On 02/20/2011 03:40 AM, Jim McCloskey wrote: [...]
And it seemed to work. /var/log/Xorg.0.log reports that direct rendering and
acceleration are enabled. And glxinfo reports:
%glxinfo | grep -i opengl
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CEDAR
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
But when I run glxgears, it reports 60 frames per second, which isn't exactly the
level of performance that I had been hoping for. And given that, it's hardly
surprising that applications like Google Earth are unusable.
The 'glxgears' program is not a benchmark. There is a feature in the radeon driver (vline) which limits the 'glxgears' maximum frame rate to your monitor's refresh rate. Try a benchmark program, or a game that displays the current frame rate (such as 'torcs'), to get a better idea of the performance of the driver on your system.
I should point out that Gallium 3D support in Mesa for Radeon cards has been making great strides since the beginning of the year. I use Radeon HD 5750 in my desktop machine, and Mesa 7.11 (unreleased; obtained from upstream, not Debian packages) provided me with a huge jump in performance towards the end of January: one track I use in 'torcs' to test performance jump from min/max frame rate of 18/35 up to 28/60. Some recent commits caused a regression in performance, and I have not received word from Mesa developers yet whether those changes are desirable in spite of the performance issue, or whether they will be taken back. But I am very happy with what I have been seeing lately.
Is there anyone who could give me some advice about what is missing here? Or where would be a good place to ask?
One good place is the Phoronix Forums. There are trolls and flame wars there, but there are also knowledgeable people (with regard to Radeon hardware and drivers) who are very responsive. I do not participate there (yet) since I only toy with this stuff in my spare time, and have not (yet) been able to dive into it seriously.
When it comes to Evergreen (Radeon HD 5XXX) support and performance, the newer your kernel and drivers the better.
HTH, Dave W.