ATI Radeon R300 and up -> DRI support, xinerama

[bluescreen303]

Hi,

I'm looking for a new GFX card to buy but before I do I want to know some stuff for sure.
Can't realy find answers on other pages so perhaps some fellow gentoo user can tell me.

I currently have an NVIDIA 6200 and a dual-monitor setup (2x 1280x1024 = 2560x1024)
It works great but I'm getting annoyed by nvidia's binary drivers. Sure they work great but newer releases wait longer and longer. I was waiting for the GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap extension to be added. At first it would appear in the next release of their driver, but it has been delayed for at least a few months.

ATI's binary drivers suck too, it seems, but from what I've been reading it seems the open source (DRI/DRM) drivers for r300 and up are finally getting somewhere.

But since the text about MergedFB still tells me it can't do 3D > 2048x2048 it seems useless to me since I want to run XGL and AIGLX. Is this limit still the case? even with newer cards? I know there is some way to disable the limit and make X work, but when GL applications take more than 2048 (which would be the case on full-screen 2560x1024) it would just give an empty window.
Are there other workarounds? perhaps using plain xinerama? or won't this work either since the 3D window spans multiple heads?

In case it is possible to use, how about performance with the open source driver?
I'm not a hardcore gamer, but atm CIV4 runs great in 1280 on cedega. will this degrade?

Thanks for any answers.

[m_spidey]

From the personal hell I have just emerged from getting a ATI X300 PCIE on XGL without locking up. Please stay away from ATI at least for a while. Its just not mature enough.

I'm begging you.
_________________
Ronald McDonald -> The necessary Evil.