What card to buy?

[neuron]

I currently have a 8800GTS, and http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=114858 + unreliable suspend is driving me nuts, I dont use 3d at all, and I haven't in a while, so I figure a 20-30$ ATI card might work well for me.

What I need is good 2d performance, compiz, suspend 2 ram and tvout. And I'd much prefer using the GPL'd driver.

Is there a cheap ATI card I can pickup and have work "out of the box"? I've looked around a bit, and it seems radeonhd doesn't have tvout? So I'm stuck with the older cards radeon supports, which arnt neccesarly that easy to find. Note that my system is fairly new, so agp is out of the picture.

I have an old 9200 PCI card I tried, but it seems to be too slow to push compiz at 1920x1200 resolution. Dragging a firefox window around pushes up X cpu usage considerably, and I can feel the lag.

[oibaf]

I have an old 9200 PCI card I tried, but it seems to be too slow to push compiz at 1920x1200 resolution. Dragging a firefox window around pushes up X cpu usage considerably, and I can feel the lag.

What linux distribution, driver and driver version are you using with the ATI 9200?

[neuron]

I'm using xorg 1.3 and driver 6.8.191 currently, I've also tried xorg 1.4 without change. Also gone through a lot of different combinations of AccelMethod/ColorTiling/EnablePageFlip/XAANoOffscreenPixmaps and MigrationHeuristic. This is on gentoo 64bit, kernel 2.6.25-r4, cflags -march=native -O2 -pipe so nothing especially interesting there ;)

Goggling performance issues on this card I only found : http://osdir.com/ml/video.dri.user/2004-09/msg00069.html

[oblivious_maximus]

Probably an X1600/X1650 (r500) card is your best bet right now as far as you having a chance at finding a new one for sale somewhere and being able to use an open driver to get the features you want, today. IIRC, 3d and TVout support is still initial, but it's functional and will only get better as time passes.

edit: just read that Xv support isn't quite there yet (it's in an X.org dev's tree but not the driver proper as yet). Like I said, initial support that will improve (though probably at a decent pace if development up to this point is any indication). edit2: I stand corrected. and I'm always sad when I try to use the strikeout tag and find it's not supported.

[bridgman]

FYI Xv for 5xx is fully supported in the -ati driver today, it's just the port of that code to -radeonhd which has not yet gone into master.

[neuron]

Very nice, I was looking at an outdated radeon manpage for my information on what was supported by that driver.

I can get a HD2400PRO(RV610) from a local shop, or post order either a RX1550/RX1650Pro/HD3450 for very little cash.

Am I likely to be able to plug those in and have tvout/xv/compiz/suspend2ram/2d right away? Everything worked perfectly on the 9200PCI card I had laying around, just way too slowly to be usable with compiz. Also are there any differences between the models I listed I should be aware of? The most resource intensive the card would be required to do is some fancy compiz effects.

[bridgman]

The 1650 Pro will probably give you the best combination of performance and immediate open source driver support today. It should have a 128-bit memory bus (vs 64-bit for the HD2400 and 3450) and a bit more shader power than the others.

[Redeeman]

So... does DRI/DRM 3d really work with these cards?

Whats important to me is:

1: it MUST have dual-link dvi or displayport (i need 2560x1600)
1.1: is stable is stable is stable, and NOT only between ferengi
2: it MUST not fuck up weirdly like nvidia, and display completely unreadable garbled output untill a driver for X is started.
3: 2d must work, aka not as slow as nvidia 8xxx taking 5-10 seconds to redraw a firefox.
4: 3d - speed isnt so important, as support.

as speedwise, i can say that intels GMA X3100 is enough, so i dont really need much..

does AMD/ATi have any offerings available which can do this?

[bridgman]

So... does DRI/DRM 3d really work with these cards?

Whats important to me is:

1: it MUST have dual-link dvi or displayport (i need 2560x1600)
1.1: is stable is stable is stable, and NOT only between ferengi
2: it MUST not fuck up weirdly like nvidia, and display completely unreadable garbled output untill a driver for X is started.
3: 2d must work, aka not as slow as nvidia 8xxx taking 5-10 seconds to redraw a firefox.
4: 3d - speed isnt so important, as support.

as speedwise, i can say that intels GMA X3100 is enough, so i dont really need much..

does AMD/ATi have any offerings available which can do this?

With a 5xx GPU the ddx/mesa/drm stack works surprisingly well. I was playing with an R580 last week and it was quite solid other than the usual compiz vs 3d flickering.

I know the 5xx parts support at least one dual-link DVI, haven't checked to see if they all support simultaneous dual-link on both DVI connectors.

Did you really mean ferengi ? The funny-looking little guys from DS9 ?

I haven't heard about the garbled output between boot and driver startup so can't say for sure... other than not having heard about it ;)

2D speed seems to be getting pretty good these days with a modern X server and EXA acceleration. The 5xx family has the traditional 2D engine which may still help with 2D performance in the short term, although most 2D acceleration uses the 3D engine these days anyways.

[oblivious_maximus]

I do believe one of the "Rules Of Aquisition" is "a deal is a deal is a deal... but only between Ferengi"

LOLs

[bridgman]

Ahh, now I understand. Thanks !!

I never got into DS9 for some reason. Always seemed like it needed more explosions.

[oblivious_maximus]

You have to bide your time through the earlier seasons, but if you do you are rewarded with all-out interstellar warfare.

It definitely a different show, more like a Star Trek soap opera, but it's good stuff imho.

[neuron]

Just googled a bit, and found this in a recent irc log:
agd5f: TobiasTheCommie: yeah the tv-out stuff is disabled on r5xx and newer chips

along with this link:
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati.git;a=blobdiff;h=e71b02e875c2e499a4d6f7b6e1905 c3049ffece4;hp=5cc21d5262172b6088f4e7f8bebbf365ade c104d;hb=effa245914823371e052cd9aa1143a02350891e7; f=src/radeon_atombios.c

Which disables a bit of code, which worked unreliably with ntsc, and not at all with pal. TV-Out is really one of my needs, I use that from this computer every day :/

[Redeeman]

yes, i did mean ferengi from DS9 :)

the garbled output is an nvidia feature, i was using this occasion to pick un them :)

I only need 1 duallink dvi connection, to drive 1 30" display, as for other connections, it doesent matter to me at all..

i dont care at all about compiz either..


So seriously, does this mean R500 stuff is now stable and has very featured 3d support?

[agd5f]

r5xx chips can support two duallink DVI ports. Just make sure you get a board that supports this.

[Redeeman]

what software versions are required for having such a setup? also, is there a card/chip version or anything, that you would recommend, to give me the greatest chance of success?

[agd5f]

what software versions are required for having such a setup? also, is there a card/chip version or anything, that you would recommend, to give me the greatest chance of success?

radeon or radeonhd should support duallink fine. Lots pcie x16 x1650 pro cards (powercolor, sapphire, etc.) support two duallink DVI ports.

[bridgman]

Right now you really need the latest x server, radeon driver (-ati), drm and mesa from git to get full 3D and textured video support. The same code should fetch up in radeonhd pretty soon.

[Dandel]

I would personally look in to buying the latest ( HD4000 series) or slightly older(HD3000 series.) generation of video cards, considering that those are the one's that need the most testing.

[bridgman]

No question, if you don't mind a short wait for acceleration support and/or want to help the drivers move forward going with a newer card would be preferable, and you would get more longevity as a bonus. The main benefit of a card like the 1650 Pro (or my favorite, the 1950 Pro) is that with a bit of downloading, building and cursing you can have pretty complete open driver support today.

[b15hop]

I just gave my x1600 to a friend. I wish I bought the x1950 pro though.

[neuron]

Anyone know how much work is being done on the tvout which was recently disabled on 5xx > chips?

I Really need that feature, I'm considering to put the 9200 PCI card I got laying around in as a tvout only card, but my computer is on a ups, and I'd really like to keep the power usage to a mere minimum.

[oibaf]

Anyone know how much work is being done on the tvout which was recently disabled on 5xx > chips?

I Really need that feature, I'm considering to put the 9200 PCI card I got laying around in as a tvout only card, but my computer is on a ups, and I'd really like to keep the power usage to a mere minimum.

http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati.git;a=commitdiff;h=dd18caa4b2efc430eaae0c4362b 65641f9bef440

See here for the onward progress:
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati.git;a=summary

[neuron]

Very nice, I'll order one then :), I remember buying a 9700 ATI card ages ago, because ATI had linux drivers and promised better drivers soon, then scrapping it a few weeks later as their support was far too bad. Now I'm going from an nvidia card to ATI/AMD, with fully gpl drivers. Feels good :).

Thanks a lot for the help people :)

[adamk]

Very nice, I'll order one then :), I remember buying a 9700 ATI card ages ago, because ATI had linux drivers and promised better drivers soon, then scrapping it a few weeks later as their support was far too bad. Now I'm going from an nvidia card to ATI/AMD, with fully gpl drivers. Feels good :).

Thanks a lot for the help people :)

Actually, all official Xorg drivers are MIT licensed, not GPL licensed. This would also appear to be the case with the Mesa drivers. Only the kernel DRM driver (a critical, but small part) would probably be under the GPL, and only for linux (ie. the FreeBSD kernel module is under the BSD (MIT?) license).

Adam

[Redeeman]

i already have a 3450.. but well.. what i really need is to just have working stuff, therefore whatever will work with open drivers, is pretty attractive to me

[neuron]

Actually, all official Xorg drivers are MIT licensed, not GPL licensed. This would also appear to be the case with the Mesa drivers. Only the kernel DRM driver (a critical, but small part) would probably be under the GPL, and only for linux (ie. the FreeBSD kernel module is under the BSD (MIT?) license).

Adam

I'll rephrase that to an open license then ;), in either case it works for me :)

[Redeeman]

okay so i found some candidate cards:

#manufacturer #type #ram #price dkk
sapphire x1550 256 200
club3d x1550pro 256 240
sapphire X1550 512 275
sapphire x1650 512 325
palit X1600pro ? 275
asus X1550 512 340
sapphire X1650pro 512 350
sapphire X1650pro 512 450
sapphire X1600pro 256 600
asus X1300pro 256 600
sapphire X1950pro 256 800
sapphire X1950pro 512 1375
HIS X1950XTX 512 2450

1USD = 4.79DKK
1EUR = 7.45DKK

i will be running in 2560x1600..

what i wish most for, is as said previously, STABILITY, and support, so best as possible opengl support.

(will it do opengl 2.0?)

recommendations? :D

[bridgman]

The X1650 512M boards definitely look like the best value, starting at 325 for the sapphire -- only concern is that I have never seen one running with a really big monitor so am not 100% sure they would perform well enough. I *think* they would be ok but don't *know*. Anyone ?

The Palit X1600 should perform about the same, but it's a bit older and I'm a bit less sure about it.

The X1950 Pro 256M would definitely have the performance but I hate spending that much on an older card, since we'll have 6xx 3D going soon and 7xx should be easier than 6xx.

I would probably go with the X1650.

[agd5f]

The X1650 512M boards definitely look like the best value, starting at 325 for the sapphire -- only concern is that I have never seen one running with a really big monitor so am not 100% sure they would perform well enough. I *think* they would be ok but don't *know*. Anyone ?


I think Dave and ajax have used run dual-link monitors with r5xx cards (compiz and all). I have a sapphire x1650 and it claims to support dual dual-link monitors, I just don't actually have one to test. I have however tested with large virtual sizes with no problems.

[bridgman]

Not sure what card this was, but it's still a cool picture ;)

http://ajaxxx.livejournal.com/56886.html

IIRC the monitors were in the Boston area, the developers were primarily far far away, and the webcam let them see if things were getting better or worse.

[Michael]

I've ran a dual-link monitor with R500 and xf86-video-ati before.

[Redeeman]

I just ebayed an X1950 pro.

I tried buying the X1650 from two different shops, both cancelled my order and said they couldnt get the card anyway lol, so i turned to ebay, and taddaa!

hopefully it will arrive soon :D

[duby229]

I just gave my x1600 to a friend. I wish I bought the x1950 pro though.

I just got one of these cards as a hand me down, and it works great. Very pleased with it.

[curaga]

Anyone know how well Matrox Parhelia series performs?
I'm thinking of a new card too, but if the OSS driver for Parhelia isn't that good, G550 pci-e it is..

[agd5f]

Anyone know how well Matrox Parhelia series performs?
I'm thinking of a new card too, but if the OSS driver for Parhelia isn't that good, G550 pci-e it is..

Matrox doesn't have open source drivers for parhelia. It's closed source only.