ati-drivers 3.14.1 / xorg 6.8.x

Beforegod · Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 11:16 am Post subject:

For all Radeon RV300 Users :

There is an OS Project which program OS Drivers for the rv300 Family.

Current state is that there is a drm patch for the kernel and a drm patch for xorg 6.8.0/1.

Ive tried these and the speed is good, not as fast as native or something, but the accerlation works good (with xcompmgr). DRI doesnt work in the moment but thats a matter of time.

Here is the homepage of the project :

http://r300.sf.net

fjas · n00b Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 4

How did you do it ? The r300 page doesn't have much documentation

How's the performance with glxgears ?
_________________
word up

vdboor · Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 11:33 am Post subject:

mglauche · Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:41 pm Post subject:

vdboor · Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 7:33 am Post subject:

sourcez · Apprentice Joined: 05 Feb 2004 Posts: 166 Location: Italy

I switched to nvidia on my desktop, with ati I have got many problems, now all works fine :lol:

My friend, that would buy a new desktop, choosing a nvidia card.
Ati loses 2 clients :evil:

_________________
"Tutti pensano a cambiare lumanità ma nessuno pensa a cambiare se stesso."
Lev Tolstoj

Calida · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:52 pm Post subject:

So did i get that right?
I have an Radeon 9800 and the only way to get a stable xorg is to step back to 6.7, or to change to an nvidia card?

And as it looks like that i have to step back to 6.7 how would i do that?

thx

stalcair · n00b Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Posts: 57

I am really tired now so I will go into dumb computer mode. Please help me out (and help everyone out that is having problems) However I will start with what I have gathered from this and other forums on the subject of Xorg 6.8.x and ATI drivers (especially related to the >=r300 series)

*dumb computer mode*
setup: (based on disorganized info management system known as Forum/BBS)
- ATI has long history of bad software drivers
- ATI has more recent history of questionable Windows and bad Linux drivers
- Xorg appears to be the "standard" X11 system for Linux (or GNU/Linux) users
- 3.14.1 is the current (18 October 2004) released drivers
- There is no beta driver set of ATI drivers
- Xorg currently does not provide full support for >=r300 ATI cards

Assumptions: (also based on info gathered here and other forums)
- Xorg 6.8.x suffers from compatability and stability problems
- No current ATI drivers (proprietary) work with Xorg 6.8.x
- >=r300 full functionality required the proprietary ATI drivers
- there is a hack attempt at r300 ATI support that is of unknown effectiveness and usability

The Problem:
- ATI users of >=r300 cards can not use Xorg 6.8.x
- No workaround exists for this solution given using current Xorg and ATI proprietary driver releases

Questions:
- What are the proposed solutions to this problem?
- How is nVidia support in Xorg 6.8.x?
- What are the long term plans of Xorg and the Linux Kernel maintainers for a remedy to this familiar problem? (note, data analysis suggests that lack of consistent and proper documentation and direction cause numerous problems in corporate confidence and support for Linux because of the instability of ABI between various releases of libraries, systems and components. Does the HAL project seem viable as a solution?)

*dumb computer mode off*

OK, enough of that.

Lets all take a deep breather... relax... let the anger flow out of you... tell the fanboy voices to give you a break... now lets work on a solution. First step is realistic assessment of the situation. What is the problem? What attempts are underway to address the problem? How can we all help?

It is frustrating to not have your computer do what it should. I care NOTHING about the pissing contests of claiming comparing WindowsXP to Linux (of any flavor) is like comparing apples to oranges. That immediately flags Linux as luserville to potentially interested parties from my experience and requires statements like "oh, ignore them... you get people like that for and against any product."

No excuses. Lets clearly document the issues. Differentiate what works from what does not on as granular a level as possible then try to help find a solution. Now where can we go to do this? bugs.gentoo.org? Here at the forums? Xorg's site? www.ati.com?

Or is it recommended to wait it out and hope for the best?

iplayfast · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:15 am Post subject:

Well said,

In my experience something changed from xorg 6.7.0-r2 to 6.7.99 something. At that point the ati drivers stopped working for 3d. So it appears to me that since the same ati-drivers worked for xor 6.7.0-r2 but do not work for xorg 6.8 then xorg must have changed.

So my question is, if xorg changed, is xorg:
1. Creating a bug
2. fixing a bug and revealing another one
3. fixing a bug which ati had already fixed on their end, so now is broken.

TheNull · n00b Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 37

iplayfast · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:47 am Post subject:

I asked Donnie Berkholz about the problem (since he seems to be in charge of the release of the xorg).

The pertinent part of our conversation

Beforegod · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:00 am Post subject:

cadaverus · n00b Joined: 29 Sep 2004 Posts: 29

I get serious "issues" with my Radeon 9600XT under linux - lockups, crashing, graphics corruption. Tried a few fixes suggested about the place but not to much avail.

So I stopped using ATI drivers and switch to the ``other'' OS when I want to play games - thats all I need the radeon for anyway, but I can understand people getting (more than) a bit angry at ATI for its shitty drivers....

I can't use wine and stuff either... hence the need for the ``other'' os....

stalcair · n00b Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Posts: 57

I have seen several comments that alude to Xorg claims of backwards ABI compatability. I looked on the Xorg site real quick and didn't find claim to this anywhere.

Could someone please post any official links to information relating to the compatability of API and ABI going from 6.7.x to 6.8.x? If anyone has some developer's release notes detailing the changes, that would be even better.

Based on iplayfast's response from Donnie Berkholz, this appears to be a planned and thus known issue. There may be changes that the ebuild maintainers should know about in there as well.

benu · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 18

stalcair: i am using nvidia cards for 5 years or longer now. They had problems in the beginning, especially when using nvidia agp, but worked surprisingly well in the last years. They too work well with xorg 6.8. It's a real pity, as the gf fx were shitty and i wanted to get a r9800, but sadly, the win drivers do still suck compared to the nvidia ones, and the linux drivers... well, luckily for me you would know better than i do. I read somewhere that ati was about to do something about their linux drivers, forming a new linux drivers team or something but i can't recall where i read that and if any dates were included. I am not holding my breath anyway. I will wait for the next midprice cards to hit the market, like 200-300 and buy a gf card i guess. Actually, i would have liked to buy an ati card, i wanted to switch when the 9700 came out, but with this bad linux support ati just isn't an option when nvidia runs so well

Matteo Azzali · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 1133

just one month or less..... geforce 6600 GT is comin out in agp version.
When nvidia add the support in linux-drivers and the cards come to my market,
I'll just grab this.

Calida · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:46 pm Post subject:

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

i have red some where about 4k stacks in the kernel options for 6.8 and 6.9 kernels affecting the ati drivers and xorg, anyone else seen that?
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iain

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

[quote="Freejack00"]Funny thing is 3.12 runs well with xorg 6.7. I tried ati 3.14 and my frames ratesd dropped from 7-8 thousand to 7 hundred. It's almost like they are intentionally sabotaging the drivers. Only problem is my laptop can't switch video cards or I would have done it by now. I am not going back to windows over a video driver I'll just by the competitors hardware that works well. I wish someone would do a non bias census and find out what the truth is about the numbers of users using linux. Then a number of them that are gamers. I bet you they would be surprised.[/quote]

hello,

i use an ati 9000 and the native xorg-6.7.0 drivers work for this card (yes, opengl works as well). I am wondering, however, if i am getting the most out of this card. should i use the ati-drivers? will they make my performance better?

as for quoting the above message, how do you test the 'frame rates'?

thanks, j

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

ok, a little googling told me to use 'glxgears' to find the frames per second.

i am getting about 1400 fps. is that good? i did try googling, i couldn't find the good frame rate for this card.

i should have mentioned it is an ati RADEON 9000.

j

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

I am getting 300fps with good rendering with the opengl screensavers (flux)

are you sure you get over 1000, I have a 9600?

ps I like the avatar
_________________
iain

BlackEdder · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:34 pm Post subject:

In danger of repeating things:
Glxgears isn't a good benchmark. From ati-drivers 09 - 12 my glxgears dropped a lot, but performance in ut2004 became a lot better

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

like i said, i really don't know how to test the frame rate, but here is the output of glxgears;

glxgears
4943 frames in 5.0 seconds = 988.600 FPS
6939 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1387.800 FPS
7151 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1430.200 FPS
8685 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1737.000 FPS
8836 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1767.200 FPS
8905 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1781.000 FPS
8899 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1779.800 FPS
8650 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1730.000 FPS

however, according to blackedder, this is not a good benchmark. i would certainly take blackedder's assessment of this situation over mine as i know nothing about this.

j

loki99 · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:58 pm Post subject:

at what screen resolution did you get this results? and did you leave the glxgears window at its standard size?

i use 1152x864 and get 1800fps with my ati9600SE (amd1800+,768mb) at the standard size window with no parts hiding behind other windows. this is with the ati-drivers-3.2.8-r2. under the ati-drivers-3.14.1 i only got about 1200fps. quite a difference.

now i can play ut2004-demo with every setting to the max without any prob at 1024x768!

ati still sucks but at least i can play my favourite game without having to reboot.

EDIT: needless to say that i´m running xorg-6.7.0

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 959 Location: we the north

i just type glxgears at the command line and i get the output i last posted (i assume the glxgears window is the standard size window since i haven't resized it). if i maximize the glxgears window, i go down to about 100 FPS.

i run my X at 1600x1200.

j