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AMD Polaris Doesn't Support ETC2 Texture Compression

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  • AMD Polaris Doesn't Support ETC2 Texture Compression

    Phoronix: AMD Polaris Doesn't Support ETC2 Texture Compression

    Well this is surprising and unfortunate: it appears that AMD's next-generation Polaris GPUs don't support the royalty-free ETC2 texture compression...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Isn't S3TC patent expiring next year already?

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    • #3
      Why is it unfortunate? As long as they support ASTC everything is fine.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by stikonas View Post
        Isn't S3TC patent expiring next year already?
        That's what I was thinking. By the time Polaris is usable for everyday use in Linux, this shouldn't matter. It wouldn't surprise me if there is already some open source S3TC project already made but just isn't released yet due to legal restrictions.

        EDIT:
        Ok, maybe there's a little bit more of a wait. The patent expires on Oct 2nd, 2017.
        Last edited by schmidtbag; 13 April 2016, 11:57 AM.

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        • #5
          Who cares about ETC support on desktop especially now with ASTC.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
            It wouldn't surprise me if there is already some open source S3TC project already made but just isn't released yet due to legal restrictions.
            there is. it is released and used. https://people.freedesktop.org/~cbrill/libtxc_dxtn/

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            • #7
              The S3TC patents are expiring, yes, but I believe ETC2 is actually better than S3TC, so it's still worth using.

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              • #8
                ASTC is superior, doesn't matter.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by peppercats View Post
                  ASTC is superior, doesn't matter.
                  Yeah try conveying that to every single game developer that currently has games relying on ETC2... Lack of support is lack of support, it doesn't matter if ASTC is better, that's no reason not to support ETC2.

                  I mean... Might as well say: "Hey, Nvidia cards are a little better than AMD cards today in general. Let's only support Nvidia cards then!" (see what I mean?)

                  You can tell everyone how much superior PNG is to JPG, not everyone will use it, many people won't even care or won't even understand why they should prefer one over the other.



                  If people cared about what's best, PNG would be in the most widespread use today. Why isn't it? Because people used JPEG. Why? Just because... (It was the default format of some programs and camera devices)...

                  Hell, it makes me fucking sick that most digital cameras default to JPEG format and this cannot be configured to PNG output instead. PNG is basically better for everything and should always be used unless filesize is critical (JPEG has stronger compression than PNG resulting in slightly smaller filesizes, that's everything, that's the only reason to use JPEG. And sure, there are many cases where this matters (optimizing bandwidth use on websites for example) but usually it's not worth it)

                  Since PNG is better should we just stop supporting JPEG? Since PNG and JPEG are better should we just stop supporting GIF? nah. We should support it all and let users decide for themselves, even if they clearly can't make good decisions, it won't make anyone happy if they can't even make a decision at all.
                  Last edited by rabcor; 13 April 2016, 12:27 PM.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by rabcor View Post
                    If people cared about what's best, PNG would be in the most widespread use today. Why isn't it? Because people used JPEG. Why? Just because... (It was the default format of some programs and camera devices)...

                    Hell, it makes me fucking sick that most digital cameras default to JPEG format and this cannot be configured to PNG output instead. PNG is basically better for everything and should always be used unless filesize is critical (JPEG has stronger compression than PNG resulting in slightly smaller filesizes, that's everything, that's the only reason to use JPEG. And sure, there are many cases where this matters (optimizing bandwidth use on websites for example) but usually it's not worth it)
                    Kind of a contradictory statement. PNG isn't perfect. To my knowledge, you can't partially load PNGs on a web page like you can with JPEG. You can't do a whole lot about the compression level for PNG, which means it can take up more disk space. JPEG can compress much faster (and therefore use less CPU) which is important for cameras.

                    Not everyone has high-speed internet. Not everyone has a camera with a multi-core CPU. Not everyone has terabytes of disk space for their photo collection. JPEG is slowly becoming less relevant as time goes on, but it is still relevant.

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