Re: r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-18 Thread GhePeU
GhePeU wrote:
>So the main question is: does the r300 open source dri driver support
>the Radeon desktop PCIe video cards (i.e. X300SE or X550) with
>Hypermemory, that is the feature that allows the card to use both the
>on-board vram and the system ram as video memory? And, secondly, do
>AIGLX or XGL work on such cards?

Reporting current status, for interested users stumbling in this thread
in the future: 

I bought a Sapphire Radeon X550 HM 256/512, recognized by Xorg as "ATI
Radeon X550 (RV370) 5B63 (PCIE)". 
This card has 256MB of 128 bit DDR RAM on-board, with Hypermemory
support up to 512 MB; Hypermemory doesn't work but Xorg can detect and
use all the on-board memory, without further problems:

(II) RADEON(0): Detected total video RAM=262144K, accessible=262144K
(PCI BAR=262144K)
(--) RADEON(0): Mapped VideoRAM: 262144 kByte (128 bit DDR SDRAM)

The r300 open source driver works, direct rendering is enabled, XAA
works, EXA is slower because the radeon driver doesn't support R300 and
render acceleration is disabled. Compiz on AIGLX works with some
hiccups, but I couldn't test it well because I bought a bad stick of ram
and my sytem is not really stable.

Thanks to everyone who answered in this thread

GhePeU


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r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-18 Thread GhePeU
GhePeU wrote:
>So the main question is: does the r300 open source dri driver support
>the Radeon desktop PCIe video cards (i.e. X300SE or X550) with
>Hypermemory, that is the feature that allows the card to use both the
>on-board vram and the system ram as video memory? And, secondly, do
>AIGLX or XGL work on such cards?

Reporting current status, for interested users stumbling in this thread
in the future: 

I bought a Sapphire Radeon X550 HM 256/512, recognized by Xorg as "ATI
Radeon X550 (RV370) 5B63 (PCIE)". 
This card has 256MB of 128 bit DDR RAM on-board, with Hypermemory
support up to 512 MB; Hypermemory doesn't work but Xorg can detect and
use all the on-board memory, without further problems:

(II) RADEON(0): Detected total video RAM=262144K, accessible=262144K
(PCI BAR=262144K)
(--) RADEON(0): Mapped VideoRAM: 262144 kByte (128 bit DDR SDRAM)

The r300 open source driver works, direct rendering is enabled, XAA
works, EXA is slower because the radeon driver doesn't support R300 and
render acceleration is disabled. Compiz on AIGLX works with some
hiccups, but I couldn't test it well because I bought a bad stick of ram
and my sytem is not really stable.

Thanks to everyone who answered in this thread

GhePeU


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Re: r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-08 Thread Michel Dänzer
On Sun, 2006-10-08 at 18:22 +1000, Daniel Kasak wrote:
> GhePeU wrote:
> 
> > And, secondly, do AIGLX or XGL work on such cards?
> 
> The r300 driver works very well with XGL. I have an X700 mobility, and
> XGL works *beautifully*. Just recently, I've started to get good results
> ( ie no hard lockups ) with AIGLX - but with the new 'beryl' window
> manager, which is Quinnstorm's fork of compiz. As Roland pointed out,
> with only a 64 bit bus you're not going to get astounding performance,
> so you might see some issues with heavy use of compiz effects, but then
> again I don't think it will be all that bad. As a point of comparison,
> I've been using compiz with AIGLX on an integrated Intel chip at work (
> in i845G ). It has no RAM of it's own, and can only see 'up to' 8MB of
> system RAM! It works fine with AIGLX - it's actually quite impressive.
> It's quite *unimpressive* with XGL - painfully slow. According this this
> page:
> http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/motherboards/article.php/10703_1141511__3
> the i845G has a 64-bit memory bus ( if I'm reading it correctly ). So
> I'd say at least for compiz ( or beryl ) on AIGLX, your chosen Radeon
> should be sufficient.

I'm afraid that's comparing apples and oranges. Integrated chipsets tend
to be less affected by the current inefficiencies of the AIGLX
GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap implementation, probably because moving
stuff into and out of the framebuffer is cheaper than with discrete
cards.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer   |  http://tungstengraphics.com
Libre software enthusiast |  Debian, X and DRI developer


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Re: r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-08 Thread GhePeU
Il giorno dom, 08/10/2006 alle 02.29 +0200, Roland Scheidegger ha
scritto:
> AFAIK Hypermemory is a pure marketing gimmick, the chip used on these 
> cards is no different than the normal cards, they just have less onboard 
> ram (and only a 64bit memory bus). So I'd suspect it should work just 
> fine BUT the driver will only use the onboard ram, and 32MB is probably 
> not quite enough if you need more than 2d (not to mention it'd be slower 
> than the normal 128bit cards), though I think there are X300SE or X550 
> out there with 64 or 128MB onboard ram. So a X550 HM 512MB (with 128MB 
> onboard) will work exactly as good or bad as a X550SE 128MB, since, 
> well, it's the exact same card with a different name... (someone correct 
> me if I'm wrong and there might be problems with for instance different 
> default setups of apertures which could lead to problems but I don't 
> think so).
> 
Yes, the reviews I've read pointed out that this "Hypermemory" is just
marketing. But if the r300 driver works without compatibility problems
with this feature, I can discard the X300SE 64 bit without Hypermemory
and point to a Sapphire X550 256/512HM which seems to have 256 MB
on-board and, according to some sites, 128 bit memory bus.


> Dunno exactly, but the basic support should be the same as any other 
> r300-based card. Though the 64bit cards definitely are no speed demons, 
> no amount of marketing buzzwords will help unfortunately in that area, 
> but I'm not sure if that would be visible for aiglx or xgl. Low amounts 
> of video memory will probably make a difference, though.
> Personally, I'd never really recommend any radeon card with only a 64bit 
> memory bus (save the good old simple radeon 7000...), marketing-enhanced 
> or not, but since these are obviously sold quite often I must be alone 
> with that opinion... IMHO, you're paying almost as much as the full 
> 128bit cards for basically half the performance.
> 
You're not alone, but most people who bother to read specs and reviews
are interested only in high-end cards. So the entry-level market is a
hell of conflicting model numbers and brand names, and most
manufacturers and retailers now offer only X300/X550 or X1300 and newer
cards. The choice was X550 or Nvidia, and I don't like closed source
drivers.

Thank you for your time.

GhePeU


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Re: r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-08 Thread Daniel Kasak
GhePeU wrote:

> And, secondly, do
> AIGLX or XGL work on such cards?
>   

The r300 driver works very well with XGL. I have an X700 mobility, and
XGL works *beautifully*. Just recently, I've started to get good results
( ie no hard lockups ) with AIGLX - but with the new 'beryl' window
manager, which is Quinnstorm's fork of compiz. As Roland pointed out,
with only a 64 bit bus you're not going to get astounding performance,
so you might see some issues with heavy use of compiz effects, but then
again I don't think it will be all that bad. As a point of comparison,
I've been using compiz with AIGLX on an integrated Intel chip at work (
in i845G ). It has no RAM of it's own, and can only see 'up to' 8MB of
system RAM! It works fine with AIGLX - it's actually quite impressive.
It's quite *unimpressive* with XGL - painfully slow. According this this
page:
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/motherboards/article.php/10703_1141511__3
the i845G has a 64-bit memory bus ( if I'm reading it correctly ). So
I'd say at least for compiz ( or beryl ) on AIGLX, your chosen Radeon
should be sufficient.

Also, avoid the Radeon Xpress cards like the plague. The memory
controller is not supported with the open-source r300 driver, and ATI's
proprietary driver locks hard when starting XGL.

Dan

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Re: r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-07 Thread Roland Scheidegger
GhePeU wrote:
> I searched with google and in the X mailing lists for the current status
> of the free source r300 driver, but I couldn't find any clear statement
> about the "Hypermemory" feature; most pages or posts were outdated or
> vague.
> 
> So the main question is: does the r300 open source dri driver support
> the Radeon desktop PCIe video cards (i.e. X300SE or X550) with
> Hypermemory, that is the feature that allows the card to use both the
> on-board vram and the system ram as video memory?
AFAIK Hypermemory is a pure marketing gimmick, the chip used on these 
cards is no different than the normal cards, they just have less onboard 
ram (and only a 64bit memory bus). So I'd suspect it should work just 
fine BUT the driver will only use the onboard ram, and 32MB is probably 
not quite enough if you need more than 2d (not to mention it'd be slower 
than the normal 128bit cards), though I think there are X300SE or X550 
out there with 64 or 128MB onboard ram. So a X550 HM 512MB (with 128MB 
onboard) will work exactly as good or bad as a X550SE 128MB, since, 
well, it's the exact same card with a different name... (someone correct 
me if I'm wrong and there might be problems with for instance different 
default setups of apertures which could lead to problems but I don't 
think so).

> And, secondly, do
> AIGLX or XGL work on such cards?
Dunno exactly, but the basic support should be the same as any other 
r300-based card. Though the 64bit cards definitely are no speed demons, 
no amount of marketing buzzwords will help unfortunately in that area, 
but I'm not sure if that would be visible for aiglx or xgl. Low amounts 
of video memory will probably make a difference, though.
Personally, I'd never really recommend any radeon card with only a 64bit 
memory bus (save the good old simple radeon 7000...), marketing-enhanced 
or not, but since these are obviously sold quite often I must be alone 
with that opinion... IMHO, you're paying almost as much as the full 
128bit cards for basically half the performance.

Roland

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r300 driver support for Hypermemory cards?

2006-10-07 Thread GhePeU
Hello,

in the next weeks I'm going to buy a new motherboard and video card.
Since pretty much every motherboard for AMD processors now has only PCI
express slots, and since I'd prefer to use an open source driver, I
opted for a Radeon X??? card.

I searched with google and in the X mailing lists for the current status
of the free source r300 driver, but I couldn't find any clear statement
about the "Hypermemory" feature; most pages or posts were outdated or
vague.

So the main question is: does the r300 open source dri driver support
the Radeon desktop PCIe video cards (i.e. X300SE or X550) with
Hypermemory, that is the feature that allows the card to use both the
on-board vram and the system ram as video memory? And, secondly, do
AIGLX or XGL work on such cards?

Thank you in advance,

GhePeU


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