Phoronix Redblog

[Michael]

For a few weeks now I have been solely using an ATI Radeon X1800XT in my personal system as a trial to see how the times have changed for ATI/NVIDIA under Linux with their proprietary drivers. I have setup this blog @ http://redblog.phoronix.com/ and it has been going since June 1, 2006.

Feel free to check it out and provide any questions/comments/suggestions that you might have -- including anything you may want me to cover during this ATI Linux challenge. You are more than welcome to share your NVIDIA --> ATI switching experience under Linux as well, or even vise versa in our NVIDIA Linux forum.

[niniendowarrior]

Michael,

Why is it that you never seem to experience real problems with it? Is the driver update that good? I'm using the one version down and I don't think I need to go down the details that we've been through before. :P

Anyway, great blog!

[Michael]

niniendowarrior,

If I recall correctly from your previous emails, your key concerns were fglrx performance and stability. I have certainly voiced my opinion about the below-average frame-rate performance with these drivers in the blog, and yes it would be great to have ATI address the performance delta with their fglrx drivers, which hopefully they shall be doing over time.

In regards to your stability comments, I have yet to run into any real fglrx stability problems in my day-to-day usage.

[niniendowarrior]

Well, that is good news to hear Michael. The below-average frame-rate is to be expected from ATi. I'm kind of resigned to that fact.

I hope to hear more from your blog. On a note, could you also post the aticonfig commandline options you added? I may have missed it but I did not come across any from the blog...

[Michael]

For the standard horizontal Big Desktop configuration:

aticonfig --dtop=horizontal

http://www.phoronix.com/redblog/?p=blog&i=MjU1MA Then when examining other features, such as FSAA, other options were used -- as noted in the respective posts.

[niniendowarrior]

My bad. I should pay more attention to what I read. Thanks for pointing it out Michael.

[eatmuchpie]

In your blog, could you please make some comparisons between windows performance and linux performance in, for example, doom3. I'm currently thinking about whether to buy a 1900xt or a 7900gtx for linux, and I'm sure many other people would be interested as well. I would prefer to buy a 1900xt for the better image quality, and for some games i will have to boot into windows to play, but if the game is supported in linux I would prefer to play it in linux.

Thanks for the good work!

[Michael]

Originally Posted by eatmuchpie

In your blog, could you please make some comparisons between windows performance and linux performance in, for example, doom3. I'm currently thinking about whether to buy a 1900xt or a 7900gtx for linux, and I'm sure many other people would be interested as well. I would prefer to buy a 1900xt for the better image quality, and for some games i will have to boot into windows to play, but if the game is supported in linux I would prefer to play it in linux.

Thanks for the good work!

I'll try to get some Windows v. Linux ATI comparison numbers for the X1800XT (though the Windows installation may result in the loss of sanity ). If your interested in more general numbers with ATI between Linux and Windows, there is our ATI A Year in Review 2005 article, which does compare the drivers throughout the past year.

[niniendowarrior]

Although I do like to see Windows vs Linux performance numbers... they tend to be quite disheartening to see. I don't think it's quite relevant to see the numbers as it is now.

Michael, would it be possible for you to study the fglrx drivers and sort of put the drivers under the knife? Kind of like what Anandtech does with the Windows CATALYST drivers. Sort of disect it and figure where and how the modifications have been done on ATi's driver. This gives everyone great insight on how the Linux drivers have evolved.

[Michael]

A large driver round-up is planned for the future at Phoronix, and will be much more thorough than our AYiR (A Year in Review) articles. It will consist of an analysis of image quality, performance, features, and other fine details.