A Batch Of Graphics Cards On Gallium3D

[Michael]

Not to be picky, and I know that high-end cards can be extremely expensive and that you only get a few free samples here and there from manufacturers, but:

What's the possibility of also testing high-end cards in the latest 3 generations? For example, Radeon HD4850 or better, HD5850 or better, HD6950 or better. For the most part I have only seen low-end cards in your tests lately, some of them are even passively cooled because they've had so much of the bulk of the card stripped out.

Earlier today I actually tried doing a comparison of classic Mesa, Gallium3D, and Catalyst on a Radeon HD 4890, Radeon HD 5770, and Radeon HD 6870. (I finally got a Radeon HD 6870.) But the Linux 2.6.38 Radeon DRM as of this morning fails to light up the display for the HD 6870.

One other thing: Can you offer incentives to people who run phoronix-test-suite and successfully submit non-outlier data into openbenchmarking.org? For example, you could have a drawing to give away a free HD5850 to one lucky person, randomly selected from the list of people who submitted their results for a given test suite and had their results accepted into openbenchmarking.org. Having events like this occasionally would give you a nice burst of data flooding openbenchmarking.org, and having a large data set is key for people to have confidence in the reliability of the data.

We've already been working on a competition and hope to be giving away a complete Linux system from a Linux-friendly vendor as part of the OpenBenchmarking.org launch yet, but that sponsorship isn't finalized yet.

[smitty3268]

I meant ETQW, Doom3, and other closed commercial games.

Yeah, nobody except Q cares about ta-spring.

I forgot r600g still doesn't support ST3C, so you're right that it wouldn't be useful. Still, it would be nice to see that for an r300g test.

Michael, can you clarify what Phoronix's position on that is? Are you afraid of getting sued if you publish an article using ST3C? I seem to remember some a long time ago, but perhaps not.

[whitecat]

Benchmarking those games without S3TC and direct rendering is pointless, which means you must have a 32-bit linux with libtxc_dxtn.

Can you explain ? You mean libtxc_dxtn cannot run on 64 bits ? Sorry if I misunderstood.

[whitecat]

ta-spring works without s3tc... and without openGL3 effects.

Really ? how disable S3TC on ta-spring ? On my machine with r600g the textures are corrupted !

[Michael]

Michael, can you clarify what Phoronix's position on that is? Are you afraid of getting sued if you publish an article using ST3C? I seem to remember some a long time ago, but perhaps not.

Because it's not "out of the box" configuration... While I'm sure there's a fair number of active Phoronix members that may install it, as far as overall Linux usage goes, how many people do you think will actually go forward and do it or even know about it? Not many at all.

[marek]

Can you explain ? You mean libtxc_dxtn cannot run on 64 bits ? Sorry if I misunderstood.

The problem is you need a 32-bit driver in order to accelerate those closed 32-bit apps, i.e. to get direct rendering. If you don't have it, indirect rendering is used, which doesn't have all the features Mesa has - it's stuck at OpenGL 1.4 with a lot less extensions. Things might work but the performance will suck to say the least.

[popper]

Because it's not "out of the box" configuration... While I'm sure there's a fair number of active Phoronix members that may install it, as far as overall Linux usage goes, how many people do you think will actually go forward and do it or even know about it? Not many at all.

i dont see the problem Michael, why dont you just make a small slax live CD/USB image available with the phoronix-test-suite and all the related app's made as modules etc.

and have a 3rd party (if you're to conservative to host them directly) make and host the S3TC and other related modules bits, that can be if wanted loaded locally or off a web site, just like any other slax module at runtime into the test run.

and then even people without knowing about them at the time can also try it and submit results.

there's already a Phoronix test Suite 1.8.1 slax module made for instance on that page
http://www.slax.org/modules.php?sear...mark&category=

plus OC in you're case if you want to run many PCs on a LAN with the same options you can simply boot a single slax cd/USB with the included net boot server option and then boot any other PC off that LAN directly into the slax image that gets booted, simple so why not do it

[whitecat]

The problem is you need a 32-bit driver in order to accelerate those closed 32-bit apps, i.e. to get direct rendering. If you don't have it, indirect rendering is used, which doesn't have all the features Mesa has - it's stuck at OpenGL 1.4 with a lot less extensions. Things might work but the performance will suck to say the least.

It's a big information you give to me !
So if I summarize, running ETQW/Doom3 on 64 bits-kernel + libGL.i686 is less optimized than running it on 32 bits-kernel + libGL.i686 ?

[marek]

It's a big information you give to me !
So if I summarize, running ETQW/Doom3 on 64 bits-kernel + libGL.i686 is less optimized than running it on 32 bits-kernel + libGL.i686 ?

On a 64-bit kernel, you need 32-bit Mesa (libGL + driver) and 32-bit libtxc_dxtn, which is not out-of-the-box experience either. Otherwise 32-bit 3D apps will either crash, misrender, or be slow.

[whitecat]

On a 64-bit kernel, you need 32-bit Mesa (libGL + driver) and 32-bit libtxc_dxtn, which is not out-of-the-box experience either. Otherwise 32-bit 3D apps will either crash, misrender, or be slow.

OK, I understand. So in my case, on my system I currently have :
- 64-bit kernel
- both 64/32-bit libdrm packages
- both 64/32-bit xorg-x11-drv-ati packages
- both 64/32-bit mesa-dri-drivers, mesa-libGL and mesa-libGLU packages
- both 64/32-bit libtxc_dxtn packages
- a 32-bits game

I shouldn't expect 3D problems ?