AMD HD48X0 video and overall 2D performance

[RobotMarvin]

Hello everyone.

I have already searched through the forum to answer my questions by myself, unfortunately all I found was rather inconclusive, so I hope nobody minds me opening a new thread about the following: -g-

1) Does the HD48X0 series also show bad or occasional video tearing like I have read about in reference to the "older" cards?

2) Is the 2D performance normal or as bad as with the current nvidia cards?

Background is the following: I currently own a 8600 GTS card and I am really not satisfied with it. Like most people, I am having issues with 2D performance which haven't been solved for several month and I really doubt they will be solved eventually. :-( I am not a gamer, even though I tend to play ET:QW from time to time but that's where the nvidia card really shines but that's not my main task, so... :-)

I really would appreciate any hints. If the HD48x0 also shows video tearing (which is a definite driver bug), that's an absolute no go for me because there is almost nothing more annoying when watching a DVD or TV.

Thanks in advance!

Have a nice day,
matthew.

[Moustacha]

Well, I can't vouch for ATI, but if you want good 2D/video playback, get a 6 or 7 series nvidia. 7600GTs are pretty good.

[d2kx]

I think there will not that much of a difference when compared to the HD 3000 series. 2D performance should be fine, while video tearing is a driver problem and may be fixed this month. I'll get the card by the end of the month, but as far as I know, some people in here already have them, so you'll only have to wait for the Catalyst 8.7 user tests.

@Moustacha: nVidia 6000/7000 series have bad 3D performance in comparison.

[Malikith]

2d performance right now on the current fglrx drivers is actually better than the current nVidia drivers. Well, at least the 2d performance isn't exactly the best on Geforce 8 and 9 cards right now on the nVidia drivers, on 6 and 7 series its fine. But I wouldn't buy a 7600 GT if you want bleeding edge graphical power. If you haven't bought a 4850 or 4870 yet, I would do what d2kx is doing and buy one at the end of the month after the new drivers have come out and check out the feedback.

But if you happen to just want to get something that works and doesn't have really any problems period and don't care too much about performance (you'll still get pretty good performance at resolutions like 1024x768 and 1280x1024 in ETQW), then yeah, the 7600 GT is a good option. Its dirt cheap too. But of course the 4850 would be ALOT faster in that game, so I mean, its up to you. Heres some results:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ati_radeonhd_4850&num=6 - Radeon HD 4850 ET:QW @ 1920x1200

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/index.php?k=profile&u=root-23259-18529-5219 - 7600 GT ET:QW @ 1024x768

The 7600 GT will give you a solid experience overall as far as watching videos and stuff at this current time, but considering the future, the 4850 will probably be the better card in the end when it comes to driver improvements. One last thing, the 7600 GT will probably run at about 45 degrees C idle, 4850's are known to run at around 75-80ish on idle. This is very likely due to powerplay not working in the fglrx driver at this current time. So thats another thing to keep in mind. Hope I was helpful.

[mirak63]

there is bad tearing in video for hd4850
it's unwatchable, I have my old 6600Gt in the second pci express slot

[Redeeman]

i would say, that if you purchase these amd cards now, you should be FULLY prepared for it _NEVER_ being able to work properly with fglrx.

people have been saying the "oh ill just buy now, in a few months, the drivers will be stable and all!", and i dont know of a SINGLE case where they havent gotten totally owned for being so naive.

[Michael]

i would say, that if you purchase these amd cards now, you should be FULLY prepared for it _NEVER_ being able to work properly with fglrx.

people have been saying the "oh ill just buy now, in a few months, the drivers will be stable and all!", and i dont know of a SINGLE case where they havent gotten totally owned for being so naive.

As shared last month, the Linux driver is reaching a feature parity with its Windows sibling. With due time, improved video playback will come.

[mirak63]

As shared last month, the Linux driver is reaching a feature parity with its Windows sibling. With due time, improved video playback will come.

well actually it's more "supported" video playback rather than "improved" video playback that we would need.
because movies are unwatchable :D

[d2kx]

The RadeonHD atombios_support-branch now has Radeon HD 4800 series support, too...

[mirak63]

how do you use it on ubuntu ?

[bridgman]

Very carefully... DDC/EDID support isn't there yet ;)

[Kano]

It must be really cool to switch always drivers depending on the apps/games you use ;)

[Apolyon]

i would say, that if you purchase these amd cards now, you should be FULLY prepared for it _NEVER_ being able to work properly with fglrx.

people have been saying the "oh ill just buy now, in a few months, the drivers will be stable and all!", and i dont know of a SINGLE case where they havent gotten totally owned for being so naive.


Its amazing that somebody in the open source community could be so naive as to feel that software does not improve, and that it will not ever improve. How really sad. Are you still using 98se by any chance? Dos 6.22?

I have honestly been very pleased with how quickly and well things have changed. It used to be so much more difficult getting ATI cards to do anything at all, and things just really aren't that way anymore.
If you can't acknowledge the imrpovements that have been made, then go try to sell your pessimism and NVIDIA attitude someplace else.

[mirak63]

so what, this prove there is a market on linux

[Redeeman]

Its amazing that somebody in the open source community could be so naive as to feel that software does not improve, and that it will not ever improve. How really sad. Are you still using 98se by any chance? Dos 6.22?

I have honestly been very pleased with how quickly and well things have changed. It used to be so much more difficult getting ATI cards to do anything at all, and things just really aren't that way anymore.
If you can't acknowledge the imrpovements that have been made, then go try to sell your pessimism and NVIDIA attitude someplace else.
you are getting it all wrong, software does improve, oh wait, but im not addressing ALL software in general..

Lets do a sanity check here, im addressing only fglrx, which has been said to "improve" for years..

lets review here.. hmm.. i have a radeon 9700, can fglrx run wine with it? i think not. this is a thing introduced in fglrx some (1 year? 6 months?) ago..

sure, they fix some things, but i think if you review fglrx's history it will not be encouraging..

The reality is, that it has been told over and over again that fglrx will improve, but it just hasnt happened, and those few improvements there might have come (ohh! a control center! how shiny!) is mostly irellevant, i think people would rather have application compatibility, and stuff actually working, rather than a shiny shiny amdccle showing pretty preview of aa/af settings.

im not saying fglrx wont be fixed alot more quickly now that AMD has aquired ATi, i do believe they are doing ALOT more than ati used to, however, i think people deserve to know that they shouldnt expect anything from it, if the past is any indicator atleast.

To sum it up.
Hows the wine? Hows the video? Hows the multiple X servers?

oh and btw, you might want to look up what i think about nvidia before you talk about it..

[RobotMarvin]

Thanks for all the comments and insights on this. I was afraid that the video playback issue was not solved yet and I am also a bit surprised because it's been around for quite some time now. :-(

So I'll stay with my crappy 8600 GTS card for a bit longer until I can be sure that I do not trade one massive problem (2d performance) for another (tearing video playback) with the switch to a HD48X0 card. :-(

I hope this gets fixed sooner rather than later... even though right now I have a lot more faith in the AMD devs than in the NVidia ones because for several month now all that's being said about those performance issues is: "we know, it's going to be fixed in a future driver release" and that's it. And with their point on open sourcing their specs, well... getting off-topic, sorry. :)

@bridgman: is there any time frame when this video playback issue is going to be fixed or what's actually causing it? I have seen it on an aging Dell laptop (X300 mobility chip) recently, so it's not specific to a certain hw architecture but purely a driver specific problem.

[mirak63]

The problem is that it shoudl be fixed NOW, not in some month, this realease should never even came out as well as 8.5 and 8.6.
Linux is my main OS.
Do you think they would have let something like that goes into a windows build ?
It's been 3 versions now, 8.5 8.6 8.7 and hd48x0 only support one driver.

I don't want to spread bad atmosphère or insult anyone, but devs should realise it's really a major failure, you can't increment a release with such a major video playback wreckage lol

[legume]

If the only video problems you see are refresh rate artifacts from lack of vsync for xv, then you could try using a player with gl output after setting vsync on with amdcccle.

Works for me with X1600 pro and HD3850 both AGP.

mplayer -vo gl:yuv=4:lscale=1

does gl colourspace and bicubic scale - there are other types of scale if you prefer them.

[egon2003]

Am I the only one getting hangs with my HD 4850 when watching video using xv? It seems to work 50% of the time when I boot my computer. If it works the first time I never get hangs. And the tearing is not nice either :(
2D Performance is good though.

[BlackStar]

I tested a 4850 card on Ubuntu 8.04 amd64 with fglrx 8.6 the past few days. Fglrx 8.7 will probably introduce official support for 4850, but things are looking great already! Comments:

1. I simply pulled out my X1950 Pro and installed the 4850. Didn't touch the drivers. Ubuntu loaded with the correct resolution on first try.

2. 2d performance is the same as with my X1950 (which is excellent).

3. Compiz performance is slightly improved compared to X1950 (there was a slight hesitation when maximizing Opera at 1400x1050 before - this no longer occurs).

4. Compiz alpha-blending and/or blur plugin does not work correctly (fades to black instead of alpha-blending).

5. OpenGL, GLSL, FBOs work fine (and noticeably faster than with X1950).

6. The __driCreateNewScreen_20050727 crash bug still occurs when creating two consecutive X connections. (Bug ticket: 737-35215)


Edit: Didn't test video outside Youtube, which works well enough.


Edit 2: Wine works fine with Diablo 2 (Glide->OpenGL wrapper) and Wing Commander: Prophecy/Secret Ops (DX5 and 6 respectively). Actually, D2 looks and runs significantly better on Wine than on Vista (never managed to get any Glide wrapper to work on the latter).