945-generation and OpenGL 2.0

[[Knuckles]]

I have an acer aspire one (netbook) with a 945GME, and glxinfo only lists support for OpenGL 1.4 .
I wanted to run an app that needs OpenGL 2.0, but I'm not really sure if it is possible on 945-generation intel graphics, even with all the latest drivers and other stuff from git.

Does anyone know if its possible to have OpenGL 2.0 on one of these?
> glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.2

[curaga]

No hardware support for better. First Intel gpu to support GL 2.0 or better is the X3100.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_900

[[Knuckles]]

No hardware support for better. First Intel gpu to support GL 2.0 or better is the X3100.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_900

Damn... Thanks you're right I was assuming this was only a software 'issue' where it clearly is more of a hardware limitation.

[szczerb]

Unless I don't understand something you can use whatever your version of mesa can do and it will do whatever it can on the GPU and the rest on the CPU. You're using a really old version of mesa, so I'd try upgrading X, mesa and kernel and see what happens.

[[Knuckles]]

Unless I don't understand something you can use whatever your version of mesa can do and it will do whatever it can on the GPU and the rest on the CPU. You're using a really old version of mesa, so I'd try upgrading X, mesa and kernel and see what happens.

I thought it might would work like that too, but the game I was trying checks the opengl version, and bails out if its not 2.0 or more (might need shader support or something). Maybe the legendary gallium will one day be able to fix this :)

[szczerb]

The really old version of mesa, that you're still using, reported 1.4 for GM965 (AKA X3100) that supports 2.0 (and now with current mesa glxinfo says:
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 965GM GEM 20090114
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.5-rc4
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

So you really should update.

[[Knuckles]]

The really old version of mesa, that you're still using, reported 1.4 for GM965 (AKA X3100) that supports 2.0 (and now with current mesa glxinfo says:
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 965GM GEM 20090114
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.5-rc4
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

So you really should update.

It's not a X3100, its a 945GME (aka GMA 950).

I'm going to try with the xorg-edgers livecd to test a recent kernel + everything else (also wanted to benchmark it a bit to see the difference between my old version and a bleeding edge one), but I don't think the newer version will report a higher opengl version for my hardware.

[szczerb]

Yes, I do know that you've got the 945. I'm just saying that you have a really old mesa and it wouldn't hurt you to check.

[[Knuckles]]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ glxinfo | grep -i Opengl
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME GEM 20090114 x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 7.6-devel
OpenGL extensions:

Unfortunately, no luck here :/

[Ant P.]

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxinfo
I have no idea what effect that'll have on actual apps (I'd guess they'll be unusable...) but it gets me a reported OpenGL version of 2.1 at least.

[[Knuckles]]

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxinfo
I have no idea what effect that'll have on actual apps (I'd guess they'll be unusable...) but it gets me a reported OpenGL version of 2.1 at least.

Yeah it does get me further on running the app I wanted, but now It complains of no support for GLSL 1.20. I'm guessing that there's no way currently to do the shaders in software.

But it would be interesting if we could get accelerated OpenGL with fallbacks for software only when needed -- maybe it could solve the problem for apps that just need a little feature from a newer release. Does anyone know if this is possible?

[crumja]

Yes, Gallium 3D will allow software fallbacks for the extensions that are not accelerated on hardware. A stable version of this is still at least a year out though. Note that the slowdown will be an order of magnitude and may not be worth the time. Just get better hardware.

[[Knuckles]]

Yes, Gallium 3D will allow software fallbacks for the extensions that are not accelerated on hardware. A stable version of this is still at least a year out though. Note that the slowdown will be an order of magnitude and may not be worth the time. Just get better hardware.

Yeah I know, it was just curiosity, I wasn't expecting any miracles from this cheap netbook :)

But glad to hear that gallium seems to have it right.

[Chad Page]

(disclaimer: i haven't played with Gallium yet)

I would assume that Gallium will compile simple shaders for i945 (similar to what r300/400 can do), and of course vertex shaders will always fall back to software. Shader Model 3-ish things like branching won't work.

Also the software rasterizer will likely be quite a bit faster through LLVM JIT-ing SSE3 code for ya, but it'll probably need a stronger CPU to be reasonable. I'd say a Core 2 Quad might be vaguely decent for simpler things.

[squirrl]

The GMA 950 chipsets (i945GM i945GME) does support Shader 2.0. Mesa3D hasn't implemented the features.

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm

High Performance 3D
Up to 4 pixels per clock rendering
Microsoft* DirectX* 9 Hardware Acceleration Features:
Pixel Shader 2.0
Volumetric Textures
Shadow Maps
Slope Scale Depth Bias
Two-Sided Stencil
Microsoft* DirectX* 9 Vertex Shader 3.0 and Transform and Lighting supported in software through highly optimized Processor Specific Geometry Pipeline (PSGP)
Texture Decompression for DirectX* and OpenGL*
OpenGL* 1.4 support plus ARB_vertex_buffer and EXT_shadow_funcs extensions and TexEnv shader caching


Seems like it's more about the numbers than the games. What's listed above is enought to develop a fantastic game. But not in linux, not yet. In another 8 months maybe the intel guys will have Xorg ship shape. Linux is years ahead of Windows in customization but at least 10 years behind in configuration. We just got device hot pluging last year and this year a proper Intel driver with Kernel Mode Setting.:D

[.CME.]

well, with latest mesa git you can get OpenGL 2.0 an GLSL on i945:
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME GEM 20090712 2009Q2 RC3 x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.0 Mesa 7.8-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

you have to use driconf and enable "limited ARB_fragment_shader" and "enable stub ARB_occlusion_query"

btw, shadermodel 2.0 works fine over ARB_fragment_program without GLSL ;)

[[Knuckles]]

well, with latest mesa git you can get OpenGL 2.0 an GLSL on i945:
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME GEM 20090712 2009Q2 RC3 x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.0 Mesa 7.8-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

you have to use driconf and enable "limited ARB_fragment_shader" and "enable stub ARB_occlusion_query"

btw, shadermodel 2.0 works fine over ARB_fragment_program without GLSL ;)

Very interesting! I must try that out soon, thanks for the tip.