From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NIYKX-0003RO-RA for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:00:34 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CD93DE039A for ; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:00:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5231E068E for ; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:31:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1NIXso-0006EK-TA for gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:31:54 +0100 Received: from ip68-231-21-207.ph.ph.cox.net ([68.231.21.207]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:31:54 +0100 Received: from 1i5t5.duncan by ip68-231-21-207.ph.ph.cox.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:31:54 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> Subject: [gentoo-amd64] New video card, finally! Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:31:32 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-amd64@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: ip68-231-21-207.ph.ph.cox.net User-Agent: Pan/0.133 (House of Butterflies) Sender: news Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: c00be8f7-1dee-4234-ac64-e9d88d83a314 X-Archives-Hash: 5a406722dccc8809cf07fed803ea1897 As regulars are aware, I /was/ running an old Radeon 92xx series card,=20 r200 series chip. My system was /relatively/ good, even if it's half a=20 decade old now, because it's a dual socket Opteron, which I had upgraded=20 to top-of-the-line dual-core Opteron 290s (2.8 GHz), with plenty of=20 memory (8 gigs, tho it's now six as a stick went bad on me and I've not=20 replaced it yet), and running four SATA drives in md/kernel RAID. Well, a few weeks ago I switched the system partitions from RAID-6 to=20 RAID-1. In many tasks the RAID-1 is actually faster than the RAID-6 was,= =20 tho part of that might be that the new partitions aren't fragmented,=20 yet. While I was at it, I rid myself of the LVM2 layer I was running=20 most of the non-rootfs system on. No real issues with it here, but it=20 was a bit of a hassle since I couldn't put the rootfs on it directly, and= =20 I have seen some horror stories I didn't like, tho whether they're=20 accurate on the current LVM2 I don't know. But anyway, I decided that=20 layer was more hassle than it was worth, and experience with the new=20 layout so far says I was right. But that just lays the groundwork for the REAL upgrade. I FINALLY got=20 the video card upgrade that I'd been needing for awhile, thus bringing it= =20 more inline with the rest of the system. It's a Radeon hd4650, rv730=20 chip, gig video RAM (tho I have a feeling I'm not using anything near=20 that), dual DVI output (I'm not sure if both are dual-link tho, might be=20 one dual-link and one single-link), AGP bus as that's what my system is=20 -- five years old, remember, I have PCI-X but not PCI-E. Of course, the xorg native xf86-video-ati driver (and xf86-video- radeonhd, tho that seems to be falling behind now, unless you have HDMI=20 you want to support or something) only have 2D for anything r600 or newer= =20 in their released drivers, thru the 6.12 series (with 6.12.4 being the=20 latest, and a possible 6.12.5 coming up). There's not even a beta=20 tarball out for the 6.13 series yet, so if one wants OpenGL support,=20 really the whole point to the upgrade, one has to run the "live" driver,=20 straight from git or available in the x11 overlay as the traditional live= =20 version 9999. So that's what I grabbed. I already had the latest non-live xorg=20 components installed from the tree and x11 overlay, so I was fortunate=20 and didn't need any further live packages, only xf86-video-ati-9999. Meanwhile, I basically gave up on the kernel bug I was git-bisecting, as=20 I couldn't duplicate it on the (then still unaccelerated) new radeon=20 hardware, tho I saved a bisect-log in case it comes back with the new=20 hardware after I enable acceleration, git-pulled, did a git-checkout of=20 v2.6.32 (Linus git tree), did the usual oldconfig, then a menuconfig and=20 changed my config around a bit, enabling KMS, etc. Did a reboot into the new kernel and played around at the radeondrmfb=20 enhanced CLI for awhile, tweaking a couple things there, then started X/ kde4 and started tweaking things for the new hardware, there. =20 After editing xorg.conf and restarting X a few times, playing with=20 glxgears, etc, I started trying out the newly available kde4 OpenGL eye=20 candy options. =3D:^) As I run dual 22" 1920x1200 LCDs, stacked for=20 1920x2400, and the old card couldn't handle OpenGL at resolutions above=20 2048 either direction, I hadn't had the OpenGL effects available to play=20 with on the old card. What a change the new card made! =3D:^) So now I'm running kde 4.3.4 with OpenGL effects. It's nice. I've=20 actually had the "snow on the desktop" effect turned on as I worked, for=20 several hours now, tweaked a bit to add more "flakes" but reduce the size= =20 to make them a bit more realistic, and with the "behind windows" option=20 turned off, so they float in front of the windows. Much like watching=20 real snow fall outside the window while you're nice and warm inside, it's= =20 quite a calming effect. OTOH, there's still enough glitches to see why it's not released yet, and= =20 I did have one crash. Also, font anti-aliasing /really/ looks bad now,=20 it's /gotta/ be a bug somewhere I'm sure, so I turned off font anti- aliasing entirely. MUCH better! With that, it's working well enough to=20 be usable if a few visual glitches, mostly background repaints turning=20 bits of the plasma panels and desktop weird colors at times, which goes=20 away with desktop switches, etc, but also a semi-regular flashing of bits= =20 of one particular corner of the desktop, and artifacts appearing on=20 scrollbars and the like occasionally. But it's good enough I've no=20 intention of going back, even if the driver code is unoptimized at=20 present and the snow makes new launches rather less than responsive! But= =20 I can always turn the snow bit off, if I want, and have a reasonably=20 responsive system with the other effects still. So now I suppose I'm experiencing kde4 as it was meant to be seen, fully=20 accelerated opengl effects, cube desktop switching, snow on the desktop,=20 wobbly windows (which unlike many, I think I'll keep tho I turned down=20 the effect power a notch, and can turn it down another if I want), cover- switch for alt-tabbing, etc. Very nice, even with the glitches. It'll=20 be even nicer when the radeon r600 opengl driver and kernel KMS matures a= =20 bit. Unfortunately, even in 4.3.4, kde4 itself is still buggy enough I'd= =20 consider it beta, tho late beta now. The first kde 4.4 beta is out now,=20 and since 4.3 still feels like beta anyway, I'll probably upgrade before=20 the scheduled February release date, tho it'll probably be beta2 or rc1=20 before I get to it. I expect kde 4.4 to be what I'd call release=20 candidate quality, the critical bugs gone and no show-stoppers, but still= =20 not quite there, and 4.5, in August, to finally hit what I'd call good=20 release quality suitable for an ordinary user. After that, it'll all be=20 frosting on the cake, especially now that I have a decent video card and=20 can enjoy it as it was designed to be enjoyed. =3D:^) --=20 Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman