On 07 May 2002 05:23:59 -0400 Lyvim Xaphir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The situation with the Radeons, last I heard, was that there were no ATI
> supplied Linux drivers, and the main support for Radeon was put in by
> the XFree86 folk.
>
> What I have heard about Xfree/Radeon function is that it has been
> problematic. Is there anybody listening here that can give a consensus
> on the Radeon situation? Are they running more or less natively, or not
> at all, or what?
>
> Also, is the performance level of the Radeons under 3D games in Linux
> comparable to the Nvidia equipment and the proprietary drivers?
>
> I'm curious since I have been looking at the ATI side. I've got an Abit
> Siluro and I'm happy, but I'm also still interested in ATI, as I'm sure
> others are too.
Rather than try to speak for ATI I attached 2 pages copied from their website dealing
with Linux & XFree86 and with sources.
Now to my Soapbox, if you please.
In todays market you now have only 2 major players in the development of video
chipsets for use in 3d hardware accelerated graphics cards (notice that I did not say
makers of graphics cards,though both do sell under their own banner, Nvidia has for
some time sold chips to second party makers and ATI, with the Radeon has recently
begun to do the same.
Matox and S3 are players but they can not be considered as Major and since it is no
longer in business Voodoo has lost its stature and no longer resides with the elite.
For out of the box performance in Linux ATI, with the radeon and Rage128
line, is the hands down winner.
The radeon provides excellent 2d/3d performance including gaming and, with Mesa
installed, good GL support.
There are actually 2 sets of ATI linux drivers, those provided in XFree86 and those
provided by gatos, otherwise known as the ati2 drivers.
Contrary to that noted in another post Mandrake 8.2 ships with Both sets of drivers
and the ati2 driver Are those which are used by default.
Are their problems with some ATI cards?
Yes!
There are as many variations of the radeon as their are flavors of B&R ice cream and
some will suffer performance degradation and in situations were other hardware
compatibility with Linux is not at optimum certain cards may not work, but most of
these issues are known and solutions are being developed.
This is nothing restricted to ATI.
It is industry wide.
Hardware is evolving at a rate faster than the software needed for its deployment can
be fully and completely tested.
There are those who always want the cutting-edge but fail to grasp the the liabilities
that come with such.
When comparing the performance of ATI verses Nvidia/nvidia driver in Linux the Winner
Is....
It depends on the criteria by which one chooses to measure it.
If measured by usage, what it can do, how it looks and feels.
I doubt that you could tell the difference.
The disparity in numbers may seem great but to the eye there is none.
Why do you think all those fancy benchmark test were created.
People can not tell the difference just by looking/using.
So as not to disappoint any who wish numbers I will simply show why
Nvidia best ATI in openGL.
For any who do not know Radeons need Mesa and libMesa to provide GL.
What follows is glxinfo from a system with a Gforce3 and the same from a system with a
Radeon
glxinfo Gforce3
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_ARB_multisample
client glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
client glx version string: 1.2
client glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info,
GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_SGI_video_sync,
GLX_SGIX_swap_group, GLX_SGIX_swap_barrier, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce3/AGP/3DNOW!
OpenGL version string: 1.3.1 NVIDIA 28.02
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample, GL_ARB_multitexture,
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression,
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_S3_s3tc, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra,
GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract,
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_draw_range_elements,
GL_EXT_fog_coord, GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays, GL_EXT_packed_pixels,
GL_EXT_paletted_texture, GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_rescale_normal,
GL_EXT_secondary_color, GL_EXT_separate_specular_color,
GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_texture3D,
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp,
GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_cube_map,
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic, GL_EXT_texture_lod,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_vertex_array,
GL_EXT_vertex_weighting, GL_HP_occlusion_test,
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_KTX_buffer_region, GL_NV_blend_square,
GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color, GL_NV_evaluators, GL_NV_fence,
GL_NV_fog_distance, GL_NV_light_max_exponent,
GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint, GL_NV_occlusion_query,
GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil, GL_NV_register_combiners,
GL_NV_register_combiners2, GL_NV_texgen_reflection,
GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc, GL_NV_texture_env_combine4,
GL_NV_texture_rectangle, GL_NV_texture_shader, GL_NV_texture_shader2,
GL_NV_vertex_array_range, GL_NV_vertex_array_range2, GL_NV_vertex_program,
GL_NV_vertex_program1_1, GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_multitexture,
GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_SGIX_depth_texture, GL_SGIX_shadow
glu version: 1.3
glu extensions:
GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator, GLU_EXT_object_space_tess
visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x21 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x22 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x23 16 tc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x24 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x25 16 tc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x26 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x27 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x28 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x29 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x2a 16 dc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x2b 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x2c 16 dc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x2d 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x2e 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x2f 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
0x30 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Ncon
[root@localhost charles]#
glxinfo for Radeon
name of display: :0.0
Loading required GL library /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context
client glx vendor string: SGI
client glx version string: 1.2
client glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context
OpenGL vendor string: VA Linux Systems, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Radeon 20010402 AGP 4x x86/MMX/3DNow!
OpenGL version string: 1.2 Mesa 3.4.2
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_EXT_abgr,
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint,
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_histogram, GL_EXT_packed_pixels,
GL_EXT_polygon_offset, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap,
GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias,
GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_MESA_window_pos, GL_MESA_resize_buffers,
GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_PGI_misc_hints, GL_SGIS_pixel_texture,
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp
glu version: 1.3
glu extensions:
GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator, GLU_EXT_object_space_tess
visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x24 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 Slow
0x25 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 0 0 0 Slow
0x26 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 0 0 0 Slow
0x27 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x28 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 Slow
0x29 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 0 0 0 Slow
0x2a 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 0 0 0 Slow
Direct hardware support will also defeat that provided through software.
I have both radeons and nvidias and they are all Excellent cards.
Were I forced to give the nod to 1 or the other I would lean towards the ATI Radeon
for 2 reasons.
1)Its out of the box support in Linux.
2)Cost-about 2/3 that of a comparable Gforce3 or 2
The choice is totally subjective for me as it would and should be for anyone.
Charles
ATI.1.bz2
Description: Binary data
ATI.2.bz2
Description: Binary data
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