The First DRM Pull Request For Linux 2.6.35 Kernel

[Svartalf]

I'm having a tough time reconciling the conflicting views of "AMD is evil for dropping support for older GPUs from fglrx" and "AMD is misguided for having its devs work on older chips in the open source drivers", though...

Heh... It'd be no different with the Windows or MacOS world, I'm afraid...

As for my take on things, I don't think you're evil at all for dropping the older GPUs off the list. Can't support the stuff forever and your profits for them have long since past unless someone's using them like they used RagePRO's in server type hardware or an embedded design with a process shrink applied to the design. If there's some nuance to driving the things right (i.e. the AGP to PCI-E bridge that drove some of the last of the AGP specific cards with the more modern chips...) it'd be nice to get help on THAT particular piece from AMD.

But past that, I'm thinking we're doing decently on supporting the older stuff ourselves with Gallium3D bringing most of the speed back to it all when it gets here.

[elanthis]

This is just taking forever. The open driver sucks, fglrx sucks, so what's the user supposed to do?

Your options come down to:

(a) time travel to the future and bring back drivers

(b) buy hardware that actually has usable drivers

(c) use an operating system that already has good driver

(d) hack on the drivers yourself to make them usable

(e) suck it up, rub some dirt in it, and walk it off

I'm disappointed with the state of the OSS drivers myself, but let's be honest: it's our fault. Nobody put a gun to my head and told me to buy an HD4770 when I damn well knew that acceptable Linux drivers didn't exist yet and wouldn't be offering full OpenGL 3.2+ support for some time. Those of us who bought higher end ATI video cards without waiting for the drivers to exist first are not very wise people. That we're stuck with hardware we can't make full use of in Linux is our mistake, nobody else's.

[RealNC]

I'm disappointed with the state of the OSS drivers myself, but let's be honest: it's our fault. Nobody put a gun to my head and told me to buy an HD4770 when I damn well knew that acceptable Linux drivers didn't exist yet and wouldn't be offering full OpenGL 3.2+ support for some time. Those of us who bought higher end ATI video cards without waiting for the drivers to exist first are not very wise people. That we're stuck with hardware we can't make full use of in Linux is our mistake, nobody else's.

I bought it for Windows though. At the time, it was the best card for that price for high-end gaming in Windows.

[val-gaav]

Hmm seems swap and sync patch for ati is not in yet ?

[Vash63]

I bought it for Windows though. At the time, it was the best card for that price for high-end gaming in Windows.

Then you're proving ATi's strategy right: Focus performance on the Windows market, the Linux consumer market is irrelevant. By buying the card for its windows performance regardless of its Linux performance, you're indicating that they should continue focusing on Windows performance.

If Linux performance was really important to you you should've put your money where your mouth is and bought a card with more feature complete Linux drivers, even if it ran worse or hotter than ATi's.

[curaga]

Then you're proving ATi's strategy right: Focus performance on the Windows market, the Linux consumer market is irrelevant. By buying the card for its windows performance regardless of its Linux performance, you're indicating that they should continue focusing on Windows performance.

If Linux performance was really important to you you should've put your money where your mouth is and bought a card with more feature complete Linux drivers, even if it ran worse or hotter than ATi's.

From that angle, should we start requesting performance per Celcius graphs?

[Vash63]

Sorry, I didn't mean actual temperature of the card. I meant its actual power draw and heat output. Performance per watt is a common measurement for both processors and graphics processors. And one that Nvidia's cheer generation is particularly poor in. The gtx480 draws twice as much power as the Radeon 5870 while only performing marginally better in most cases. Power draw and heat output arte directly related, thus it 'runs hotter.'

[Vash63]

s/cheer/current

Damn phone auto-correction mixed with this forum's strange lack of editing functions...

[cg512]

Did you see any AMD employees working on AGP at all?

Most of the AGP patches are from community members who really can work on what they like.

Dave.

Yes & wide hardware support is a strength of Linux. Lets not be lemmings & follow Windows7 over the cliff.

cg

[monraaf]

Yes & wide hardware support is a strength of Linux. Lets not be lemmings & follow Windows7 over the cliff.

cg

A strength of Windows is that it has full featured graphics drivers at launch of graphics card x. In the OSS graphics drivers department this is where Linux is still lacking. I'd personally rather see Linux play catch-up there at the cost of supporting museum-pieces forever.