Radeon HD 6950/6970|Open source driver status?

[epsilon72]

I am in the market for a new (or more powerful used) video card. I have always used nvidia but am considering going with a Radeon to use with the open source drivers. I know that radeonsi isn't really ready for prime-time yet so the 7000/Rx 200 series is out, at least for now.

I was wondering though , for any of you who have an HD 6950 or HD 6970, how well does it perform with xf86-video-ati? I would be running gnome 3 and playing games like TF2 on Steam with it.

I'm aware that the 6950/6970 is not a new card by any means, but it is more powerful and slightly newer than my GTX 460. If I got one, I'd get a used one for cheap and wait until the radeonsi driver can play source games well.

[Demonking]

Hello epsilon,

i have a Radeon 6870, it's not the same like your 69xx but depend on the wiki entry https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon the
xf86-video-ati is working with your card.

I also use the xf86-video-ati without any problems and never had any crashes or graphic errors.

Since Kernel 3.11 also the power managment has increased.

On the Other Hand, i'm not playing games, but emulate sometimes a lot of vm's at the sametime.


Greetz

Demonking
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[epsilon72]

Thanks for your input, Demonking.

Phoronix says that the 6000 series works with source games, at least. I will have to do more research.