A Fourth Release Candidate For Mesa 7.5

[deanjo]

Intel's IGPs are more popular than Nvidia's IGPs and discrete solutions put together.

I know that, but I believe he is still talking about discreet solutions alone. Lets face it, nobody in their right mind tries to do 3d intense graphics on even the fastest IGP solution.

[MostAwesomeDude]

I know that, but I believe he is still talking about discreet solutions alone. Lets face it, nobody in their right mind tries to do 3d intense graphics on even the fastest IGP solution.

Call me crazy, but there are IGP Radeon chipsets with unified shaders, which are definitely able to compete with their discrete cousins. Also, Poulsbo and PowerVR accelerators (based on Imagination SGX) are fairly beefy for their size and power consumption.

[BlackStar]

I know that, but I believe he is still talking about discreet solutions alone. Lets face it, nobody in their right mind tries to do 3d intense graphics on even the fastest IGP solution.

Recent IGPs are more potent than people give them credit. I've used a Quadro NVS 135M (equivalent to an 8400M with shared memory) to develop a beefy VR application: displacement mapping, SSAO, shadow maps, ... Result? 30fps @800x600 (no SSAO) or 30fps @640x480 (with SSAO), using 2x FSAA. This scales to ~72fps @1600x1200 on a 4850 (4x FSAA & stereo rendering).

[deanjo]

Result? 30fps @800x600 (no SSAO) or 30fps @640x480 (with SSAO). .

640 and 800 resolutions hardly qualify as beefy.

[BlackStar]

640 and 800 resolutions hardly qualify as beefy.

Do you have *any* idea what displacement mapping and SSAO stand for?

To put things into perspective, the NVS 135 is an IGP that is advertized as 2d only and comes *without* any memory. Its results fall somewhere between a discrete 7600 and 7800 GPU and have better image quality to boot.

Make no mistake, recent IGPs from nvidia and esp. ati pack quite a bit of horsepower.

[deanjo]

Do you have *any* idea what displacement mapping and SSAO stand for?

To put things into perspective, the NVS 135 is an IGP that is advertized as 2d only and comes *without* any memory. Its results fall somewhere between a discrete 7600 and 7800 GPU and have better image quality to boot.

Make no mistake, recent IGPs from nvidia and esp. ati pack quite a bit of horsepower.

Yes I do know what displacement mapping and SSAO are. Lets put it into perspective. Your "performance equivalents" were budget discrete parts over 3 years ago and are old and slow compared to the discreet parts nowdays. If you want to run something like old doom 3 your gonna have a hard time even hitting playable framerates @ 1024.

[BlackStar]

Yes I do know what displacement mapping and SSAO are. Lets put it into perspective. Your "performance equivalents" were budget discrete parts over 3 years ago and are old and slow compared to the discreet parts nowdays. If you want to run something like old doom 3 your gonna have a hard time even hitting playable framerates @ 1024.

If you actually knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't be comparing to Doom 3, which has neither.

Obviously, IGPs will be slower than discrete GPUs or, in the best case, equivalent to low-end offerings of the current generation. This doesn't mean they are useless for 3d: 7600s and 7800s still perform acceptably in many games today. Which is important, since IGPs take a large (the largest?) slice of GPU sales.

The point here is that a dead cheap IGP can match the performance of a mid-range GPU from the previous generation, improve on its image quality *and* offer more features (video decoding, OpenCL). Obviously, you won't use an IGP if you are a gamer or otherwise care about 3d performance, but guess what? Most people aren't gamers.

Bottom line: a good IGP is the perfect match for an HTPC and the occasional game. Low power consumption? Check. Video decoding? Check. Acceptable performance? Check.

Edit: WTH, thought this was the HTPC thread! This is way off-topic for the Mesa3d discussion, apologies.

[deanjo]

If you actually knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't be comparing to Doom 3, which has neither.

I never said doom had either. I was using it as a example of how inadequate igp solutions are for anything but basic desktop use or running old apps. They simply do not have the needed horsepower for present 3d graphics standards. Lets face it nobody sane would even think of trying to run Crysis on any IGP.

Obviously, IGPs will be slower than discrete GPUs or, in the best case, equivalent to low-end offerings of the current generation. This doesn't mean they are useless for 3d: 7600s and 7800s still perform acceptably in many games today.

When the resolution is dropped drastically and eyecandy at the bare minimum.

The point here is that a dead cheap IGP can match the performance of a mid-range GPU from the previous generation, improve on its image quality *and* offer more features (video decoding, OpenCL). Obviously, you won't use an IGP if you are a gamer or otherwise care about 3d performance, but guess what? Most people aren't gamers.

Actually your IGP that you used for an example would be equivelent (a hair less because of memory) to the bottom feeder, the 8400 GPU

Bottom line: a good IGP is the perfect match for an HTPC and the occasional game. Low power consumption? Check. Video decoding? Check. Acceptable performance? Check.

The only one up to the task is a nvidia IGP with the blobs. In FOSS land there still isn't a solution that does not require brute force processing by the CPU on HD content. Bye bye power consumption.

Edit: WTH, thought this was the HTPC thread! This is way off-topic for the Mesa3d discussion, apologies.

And as which Mesa3D performance is ~ 50-60 percent of what propriatary GL stack is able do. Which BTW is what your comparing in your examples. Best 3d performance is experienced with blobs, not mesa3d.

[MostAwesomeDude]

And as which Mesa3D performance is ~ 50-60 percent of what propriatary GL stack is able do. Which BTW is what your comparing in your examples. Best 3d performance is experienced with blobs, not mesa3d.

Patches welcome.

~ C.

[Mr. Anderson]

What are the Mesa developers doing there? There is no problem if they take the time they need for developing. But announcing something similar to "it will be out in three days" and after three months there is still nothing is harming the project.