably similar hardware... Do we even know how many stream processors the 500 series pack or if it has a vertex engine? How about memory interface, etc?)