Anybody else using Free software DRI drivers with their ATI cards?

[drag]

Just curious to wheither or not people are using them.

Personally I have two ATI cards and I use Free software drivers for both and haven't tried the propriatory fglx drivers.

I have a Apple 12" Ibook with 1.2ghz G4 proccessor and a 9200 ATI video card. With that I use the radeon 2d and R200 DRI drivers as supplied with Debian Unstable. (Xorg 7.0 right now I believe)

My other machine with ATI card is my desktop and is a Intel Pentium-D 930 cpu with 945g motherboard. The card is a ATI x800 PCIe card (r480 I think) and I am using the r300_dri.so drivers with it. I compiled drivers from CVS for Libdrm libs, DRM kernel modules, dri X drivers, and libgl libs. All from the Mesa and DRM cvs code from a few weeks ago.

[Michael]

Phoronix has a few ATI 9200, X300, and X800 setups using (well, switching between at times) the free open-source drivers. The performance is mediocre, but the lack of TV-out support does prevent many from using the open-source drivers (as well as the lack of R5XX X1k open-source support).

[drag]

Phoronix has a few ATI 9200, X300, and X800 setups using (well, switching between at times) the free open-source drivers. The performance is mediocre, but the lack of TV-out support does prevent many from using the open-source drivers (as well as the lack of R5XX X1k open-source support).

That's cool. Ya you definately don't want to use it for best performance.

I get:
glxgears -printfps
24321 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4864.172 FPS
25609 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5121.664 FPS
26403 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5280.583 FPS
26418 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5283.542 FPS
26431 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5286.183 FPS
26349 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5269.687 FPS
26431 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5286.188 FPS

on my setup.
Pentium-D 930. Kernel 2.6.17.
lspci -vv |grep ATI
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R430 [Radeon X800 (PCIE)] (prog-if 00 [VGA])
04:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc R430 [Radeon X800 (PCIE) Secondary]

256 megs of RAM. The nice things about it also is it's fanless gigabyte version.

What do you get with your x800?

With my 9200 on my 1.2ghz Ibook I get:
glxgears -printfps
13692 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2738.357 FPS
13721 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2744.004 FPS
13703 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2740.571 FPS
13735 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2746.877 FPS
13738 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2747.547 FPS

But it definately seems like the X800 is more then twice as fast... So it's obvious that Glxgears is a horrible benchmark.

I haven't tried benchmarking Quake3 with my X800 though. Maybe I should try that. Can't right now, unfortunately.

[niniendowarrior]

The opensource DRI drivers work best on 9200 cards and below. I can only recommend opensourced drivers for newer video cards when you are not particular about any video card features and don't care about 3D support.

[drag]

The opensource DRI drivers work best on 9200 cards and below. I can only recommend opensourced drivers for newer video cards when you are not particular about any video card features and don't care about 3D support.

Or you care about security, stability, and having new features in X. For instance I've been able to run AIGLX for some time now.

[Fragadelic]

Or you care about security, stability, and having new features in X. For instance I've been able to run AIGLX for some time now.


I have a 9200 and use the stock linux drivers for it. Its nice to have working 3d out of the box on pretty much any distro.

My glxgears score is 2915fps.

I have a P4 524 3.06G CPU running on an MSI PM8M3-V H motherboard with 1G of RAM.

I can play Enemy Territory on most maps with com_maxfps at 43 and only a few maps it drops below that.

ET is pretty much the only game I play since I like to pick 1 game and get decent at it rather than switching from game to game and getting killed all the time - lol.

Here is a link http://www.free3d.org/ for a site that keeps track of open source dri performance. It is all just based on glxgears since that is available on pretty much all X enabled distros but we all know glxgears is not a real benchmark. Mine is the 3rd one down on the list(right now unless someone else posts a higher score).

I haven't really tried the ATI drivers but I might to see how they compare.

[Michael]

Here is a link http://www.free3d.org/ for a site that keeps track of open source dri performance. It is all just based on glxgears since that is available on pretty much all X enabled distros but we all know glxgears is not a real benchmark. Mine is the 3rd one down on the list(right now unless someone else posts a higher score).

I haven't really tried the ATI drivers but I might to see how they compare.

This site must not be popular or updated well. The fastest GPU with DRI drivers is a 9000PRO with only a Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor?

I can refrain from posting all my scores so you can remain in 3rd place ;)

Here is a Phoronix article (http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482) comparing the open-source Radeon drivers against the closed-source fglrx driver.

[Fragadelic]

I'd love to see more scores and so would others. The whole point of the site is to provide data on open source dri stuff.

If you don't want to post them there, please post them in this thread.

[Fragadelic]

I saw that article before as well but those seem low to me. I run ET at 1024x768 and get better fps than even the ATI fglrx drivers on that review does at 640x480.

What texture settings did you use?

[Michael]

I'd love to see more scores and so would others. The whole point of the site is to provide data on open source dri stuff.

If you don't want to post them there, please post them in this thread.

Heh, sorry about that, was sort of being sarcastic about that (due to the number of Phoronix systems include those with octal cores and faster graphics cards).

As time permits I can post some results in this thread (and if you want you can put them in that Wiki on that webpage).

[Fragadelic]

Now I'm curious as to how the ati drivers will perform on the system since I only got this card a few days ago. Paid $20 brand new so I thought I'd give it a shot. I also have a 6600GT but it plays kinda funny with the mobo/cpu combo and I have the latest bios installed. It doesn't beat the 9200 by as much as it should so there is definitely something that either the mobo or the video card don't like about the other.

I'm stuck with AGP for now and a very limited budget for a new card.

The ati cards seem to play better with the mobo and I'm not sure why.

[Fragadelic]

I went ahead and installed the fglrx drivers from ati - the 8.28.8 since those are the last to support the 9200 and they are much better than the stock open source ones.

Strangely, the performance of the 9200 with fglrx isn't that far off the 6600GT with nvidia drivers on this system so either the card is going bad or something else is wrong. I'm not worrying about it though since the 9200 works fine with ET for my needs. I might upgrade to something newer in the new year but I feel agp will be like the dinosaurs very soon - extinct - lol.

[colo]

I'm about to get a PCI-E video card supporting hw-accelerated GLX with free software only, is there any specific recommendation you can make? What about a "Radeon X850XT PE"? Is that one known to work with "r300", as the driver used to be called?

Thanks in advance for your advice! :)

[Michael]

I'm about to get a PCI-E video card supporting hw-accelerated GLX with free software only, is there any specific recommendation you can make? What about a "Radeon X850XT PE"? Is that one known to work with "r300", as the driver used to be called?

Thanks in advance for your advice! :)

The X850XT PE (R480/R481 Chipset) should be supported by the Radeon r300 driver. However, with the present status of the open-source drivers you may not see any large performance difference between the X800XT PE and other X800 models.

[Fragadelic]

Michael,

Do you know what the current best performing ATI card is in Linux?

How well does a 1600pro stack up?

I tried searching for articles but couldn't find any. If you have a link to one that I may have missed, that would be great.

[Fragadelic]

Forgot to mention - using the fglrx drivers and not the open source ones.

[Michael]

Michael,

Do you know what the current best performing ATI card is in Linux?

How well does a 1600pro stack up?

I tried searching for articles but couldn't find any. If you have a link to one that I may have missed, that would be great.

Well, the best performing ATI card using the 8.31.5 display drivers would be the X1900XTX. However, that soon will change (remember the X1950 series currently doesn't work with the fglrx drivers without falsifying the chip ID).

An article coming out less than 24 hours from now on Phoronix should address some additional performance figures, and you'll be able to see where the X1600PRO performs by the delta between the high-end part and the X1300.

[Fragadelic]

Excellent!

I'm so glad I stumbled upon Phoronix. This is to the linux world what Tom's Hardware is to the windows world.

Keep up the good work!

I usually stay behind the curve on all hardware so the 1600pro or even the 1650pro which doesn't appear to have official fglrx support either would most likely be what I end up with.

[Michael]

I usually stay behind the curve on all hardware so the 1600pro or even the 1650pro which doesn't appear to have official fglrx support either would most likely be what I end up with.

The X1650PRO should work with the fglrx display drivers. It should work with the current display drivers, otherwise I know for certain that the next display drivers will support the: Radeon X1650 Series (RV535 XT (71C1) 71C1), Radeon X1650 Series (RV530 XT2 71C6), and Radeon X1650 Series (RV535 (71C7) 71C7).

[Fragadelic]

That sounds good cause I am stuck with agp for now and the best I can get locally is 1650pro.

I would like to see what the Canadian price for the 1950agp will be but I haven't seen it anywhere.

[Fragadelic]

I didn't see the 1650 listed among the list of supported chips on teh ATI website so maybe in the next release.

[Michael]

I didn't see the 1650 listed among the list of supported chips on teh ATI website so maybe in the next release.

The list on their website isn't very complete. The real way to find out the supported cards is by having them listed in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Excellent!

I'm so glad I stumbled upon Phoronix. This is to the linux world what Tom's Hardware is to the windows world.

Keep up the good work!

I usually stay behind the curve on all hardware so the 1600pro or even the 1650pro which doesn't appear to have official fglrx support either would most likely be what I end up with.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=8127 -- It demonstrates the performance of the X1950PRO 256MB as well as comparing it to the X1300PRO 256MB, X1800XL, and X1800XT.

[Fragadelic]

Good review.

Is there any way of putting all your results in a table of sorts? That way we could compare all the cards you have reviewed in one place. I think a nice little spreadsheet with card name and the various frame rates would be awesome. A kind of one-stop shop for comparing the cards performance under linux. Just an idea.

[Michael]

Moved GPU discussion regarding article to: http://phoronix.net/forums/showthread.php?t=476

So this thread won't go off-topic.

[Fragadelic]

Michael,

Was it you that posted the X800GTO score on Free3d?

[Michael]

Michael,

Was it you that posted the X800GTO score on Free3d?

Nope, it wasn't me.

[Fragadelic]

Somebody did and it is top dog now - lol. Over 5400 FPS.

I finally got my 6600gt working in my system so the 9200 is back on the shelf for now. Still POSTs slow but working great otherwise.

[colo]

What's this Free3D-Site being talked about, and where can I find it? Google doesn't come up with anything profound...

[Michael]

http://free3d.org/