Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (471 mails)
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Re: [opensuse-factory] Plans and Issues for ATI fglrx Driver for 11.2?
- From: "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:59:09 -0500
- Message-id: <200906241659.10197.drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Wednesday 24 June 2009 08:47:35 am you wrote:
Stefan, All,
This issue should be at the top of the priority list. As we all know,
with the introduction of the 8-10 driver providing support for Xorg 7.4 and the
2400 series cards, the driver was broken for many earlier cards x1200, etc.,
leaving the last functional driver for many being the 8-9 release. With ATI
dropping support for all pre-2400 series cards with the 9-3 driver, and the
8-10 to 9-3 drivers not working for a whole lot of laptops, opensuse presently
cannot offer a workable driver for all laptops with pre-2400 series cards
because the 8-9 driver does not support xorg 7.4
Further complicating matters is the lack of downclocking/GPU-chipset
powerdown capabilities of the radeon and radeonhd drivers. Without the fglrx
downclocking, many laptops will literally burn themselves up. I did temperature
testing for the radeonhd list (ongoing) and, for example, there is a 25 deg. F
difference in my laptop exhaust temperature between the fglrx driver and the
radeonhd driver. (147 Deg. F with the radeonhd will fry your leg if you are
resting your "laptop" on your lap)
The radeonhd folks (Matthias Hopf, Rafal Milecki, Yang Zaho, etc..) are
doing fantastic work with the driver, but coding the GPU-chipset
powerdown/downclocking routines will take time.
Further, performance, performance, performance. The radeonhd driver
doesn't provide near the performance that the fglrx driver has. The driver
works great for 2D, compiz works fine, but for anything beyond that, there is
no comparison. (I know glxgears is not a speed test, but just for comparison
sake, my laptop with the fglrx driver give 960 FPS, with the radeonhd driver
183 FPS) You can see the dramatic difference.
Given the "heat" + "performance" issues currently associated with the
radeonhd driver, the fglrx driver is a must for laptop users. (Desktop users
are OK on the heat issue, it is just the cramped space and limited cooling of
laptops that expose this significant issue)
Now for openSuSE, currently there is no upgrade path beyond 11.0 for
users effected by the 8-10 to 9-3 driver issues, because the 8-9 driver does
NOT support xorg 7.4. The only fglrx driver offering that opensuse has is for
the 2400+ Series cards. (Guess how many laptops have 2400+ Series GPUs -- very,
very few)
The radeonhd driver will eventually be a great replacement for fglrx,
but that is in the distant future, not for 11.2. Stefan has done a great job in
the past working fglrx driver issues. But the ATI current/Legacy split has
really brought about serious usability issues for opensuse (as well as all
other Linux distros)
The bottom line is, some entity with the clout of Novell, RedHad,
Gentoo, Ubuntu or the combination of all of the above will need to approach
AMD/ATI and find a workable solution to either:
(1) Negotiate the release of "Legacy Card" driver code to the downclocking and
performance can be maintained by the Linux community while ATI retains the
2400+ series code proprietary; or
(2) Negotiate the setup and maintenance of a 3rd party driver repository for
ATI driver, that maintains working ATI drivers for current linux releases for
both ATI "current" and "legacy" cards.
The alternative is where we are today. A majority of boxes with ATI
cards have no driver support in Linux from ATI, and while the open-source
radeonhd driver is getting much better, the lack of downclocking/GPU-chipset
powerdown on laptops will literally burn a hole in your leg and fry your palms
even with the options:
Option "ForceLowPowerMode"
Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "100000"
set in xorg.conf
Serious issues that need serious attention before the dvds are pressed
for 11.2 final.
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 04:39:49PM +0200, Susanne Oberhauser wrote:
Now what we _can_ do is, we start building the different ati driver
versions in parallel in an obs project:
project: ati-fglrx
packages:
ati-fglrx-8.8
ati-fglrx-8.9
ati-fglrx-8.10
ati-fglrx-9.1
ati-fglrx-9.2
..
Unfortunately we can't do this for fglrx driver and probably any
proprietary driver in obs. So either for this we would need a 3rd
party buildservice or convince ATI to host such a system of repos.
Stefan
Public Key available
------------------------------------------------------
Stefan Dirsch (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH
Tel: 0911-740 53 0 Maxfeldstraße 5
FAX: 0911-740 53 479 D-90409 Nürnberg
http://www.suse.de Germany
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Stefan, All,
This issue should be at the top of the priority list. As we all know,
with the introduction of the 8-10 driver providing support for Xorg 7.4 and the
2400 series cards, the driver was broken for many earlier cards x1200, etc.,
leaving the last functional driver for many being the 8-9 release. With ATI
dropping support for all pre-2400 series cards with the 9-3 driver, and the
8-10 to 9-3 drivers not working for a whole lot of laptops, opensuse presently
cannot offer a workable driver for all laptops with pre-2400 series cards
because the 8-9 driver does not support xorg 7.4
Further complicating matters is the lack of downclocking/GPU-chipset
powerdown capabilities of the radeon and radeonhd drivers. Without the fglrx
downclocking, many laptops will literally burn themselves up. I did temperature
testing for the radeonhd list (ongoing) and, for example, there is a 25 deg. F
difference in my laptop exhaust temperature between the fglrx driver and the
radeonhd driver. (147 Deg. F with the radeonhd will fry your leg if you are
resting your "laptop" on your lap)
The radeonhd folks (Matthias Hopf, Rafal Milecki, Yang Zaho, etc..) are
doing fantastic work with the driver, but coding the GPU-chipset
powerdown/downclocking routines will take time.
Further, performance, performance, performance. The radeonhd driver
doesn't provide near the performance that the fglrx driver has. The driver
works great for 2D, compiz works fine, but for anything beyond that, there is
no comparison. (I know glxgears is not a speed test, but just for comparison
sake, my laptop with the fglrx driver give 960 FPS, with the radeonhd driver
183 FPS) You can see the dramatic difference.
Given the "heat" + "performance" issues currently associated with the
radeonhd driver, the fglrx driver is a must for laptop users. (Desktop users
are OK on the heat issue, it is just the cramped space and limited cooling of
laptops that expose this significant issue)
Now for openSuSE, currently there is no upgrade path beyond 11.0 for
users effected by the 8-10 to 9-3 driver issues, because the 8-9 driver does
NOT support xorg 7.4. The only fglrx driver offering that opensuse has is for
the 2400+ Series cards. (Guess how many laptops have 2400+ Series GPUs -- very,
very few)
The radeonhd driver will eventually be a great replacement for fglrx,
but that is in the distant future, not for 11.2. Stefan has done a great job in
the past working fglrx driver issues. But the ATI current/Legacy split has
really brought about serious usability issues for opensuse (as well as all
other Linux distros)
The bottom line is, some entity with the clout of Novell, RedHad,
Gentoo, Ubuntu or the combination of all of the above will need to approach
AMD/ATI and find a workable solution to either:
(1) Negotiate the release of "Legacy Card" driver code to the downclocking and
performance can be maintained by the Linux community while ATI retains the
2400+ series code proprietary; or
(2) Negotiate the setup and maintenance of a 3rd party driver repository for
ATI driver, that maintains working ATI drivers for current linux releases for
both ATI "current" and "legacy" cards.
The alternative is where we are today. A majority of boxes with ATI
cards have no driver support in Linux from ATI, and while the open-source
radeonhd driver is getting much better, the lack of downclocking/GPU-chipset
powerdown on laptops will literally burn a hole in your leg and fry your palms
even with the options:
Option "ForceLowPowerMode"
Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "100000"
set in xorg.conf
Serious issues that need serious attention before the dvds are pressed
for 11.2 final.
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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