Is much more patience needed for a 3D driver..

[junglist]

Is much more patience needed for a 3D opensource driver? I have tried all 3 i know of to get my new ATI Radeon 4870 to work with either opensuse or sidux, both with the new .26 kernel.
I can't even get 2D to work with Radeon HD , Radeon and FLGRX.
Will the Radeon HD driver be good enough to run 3D soon? Anyone? I think i bought the card to early...

[bridgman]

Work is being done on 3d open source support for the HD3xxx and HD4xxx cards now. Not working yet though.

The 3D stack (Mesa, DRM) is the same for radeon and radeonhd BTW.

When you say "you can't even get 2d to work" can you be more specific ?

[lucky_]

Work is being done on 3d open source support for the HD3xxx and HD4xxx cards now. Not working yet though.

Talking about support for 3D, will there be any thing for the 2xxx series ?
Is there any way to contribute? I have a 2400 XT at work and don't mind spending extra hours working on improving the AMD experience.

[bridgman]

Sorry, I translated "6xx/7xx" into "HD3xxx and HD4xxx" and forgot about the HD2xxx parts. We are working with a mix of 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx cards today and expect support to be available for all three at more or less the same time.

[lucky_]

Sorry, I translated "6xx/7xx" into "HD3xxx and HD4xxx" and forgot about the HD2xxx parts. We are working with a mix of 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx cards today and expect support to be available for all three at more or less the same time.

Ok and I presume that there is no way to contribute to its development since the doc is not yet available (nda stuff), right ?

[bridgman]

No, but what I'm hoping is that we will have the docs out about the same time we get the first triangles going through the driver stack, and that's a pretty good time for other developers to pile on. One of our key hardware contacts is back from vacation next week and we picked up some more internal debugging tools so I remain hopeful

The shader instruction set is out already, which is enough to make most developer's heads explode, as are tools (GPU Shader Analyzer*) to let you run high level shader source through the compiler and look at the resulting shader instructions.

* Windows only, sorry

[junglist]

@bridgman, thanks for the reply. I keep getting dumped into a console without x running everytime i attempt to install radeonhd or fglrx. Admitedly i am not experieced with the command line yet and don't even know how to pull up the error files. I think i will just wait for the next kernel to have a better opensource driver in it. Am i right that radeonhd will be in .27? Also does the X-server update i read about also come with the next kernel and bring ATI improvements?

[val-gaav]

I think i will just wait for the next kernel to have a better opensource driver in it. Am i right that radeonhd will be in .27? Also does the X-server update i read about also come with the next kernel and bring ATI improvements?

AFAIK the driver is not in kernel, at least not the 2d part. The only thing related to kernel right now is 3d thing called DRM.

Drivers in X right now work in this way:

- The general driver be it radeon or radeonhd that gives you basic 2d support.

For 3d you need:
- Mesa - OpenGL implemenatation in X
- DRM - you need the kernel module that supports your card, and the same with libdrm package.

Since your card has no open source 3d support yet you shouldn't worry about your kernel version. What you need to get the basic 2d support is just the driver newest version. For 4870 it's most likely a fresh git driver version (since those cards are quite new on the market). If you post what distro you are using people may even direct you to packages for it so there may be no need to compile things yourself.

[junglist]

Thanks, you have cleared up many things. I will search for .deb packages for sidux then. Maybe the next version of sidux will have the latest radeonhd driver available through its update scripts.