Re: hardware acceleration, radeon driver 6.14 (unstable)

[Jim McCloskey <mcclosk@ucsc.edu>]

* Dave Witbrodt (dawitbro@sbcglobal.net) wrote:

  |>  >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.

Thank you very much indeed; this is very helpful. I understood that glxgears was
not regarded as a reliable benchmark, but the number I was getting (60FPS or
thereabouts) seemed low enough that it probably indicated that something was
amiss. Since then I've been trying various 3D applications to see how things
stood. The results have been mixed.  Some (compiz-fusion, stellarium,
extremetuxracer) have no problems; others (Google Earth, foobillard) freeze the X
server a few seconds after startup (not the laptop itself, though; it remains
possible to ssh in from elsewhere in the home network).

I hadn't known about torcs; I'll try it as soon as I can.

  |>  I should point out that Gallium 3D support in Mesa for Radeon
  |>  cards has been making great strides since the beginning of the
  |>  year.  

Absolutely. The pace of development has been really exciting.

  |>  >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.

Do the developers read those forums? Something I've been unsure about it is whether
or not it would make sense to file a bug-report. The only 3D applications I care
about at all are compiz and Google Earth, and I can live happily without either of
them. I'm exploring all of this mostly out of curiosity and a desire/willingness to
help with testing, reporting etc.

  |>  HTH,

It does indeed. Thank you very much,

Jim