Radeon HyperZ R300g Performance

[xeros]

Yes, I do. I work on open source graphics drivers at AMD. Not only do we write much of the code, we also support community developers by providing hardware and an interface to our internal teams. The open source drivers have had good support for r3xx-r5xx cards for years. The open source drivers work fine for the vast majority of users and they support all the latest features of the open source graphics stack. They have full modesetting and 3D support and they are open source so anyone in the community can improve them or port them to another OS. Additionally, the open source drivers still have full support for r1xx and r2xx asics. AFAIK, nvidia never supported asics that old on Linux at all. Additionally, because the source is available, the community can develop things like mesa or wine specific GL extensions to better support D3D applications, or to expose functionality on the hardware that may not map to an existing OpenGL extension. Open source drivers also work out of the box natively on new user interfaces like wayland and android.

Thanks for all, Alex!
I'm still using AGP Radeon 9600 + PCI-E Radeon X300 together (currently in zaphod mode) in my desktop machine (it wont handle anything newer or more powerfull), using latest Linux distributions (with KDE and it's compositor), without any big performance or missing features problems (no problems with games also). I've switched to open source radeon driver in around pre-last release of ATI's "binary blob" and drop support for R3xx-R5xx cards. I was really impressed how stable open source radeon was (compared to "binary blob") and that each feature that was there simply worked! Since then I was always happy with every version of open source radeon/r300/r300g driver. And support from Alex, Marek, Tom and other radeon driver developers was always great - very quick problems resolving (usually up to few hours after problem was reported there was a proper patch - well, my problems were usually in uncommon cases, when using multiseat with one or two cards, or video out to analog TVs, or some OpenGL features that "binary blob" didn't support on my cards).

Once more - BIG THANKS for all your efforts!

[bug77]

re: "without HyperZ" -- yes, that is just one more step in ongoing performance optimization, not a fundamental change in what you can do with the driver. It is important, but IMO it doesn't define the line between "support" and "no support".

re: Steam, I think the initial focus for Steam is via the Catalyst driver, not sure what the plans are re: getting games running on the open source driver. That was probably the right decision at least until we have consistent launch-time support for new GPU generations. We're still aiming for that to start with the Sea Islands generation.

Re: transitioning support, the decision to move a GPU generation to legacy is made based on market-weighted requirements across all the OSes supported by the Catalyst code -- the Linux Catalyst driver basically "looses the ability to leech off the work we do for other OSes" if you want to use forum terminology.

When we hear about a transition coming we do look for specific things we can do on the open source side to minimize the impact (eg the initial power management work Alex pushed out when we heard about the r3xx-r5xx transition), but since Catalyst Linux exists primarily to take advantage of code sharing across multiple OSes the decisions are made at an "all OS" level not at a Linux-only level.

If Catalyst Linux were a Linux-only code base then the answer would obviously be "yes we would coordinate", but it would also be open source and have pretty much the functionality of the current open source stack, except for the fact that work would have started a few years earlier (which would help). The problem with that approach is that it would not have given us a suffficiently capable 3D workstation driver, which in turn would have meant that the funding for Linux graphics driver work probably would never have materialized in the first place.

Ah, a more articulated answer. Thank you.
I would still argue that while "initial focus for Steam is via the Catalyst driver", Catalyst has dropped support for cards older than HD5000. Is there a legacy driver for cards that are still powerful enough to run most games (HD2000-4000)? Can the open source variant rise to the occasion?

[Hamish Wilson]

Also, can I use a 4870 with the latest X server and the upcoming games from Steam?

Apparently: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.p...ge-2#post-6971

Yes, I do. I work on open source graphics drivers at AMD. Not only do we write much of the code, we also support community developers by providing hardware and an interface to our internal teams. The open source drivers have had good support for r3xx-r5xx cards for years. The open source drivers work fine for the vast majority of users and they support all the latest features of the open source graphics stack. They have full modesetting and 3D support and they are open source so anyone in the community can improve them or port them to another OS. Additionally, the open source drivers still have full support for r1xx and r2xx asics. AFAIK, nvidia never supported asics that old on Linux at all. Additionally, because the source is available, the community can develop things like mesa or wine specific GL extensions to better support D3D applications, or to expose functionality on the hardware that may not map to an existing OpenGL extension. Open source drivers also work out of the box natively on new user interfaces like wayland and android.

Exactly. I am still using R200 cards for certain use cases in fact.

[curaga]

Do you really think of open source as support? Do you coordinate between AMD dropping support for hardware and open source community, ensuring there's a viable alternative at the time?
Support is either there or it isn't. As of today, an FX5200 (a terrible card fwiw) is fully supported, whereas its counterpart, the Radeon 9000 (a much better alternative) just received HyperZ support. Of course, the Radeon 9000 has been supported in the binary drivers before, but how long has it been since support has been dropped there?

FX5200 means Nvidia's legacy driver. Which does not support recent X servers (nor kernels likely).

So the situation there is exactly the same as AMD's - the blob for neither supports anything current, no?

[bug77]

FX5200 means Nvidia's legacy driver. Which does not support recent X servers (nor kernels likely).

So the situation there is exactly the same as AMD's - the blob for neither supports anything current, no?

Well, nvidia's legacy driver supports x.org 1.11. Not the latest, but fairly recent.

[bridgman]

Is there a legacy driver for cards that are still powerful enough to run most games (HD2000-4000)? Can the open source variant rise to the occasion?

The latest legacy driver is 12.6 IIRC... don't think it supports server 1.13 yet but it does support 1.12...

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...eon_linux.aspx

[dungeon]

Yes, I do. I work on open source graphics drivers at AMD. Not only do we write much of the code, we also support community developers by providing hardware and an interface to our internal teams. The open source drivers have had good support for r3xx-r5xx cards for years. The open source drivers work fine for the vast majority of users and they support all the latest features of the open source graphics stack. They have full modesetting and 3D support and they are open source so anyone in the community can improve them or port them to another OS. Additionally, the open source drivers still have full support for r1xx and r2xx asics. AFAIK, nvidia never supported asics that old on Linux at all. Additionally, because the source is available, the community can develop things like mesa or wine specific GL extensions to better support D3D applications, or to expose functionality on the hardware that may not map to an existing OpenGL extension. Open source drivers also work out of the box natively on new user interfaces like wayland and android.

I think i've found fix for tcl lighting not emited on r200 , don't know if someone read these bugs, need help to stop atom complain about dwords... could you look there :

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22576

[Gusar]

FX5200 means Nvidia's legacy driver. Which does not support recent X servers (nor kernels likely).

It does support the latest X and kernels and Nvidia will continue updating it through the end of 2013. Also, the 304 branch (for Geforce 6/7) will be supported through the end of 2017!! Source: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answe.../a_id/3142/kw/

[curaga]

It does support the latest X and kernels and Nvidia will continue updating it through the end of 2013. Also, the 304 branch (for Geforce 6/7) will be supported through the end of 2017!! Source: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answe.../a_id/3142/kw/

Ah, yes, the 5200 will keep working for 2013. It's the GF4 and lower that they dropped completely now:

No further releases from the 96.43.* series are planned.

No further releases from the 71.86.* legacy driver series are planned.

I get mixed up with them having so many legacy drivers.

[agd5f]

Ah, a more articulated answer. Thank you.
I would still argue that while "initial focus for Steam is via the Catalyst driver", Catalyst has dropped support for cards older than HD5000. Is there a legacy driver for cards that are still powerful enough to run most games (HD2000-4000)? Can the open source variant rise to the occasion?

As has been noted, the legacy driver still supports xserver 1.12. Additionally, the open source drivers should be able to run the games as well, but likely won't be quite as performant as the catalyst driver.