Open-Source ATI Evergreen Support Arrives

[Louise]

Very impressive!

It is amazing how much work there is being put into these drivers.

[monraaf]

Thanks for the power figures. Sounds interesting. Yes, idle power consumption is something that all chips from R600 and above needs to be worked on.

Apparently it's tricky stuff... I was playing around a little with the engine and memory clocks, setting them to the same values fglrx uses when idle, managed to shave off another 3 watts, then all of a sudden the display went into DPMS off mode and had to reisub.

I think there's no code yet to lower GPU voltage in the oss driver. Once/if that gets in I think we should come pretty close to fglrx idle power consumption.

[krionius]

I think there's no code yet to lower GPU voltage in the oss driver. Once/if that gets in I think we should come pretty close to fglrx idle power consumption.

Which is vital for both the desktop/laptop cards - to save energy and the earth from pollution.

In notebooks its a must.

[Adarion]

all of a sudden the display went into DPMS off mode and had to reisub.

Ouch. Good to have that magic sysrq in kernel. Humm. Strange that it switches like off when you just use the same values. But then fglrx probably knows more where to do what and how you can save more without having the HW go crazy. But I hope that this is still to come for the free driver(s).
Playing with voltages might be a difficult game. Especially on laptops you can only hope that the system builder didn't really change anything from the stock chips. Afair they have some freedoms here and there wich might turn out surprisingly during oss development and will need quirks.