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  • OpenChrome Provides New VIA X.Org Driver

    Phoronix: OpenChrome Provides New VIA X.Org Driver

    The community-based OpenChrome project has shipped their xf86-video-openchrome 0.3.2 DDX...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Are they building off Gallium3D? Also, how relevent is this driver these days? S3 GPU's aren't exactly common anymore, and their stand alone GPUs are very very slow by today's standards and are near impossible to find. With the Brazos series from AMD and Intel finally moving away from PowerVR GPUs on Atom it doesn't make much sense to use VIA/S3 hardware anymore. Not that their nonexistent support for Linux ever made their hardware worth using.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Kivada View Post
      Are they building off Gallium3D? Also, how relevent is this driver these days? S3 GPU's aren't exactly common anymore, and their stand alone GPUs are very very slow by today's standards and are near impossible to find. With the Brazos series from AMD and Intel finally moving away from PowerVR GPUs on Atom it doesn't make much sense to use VIA/S3 hardware anymore. Not that their nonexistent support for Linux ever made their hardware worth using.
      Man, it's for fun! We should not support the evil? corporations, AMD and NVIDIA! </sarcasm>

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Kivada View Post
        Are they building off Gallium3D?
        This driver is only for mode-setting and 2D acceleration. There's probably not enough interest or manpower (and not enough docs/code from VIA) to try a gallium3d driver, but stranger things have happened...

        Also, how relevant is this driver these days?
        There's still a fair amount of VIA/S3 stuff out there, and it seems to be okay for basic use, so I would say it's relevant.

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        • #5
          I am not a developer and I do not know what it is but there is documentation available for 2d and 3d


          ho, and my motherboard ve900 (via vx900) is good for windows.
          strongly a better support for linux when the drm to be upstream on kernel

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          • #6
            Ah, still movement. I shall --sync and emerge the new driver soon. I still have some of these chips around, sadly these GPUs were due to the lack of driver never very useful but hey, why not. Kudos to these poor souls still hacking to support these chips.
            Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Calinou View Post
              Man, it's for fun! We should not support the evil? corporations, AMD and NVIDIA! </sarcasm>
              TF are you on about? Nobody in their right mind buys VIA/S3 hardware anymore, the performance per watt and performance per dollar just isn't there and what hardware they had sold when it was relevant is getting pretty long in the tooth and thus has or will be phased out by anyone that bought it when it was new. Not that many did seeing how hard it is to find any shop that ever stocked their hardware post being pushed out of the AMD and Intel mobo chipset market all those years ago.

              Here is the only review I ever found of VIA/S3's last generation of GPUs, they where not impressive for the price or power usage. http://8000.hillbillyhardware.com:80...tx/540gtx.html

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              • #8
                Originally posted by DanL View Post
                There's still a fair amount of VIA/S3 stuff out there, and it seems to be okay for basic use, so I would say it's relevant.
                How much of it is old mobo chipsets for AMD and Intel versus boards based on the Nano or C3 and S3 GPUs?

                It's been at least 5 years since I've even sen anyone consider anything from VIA/S3, and iirc it was a dual core Nano ITX they where looking at for the built in encryption.

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                • #9
                  "Back at the time when I was young" *cough* well, AMD and int_e_l were giving each other a MHz race.
                  VIA (and Transmeta) stepped in with these not really numbercrunching but low power CPUs. Soon after the MiniITX boards came. These were a seemingly perfect combination of low power consumption, low thermal solutions - few even w. passive cooling - in a small form factor with added ASICs for goodness like MPEG2 acceleration and Padlock for crypto. You didn't need a fast CPU when you had an MPEG2 accel chip and also not for just playing MP3s in your "home theater". Padlock did crypto support. Many boards featured things like TV out, or serial ports for machine controlling or 2+ LAN ports for networking and being a cute server. With addons you could reach up to 4 or 5 LAN ports or other fancy things.

                  So basically the idea was neat, and it would have worked out if VIA had pushed out decent drivers and/or documentation. But this way the chips were quite a pain and you can put these boards better to use as fileservers but definitely not as HTPCs.
                  You could add a "real" GPU, but you had to use the one and only PCI slot for it (today: PCIe). But that would hamper your efforts on having a low profile, cool, silent, low power HTPC.

                  I still use one as a low power fileserver and I had a laptop with these chips for about 8 years. I also use one to control a machine via RS232. So yes, some people still use these chips.

                  Of course today AMD and intel have quite good offers for HTPCs, small servers and so on. Better GPUs/drivers, just lacking the crypto accel but the CPUs are often multicore (at least AMDs) and stronger than the VIA C3/C7. Well maybe some low end atoms are slower than a C7 but I guess these might have even lower power consumption on their good side.
                  I'll very very likely not buy VIA again, it has been so many years me waiting and still hoping for the wonder to happen but it didn't. Darn, they could really have claimed a good spot in the market with better Linux support (or even on the Windows side better drivers).
                  Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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