Re: fglrx

[Kelly Clowers <kelly.clowers@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 14:02, Freeman <evenso@worldwidehtml.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:32:03AM -0800, Kelly Clowers wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 20:43, Freeman <evenso@worldwidehtml.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Can someone recommend good reading on ATI drivers in testing.
>> >
>> > I don't think my card is supported any longer.
>> >
>> > ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 02)
>> >
>> > But I've not been finding the docs that will do anything other than confuse
>> > me if they exist.
>> >
>>
>> That card hasn't been supported by fglrx for some time. However,
>> the FOSS "Radeon" driver (package xserver-xorg-video-ati) should
>> have full 2d and 3d support for that card.
>>
>
> It was a matter of swapping fglrx for firmware-linux. Guess I had the idea
> that it was all getting outdated.

Well, firmware-linux just has the loadable firmware that many devices
need to run. The firmware for each device used to be in each driver, but
they were split out due to Freeness issues.

> It seems like firmware-linux is self-adjusting somehow.
>
> At first it was loosing frames in HD vids and Goolge Earth ran haltingly
> although without complaining about lack of 3D.  After 4 sessions, I notice
> only a very slight difference from fglrx performance.

The OSS video drivers are often less performant. Your performance may
have gone up due to more data being cached or something, but it is not
a general characteristic of the Radeon driver that it would increase its
performance over several runs.

In the future the Gallium3D driver architecture should allow much
better performance.


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers