A Major Open-Source ATI Linux Driver Update

[darkbasic]

The only real problem of R600g/c is the lack of S3TC. It will take a while before it will be solved.

[Welsh Dwarf]

The only real problem of R600g/c is the lack of S3TC. It will take a while before it will be solved.

Thanks for the tip, a bit of googleing also gave me http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonProgram which also added some confiance.

I'll probably be getting an ATI graphics card for me new Linux box then (never thought I'd say that one day )

[pingufunkybeat]

What you mean by Drift, Vdrift? I didn't test that, I only ran openarena and doom3 benchmarks and page-flipping brings no difference there.

You are running 2.6.38 and have the relevant options set in xorg.conf, right?

[pvtcupcakes]

I'd be manly coding but I do like to game from time to time (the most demanding games being SC2/WoW under wine).

Does any one have any experience with this / any tips on choosing my setup.

TIA

David

WoW does not work on r600g, and I'm guessing SC2 doesn't either.
If you run WoW in OpenGL mode on r600g, it will look like the textures are stitched together oddly and it will crash within a minute of getting into the game.
DirectX mode doesn't crash, but it has a lot more rendering errors to the point where it's not playable.

I think r600c ran WoW in DirectX mode fairly well at one point. It crashed like once every 30 minutes IIRC. I'll have to try it out again. OpenGL mode on r600c was the same situation as on r600g.

The closed source fglrx driver does run WoW pretty well. So I guess you can't go wrong buying an AMD card.

[pingufunkybeat]

SC2 is certified platinum on the RadeonProgram matrix. I haven't tried it myself.

[deanjo]

What you mean by Drift, Vdrift?

Yes, that is what I mean.

[pvtcupcakes]

SC2 is certified platinum on the RadeonProgram matrix. I haven't tried it myself.

I don't have SC2, so I just assumed that since it's a Blizzard game newer than WoW it'd work less.

Just looked at the RadeonProgram matrix and WoW has a silver rating and SC2 does have a platinum. That's kind of odd.

[Svartalf]

If you are going to make bold claims like that, you are going to have to back them up with evidence (i.e. benchmarks). With my own testing I could not find that page-flipping made a difference in fps.

Depends on the applications and if you're doing something like Compiz. For some applications, it'll bring a good boost in performance. For others, not so much so (as you found in your testing...).

[Svartalf]

I don't have SC2, so I just assumed that since it's a Blizzard game newer than WoW it'd work less.

Just looked at the RadeonProgram matrix and WoW has a silver rating and SC2 does have a platinum. That's kind of odd.

Why is it odd? It's a different engine or a differing version of the same engine using differing features. Just because it's from the same company doesn't mean that they're going to use the same problematic code everywhere unless it's exactly the same engine (Heh... KoTOR and KoTOR II's a good example of this... Quite a few mis-uses of the OpenGL API there... >:-D)

[Qaridarium]

Will this driver be more usable on an R100 chip as that's what my Thinkpad T42 has. Any improvement in usability even on that chip's welcomed

you really should upgrade your notebook to an newer one get an amd fusion one much better and cheap.

r100 will not get any big step improvements the lowest card you should get is an r300

r300-500 get the lastest opensource work in 2.6.38 kernel and mesa and so one.

r600-r900 is also fine.

r100 is really out of support range.