XGI Technology Drivers Revisited

[Michael]

Originally Posted by Phoronix

It has been one year to the day since XGI Technology had last released a Volari Linux display driver and about 14 months since we had first delivered word of XGI considering open-source 3D display drivers. Where do things now stand for XGI Technology? We will tell you all of the details today where things are for this Taiwan graphics company.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=8362

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Someone over at OSNews has posted this piece of info.

--------------XGI have submitted open source 3D drivers to X.org, as can be in the Freedesktop bugzilla.--------------

Can this be verified?

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16855

[Michael]

Originally Posted by halfmanhalfamazing

Someone over at OSNews has posted this piece of info.

--------------XGI have submitted open source 3D drivers to X.org, as can be in the Freedesktop bugzilla.--------------

Can this be verified?

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=16855

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9129

As was mentioned in the article, the XGI 2D drivers are in git -- http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xor....git;a=summary

The BugZilla id was started by Jong Lin of XGI whom was one of the many people I had talked with back in 2005 about GPLing the drivers.

That BugZilla announcement was on November 22, but if you look at the change-log (http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xor...a=log;h=master) it hasn't (at least yet) been committed.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Apparently in one of the comments logged under bug 9129 there is indeed a 3d driver.

For whatever reason, it's now giving authorization errors. Might be due to the traffic. I was just about to have a look for myself.

Take a quick look at how the discussion over at OSN has played out.

[marcheu]

Well, there is actually an open source driver released by Xgi and it was attached to that bug. However there are some issues surrounding the driver code, which is why the bug report was closed afterwards.

Despite that, it seems that Xgi is quite willing to release open source drivers for its card. I'm not sure how long it will take to cleanup those issues though.

[marcheu]

Oh, of course I meant an open source 3D driver.

[Michael]

Well, it is very unfortunate that the 8600 series has yet to surface (and probably never will) and there is only one PCI Express model (8300). Once these drivers do work out, they will likely still be slower than the ATI Radeon 9200. On Windows the V3XT and V8 perform slower than the 9200 (IIRC), so for now at least its defeated by using the open-source R200/R300 Radeon driver. Also, the XGI Tech products are sold at less online (and retail, if any) stores compared to the Radeon AGP cards, which are also cheaper at last check. There is also Nouveau once that is going.

[marcheu]

Yes, I just wanted to point out that Xgi seems quite supportive of open source, and is willing to provide open source drivers. Therefore, their cards may soon become of interest to people who place free software as #1 priority.