ATI fglrx 8.28.8 Discussion

[Michael]

http://www.ati.com/

ATI fglrx 8.28.8 Linux Driver

Display Switching Support for IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad Products
ATI Pairmode Support
Retaining Display Device State Between Restarts
New Product Support
Unified Linux Proprietary Linux Driver

Phoronix

Yet again ATI Technologies has managed to deliver another feature-packed driver release. Amongst the changes in this month's 8.28.8 release, are a combined i386/x86_64 installer, pairmode option, preserve monitor status across restarts, new product support, and various other changes. We at Phoronix have our usual driver examination and review to share today.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=7188

[Tsiolkovsky]

And the computer freeze on logout bug is still here :( When is ATI going to fix this?! It has been around for months and still no fix. I'm very disappointed.

[kramey]

First of all, I know that glxgears is not a benchmark. But I have installed the new drivers - 8.28.8 - and rebuilt my kernel according to the instructions. glxinfo and the ATI control both show that "Direct Rendering" is enabled. Despite that, glxgears shows a frame rate of only 250 FPS. It is my understanding that it should give a rate of at least an order of magnitude higher.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

ken

[Michael]

Using a X1400, the 8.28.8 drivers (as with past drivers) is also about 250 FPS. Had you noticed more frames from glxgears in the past? Had you noticed any performance change with fgl_glxgears?

$ glxgears
1218 frames in 5.0 seconds = 243.506 FPS
1250 frames in 5.0 seconds = 249.998 FPS
1250 frames in 5.0 seconds = 249.998 FPS
1252 frames in 5.0 seconds = 250.398 FPS

[kramey]

Before the upgrade, the rate was about 200 FPS. fgl_glxgears gives about 500 FPS:

fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
2283 frames in 5.0 seconds = 456.600 FPS
2441 frames in 5.0 seconds = 488.200 FPS
2453 frames in 5.0 seconds = 490.600 FPS

It's worth noting that the animation is extremely fast and smooth. Before the upgrade, there were pauses and it was "jerky". So, it's obvious that it has caused some improvement, but it seems slow compared to other comments I've seen about glxgears FPS rates.

Thanks.

ken

[rinthos]

Glxgears (yes it's not a benchmark, got it) scores prior to the 8.27.10 driver:

approx 1200fps

Glxgears for 8.27.10 and 8.28.8: 242


Fgl_glxgears prior to 8.27.10:

approx 350

Fgl_glxgears for 8.27.10 and 8.28.8: 268


System: Hp/Compaq nc6000 w/ Radeon Mobility 9600 64MB dedicated.

Pretty much both have gone down.
Linux Game Native Versions: Ut2k4 scores have gone up slightly, Doom3 has gone down slightly.

The above is using Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Hope this helps.
---

[kramey]

That's interesting. I was reading notes by other people, quoting frame rates between 1000 and 3000. So, when I ran it on mine and saw that it was around 500 - at the best - I thought I must have a serious problem. But, it sounds like my numbers are not unreasonable.

Thanks.

ken

[hkBst]

I'm getting:
3454 frames in 5.1 seconds = 679.893 FPS
3400 frames in 5.1 seconds = 672.152 FPS
3480 frames in 5.1 seconds = 683.893 FPS
and that is with the xorg radeon driver with software openGL (mesa)

It seems the new driver works for xpress 1x00. No mention of xpress 200 though. Another one of those long unfixed bugs :(

[disturbedsaint]

Michael, do you have any kind of information concerning the expected timeframe/release for a driver that supports the GL_EXT_texture_from_pixmap extension?

[Michael]

I have yet to receive any official word regarding that OpenGL extension from ATI. I would personally hope the support is delivered by/with the 8.30 fglrx drivers.

[JosiahBradley]

I wish I would have seen that line saying the new drivers dont support 2.6.18 kernels before running the installer. I'm now without video drivers. Any one know how to manual install the new drivers with the patches on gentoo. I went thru the packages and can't really find a generic way to make them or install them. I can't downgrade kernel versions either because so far only the 2.6.18 kernel supports my Nvidia on-board ethernet. And just to throw in some glxgears numbers I was getting around 10k and now it dosent run. Oh and hello first post : )

[Michael]

Welcome to the Phoronix Forums.

If you extract the driver installer (--extract), the Linux 2.6.18 kernel patch is in ~/fglrx-install/packages/Fedora/ (or SuSE or the other patched distros). The patch is called kernel-2.6.18.diff. This file patches firegl_public.c.

Unfortunately, I haven't tried Gentoo in quite a while with ATI, so I am not sure off hand on the best approach for you with installing the fglrx drivers (other than possibly speaking with the ati-driver emerge maintainer about having the patch included).

[JosiahBradley]

I've been hacking away at the make.sh file found in common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/ and may have it working at some point but I don't know very much if anything about shell scripts and am doing what I can with the comments. I patched that one file for kernel 2.6.18 and now I'm stuck at the part were it trys to make a symlink to the correct gcc library or something. anyone with gentoo( or trying it manually) and 2.6.18 want to help be my guest : )

For anyone interested heres the exact line im on: Error: could not resolve matching ip-library

[Michael]

Josiah,

Any luck with Gentoo and the ATI 2.6.18 patch?

[loser520]

That's interesting. I was reading notes by other people, quoting frame rates between 1000 and 3000. So, when I ran it on mine and saw that it was around 500 - at the best - I thought I must have a serious problem. But, it sounds like my numbers are not unreasonable.

Thanks.

ken

I just installed 8.28.8, and on my X800XL I now get 250fps on glxgears.

With the older, 8.26.18 I got ~ 7500 fps. Playing games such as nexuiz, I dont notice a performance degrade of 1 order of magnitude as shown in the glxgears frame rates.

Why is the glxgears frame rate so low now? Should I be worried?

Oh, and first post, so be gentle :).

[Michael]

glxgears is by no means a reliable or accurate benchmark, so you shouldn't be too worried... Have you noticed any differences in real world applications/games? If you do, create a new thread, as no major performance gains/losses have been spotted.

Welcome to the forums.

[disturbedsaint]

I have yet to receive any official word regarding that OpenGL extension from ATI. I would personally hope the support is delivered by/with the 8.30 fglrx drivers.

Didn't have the time to reply till now.
Thanks for your answer, I guess we'll all just have to wait.

The one who implements this the first will be the company whom I will buy a graphics card from (though I prefer ATI over Nvidia, mainly for Nvidia's way of "killing" 3dfx:))