[gentoo-user] State of Radeon drivers

[gentoo-user] State of Radeon drivers

[Florian Philipp]

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Hi list!

I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?

Thanks in advance!
Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] State of Radeon drivers

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Sonntag 25 Juli 2010, Florian Philipp wrote:
> Hi list!
> 
> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
> Suspend2Ram,

depends on a lot more things than the graphic adapter.

> 3d acceleration etc to work stable?

yes

[gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 07/25/2010 07:00 PM, Florian Philipp wrote:
> Hi list!
>
> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?

Suspend should work.  3D however is too slow.

You'd be better of using the proprietary driver, especially since on a 
notebook you want to have increased battery life; the open source driver 
doesn't provide good power management.

Re: [gentoo-user] State of Radeon drivers

[Daniel Troeder]

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On 07/25/2010 06:00 PM, Florian Philipp wrote:
> Hi list!
> 
> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Florian Philipp
> 
Open Source (x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati) and Close Source drivers
(x11-drivers/ati-drivers) do both work with suspend2ram.


From this mailing list (my post) 06/24/2010 10:22 AM +0200, Subject "Re:
[gentoo-user] ATI  RV710/730" in regards to ATI only:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATI: 3D is very good - a must for gaming, 2D is SLOW! (thou they did
something about that  with 10.6 - experience differs for users - its
said that window management is fast now, but video still has tearing
effect [also my exp.])
Latest driver (10.6) work with xorg-server-1.7.x only and kernel module
has problems with >=2.6.34 (exp. differ).

Xorg: 3D is basic and very slow but works (the newer the driver/server
the better, development is VERY fast), 2D is a dream (very fast, no
tearing with video)!
Driver is released with Xorg - so work always with newest Xorg, kernel
module is in-kernel - work always with newest kernel :) Driver supports
both KMS and user space MS.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

So... for buying... if u need only 2D (and basic 3d) -> intel.

If you want to play games: nvidia or ati/amd...

The OSS-driver 4 ATI is MUCH more mature and ATI/AMD gives out
documentation and also develops - work is going very well, but will take
time for 3d to catch up. Still for OSS -> ATI.

The closed source drivers of nvidia are much better (very fast match new
kernels and Xorg releases) than the closed source drivers of ati (they
are like a year behind kernel/xorg releases)! So if you plan on being
always on closed source drivers (because you game often or use
3D-software for modeling or so) then x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers works
better. The nvidia driver also offers hardware accelerated HD-video
playback (1080p H264 -> only 10% CPU, rest in GPU).

Bye,
Daniel

-- 
PGP key @ http://pgpkeys.pca.dfn.de/pks/lookup?search=0xBB9D4887&op=get
# gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0xBB9D4887


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[gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[James]

Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:


> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?

Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other 
insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....

For example, I have a fanless ATI video card 
ATI Technologies Inc RV710 [Radeon HD 4350]
where I'm currently using ati-drivers. Sweet enough
for most video gaming, silent and power efficient.
I just got this card, but have not set it up yet:
HIS Radeon HD 5550 Low Profile Video Card,
also fanless.....

There is new support, open source, in the kernel for ATI video,
Look here under graphics:
http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges

and here:
http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd

So I use ati-drivers on the newer ati video cards, then
switch to open source drivers, as the hardware matures or 
support, via open sources, becomes robust for a given generation
of ATI video product. One thing to remember; It's kind of 
difficult to change the video card on a laptop....

ymmv;hth,


James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[Daniel Troeder]

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Oh yes - considering support time is a really good hint!

Just one thing:

On 07/26/2010 01:01 AM, James wrote:
> http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd
The radeonhd driver has been abandoned recently by its last supporter
(Novell), because the "radeon"-driver includes now practically all
features of "radeonhd". So you should look at
http://www.x.org/wiki/radeon

Bye :)
Daniel

-- 
PGP key @ http://pgpkeys.pca.dfn.de/pks/lookup?search=0xBB9D4887&op=get
# gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0xBB9D4887


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 26.07.2010 01:01, schrieb James:
> Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:
> 
> 
>> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
>> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
>> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
> 
> Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
> few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
> always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
> sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
> get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other 
> insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....
>

Hehe, religious is the right word. I remember a situation at my
workplace: The admin of our departement IT ordered a Linux workstation
with (fully supported) ATI graphics. At the last second he was overruled
by the head of our institute's IT in favor of a completely unsupported
and more expensive NVidia card. Not only did the poor guy have to wait
two more weeks for the shipment to arrive, he was also stuck with the
VESA driver for half a year and unstable NVidia drivers ever since.

Well, thanks everyone who answered! Problem solved.

Florian Philipp


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[App Deb]

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If you are going to use any *nix, nvidia is the best option for years now.
The nvidia closed source drivers are of professional quality and have great
performance. Actually they are the *standard* for graphics in *nix, and many
(professional or not) applications actually support only nvidia.

The ati oss driver is still under development, sometimes it works ok,
sometimes not, and it is mostly for basic desktop usage and in my opinion it
is progressing too slow. Anyway, I don't like having a driver that uses 10%
of my hardware's capabilties. So until it actually reaches 100% (like the
rest of the linux drivers) I can't recommend ATI on linux and nvidia is the
way to go.

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Florian Philipp <
lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> wrote:

> Am 26.07.2010 01:01, schrieb James:
> > Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:
> >
> >
> >> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
> >> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
> >> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
> >
> > Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
> > few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
> > always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
> > sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
> > get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other
> > insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....
> >
>
> Hehe, religious is the right word. I remember a situation at my
> workplace: The admin of our departement IT ordered a Linux workstation
> with (fully supported) ATI graphics. At the last second he was overruled
> by the head of our institute's IT in favor of a completely unsupported
> and more expensive NVidia card. Not only did the poor guy have to wait
> two more weeks for the shipment to arrive, he was also stuck with the
> VESA driver for half a year and unstable NVidia drivers ever since.
>
> Well, thanks everyone who answered! Problem solved.
>
> Florian Philipp
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[BRM]

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That's great so long as nVidia supports your card. The problem with the binary 
drivers is that they typically only support a percentage of all the cards the 
video maker makes.
For example, I can't use the ATI binary driver on my laptop since it no longer 
supports the R250 chipset, only their latest 3 or 4 generations of cards. So I 
have to use the OSS driver, which works great with it.
I have been able to use both the OSS and proprietary drivers on my desktop with 
an nVidia card, but I don't know how much longer that will last.

nVidia's proprietary driver is good namely because it is the same at the core as 
on Windows and Mac, and they wrap it to make it work with the *nix kernels. 
However, they also do a lot of other funky stuff and keep people from being able 
to fully use the full extend of X. Just search this list (among others) for 
xRanderer and other components of X and you'll see the full story of nVidia's 
proprietary driver.

Ben


>
>From: App Deb <appdebgr@gmail.com>
>To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
>Sent: Tue, July 27, 2010 5:29:10 AM
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers
>
>If you are going to use any *nix, nvidia is the best option for years now. The 
>nvidia closed source drivers are of professional quality and have great 
>performance. Actually they are the *standard* for graphics in *nix, and many 
>(professional or not) applications actually support only nvidia.
>
>
>The ati oss driver is still under development, sometimes it works ok, sometimes 
>not, and it is mostly for basic desktop usage and in my opinion it is 
>progressing too slow. Anyway, I don't like having a driver that uses 10% of my 
>hardware's capabilties. So until it actually reaches 100% (like the rest of the 
>linux drivers) I can't recommend ATI on linux and nvidia is the way to go.
>
>
>On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Florian Philipp <lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> 
>wrote:
>
>Am 26.07.2010 01:01, schrieb James:
>>
>>> Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
>>>> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
>>>> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
>>>
>>> Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
>>> few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
>>> always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
>>> sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
>>> get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other
>>> insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....
>>>
>>
>>Hehe, religious is the right word. I remember a situation at my
>>workplace: The admin of our departement IT ordered a Linux workstation
>>with (fully supported) ATI graphics. At the last second he was overruled
>>by the head of our institute's IT in favor of a completely unsupported
>>and more expensive NVidia card. Not only did the poor guy have to wait
>>two more weeks for the shipment to arrive, he was also stuck with the
>>VESA driver for half a year and unstable NVidia drivers ever since.
>>
>>Well, thanks everyone who answered! Problem solved.
>>
>>Florian Philipp
>>
>>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[App Deb]

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Nvidia's binary can't be compared to ATI's one. The problems you describe
are ATI-binary specific.

And yes the nvidia binary replaces a lot of Xorg stuff, but after some time
you will realise that this is a good thing, as the Xorg is a mess, breaks
with updates, and introduces bugs with each release. And because developers
know that, they always prepare their software for nvidia, as it is the only
*serious* graphics solution for *nix right now.

Don't get me wrong, I don't even have an nvidia card in my systems right now
(cause ATI are superior in windows, all my systems have ATI), but I miss the
times that I had one. So much more stuff worked without problems and with
better performance.

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 4:42 PM, BRM <bm_witness@yahoo.com> wrote:

> That's great so long as nVidia supports your card. The problem with the
> binary drivers is that they typically only support a percentage of all the
> cards the video maker makes.
> For example, I can't use the ATI binary driver on my laptop since it no
> longer supports the R250 chipset, only their latest 3 or 4 generations of
> cards. So I have to use the OSS driver, which works great with it.
> I have been able to use both the OSS and proprietary drivers on my desktop
> with an nVidia card, but I don't know how much longer that will last.
>
> nVidia's proprietary driver is good namely because it is the same at the
> core as on Windows and Mac, and they wrap it to make it work with the *nix
> kernels. However, they also do a lot of other funky stuff and keep people
> from being able to fully use the full extend of X. Just search this list
> (among others) for xRanderer and other components of X and you'll see the
> full story of nVidia's proprietary driver.
>
> Ben
>
>
> *From:* App Deb <appdebgr@gmail.com>
> *To:* gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> *Sent:* Tue, July 27, 2010 5:29:10 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers
>
> If you are going to use any *nix, nvidia is the best option for years now.
> The nvidia closed source drivers are of professional quality and have great
> performance. Actually they are the *standard* for graphics in *nix, and many
> (professional or not) applications actually support only nvidia.
>
> The ati oss driver is still under development, sometimes it works ok,
> sometimes not, and it is mostly for basic desktop usage and in my opinion it
> is progressing too slow. Anyway, I don't like having a driver that uses 10%
> of my hardware's capabilties. So until it actually reaches 100% (like the
> rest of the linux drivers) I can't recommend ATI on linux and nvidia is the
> way to go.
>
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Florian Philipp <
> lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> wrote:
>
>> Am 26.07.2010 01:01, schrieb James:
>> > Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:
>> >
>> >
>> >> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
>> >> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
>> >> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
>> >
>> > Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
>> > few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
>> > always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
>> > sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
>> > get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other
>> > insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....
>> >
>>
>> Hehe, religious is the right word. I remember a situation at my
>> workplace: The admin of our departement IT ordered a Linux workstation
>> with (fully supported) ATI graphics. At the last second he was overruled
>> by the head of our institute's IT in favor of a completely unsupported
>> and more expensive NVidia card. Not only did the poor guy have to wait
>> two more weeks for the shipment to arrive, he was also stuck with the
>> VESA driver for half a year and unstable NVidia drivers ever since.
>>
>> Well, thanks everyone who answered! Problem solved.
>>
>> Florian Philipp
>>
>>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers

[BRM]

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I was updating my AMD64 system last night - which has an nVidia card and uses 
the nVidia binary stack - and ran into problems. jasper won't compile with 
nVidia's provide opengl implementation. But bug report[1] notes suggest the 
problem is in nVidia's binary layer and all the crap the replace. I had to 
switch it over to the standard X11 opengl to compile it. I'll switch it back 
later, but there are serious problems with the nVidia binary stack that way.

My point is that in using the binary drivers you are laden to the card supports 
they choose, and you will eventually end up using the open source drivers once 
they decide it is no longer worth their effort to support the card. This holds 
true for both nVidia and ATI.

Ben

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133609


>
>From: App Deb <appdebgr@gmail.com>
>To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
>Sent: Tue, July 27, 2010 5:16:46 PM
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers
>
>Nvidia's binary can't be compared to ATI's one. The problems you describe are 
>ATI-binary specific.
>
>
>And yes the nvidia binary replaces a lot of Xorg stuff, but after some time you 
>will realise that this is a good thing, as the Xorg is a mess, breaks with 
>updates, and introduces bugs with each release. And because developers know 
>that, they always prepare their software for nvidia, as it is the only *serious* 
>graphics solution for *nix right now.
>
>
>Don't get me wrong, I don't even have an nvidia card in my systems right now 
>(cause ATI are superior in windows, all my systems have ATI), but I miss the 
>times that I had one. So much more stuff worked without problems and with better 
>performance.
>
>
>On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 4:42 PM, BRM <bm_witness@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>That's great so long as nVidia supports your card. The problem with the binary 
>drivers is that they typically only support a percentage of all the cards the 
>video maker makes.
>>For example, I can't use the ATI binary driver on my laptop since it no longer 
>>supports the R250 chipset, only their latest 3 or 4 generations of cards. So I 
>>have to use the OSS driver, which works great with it.
>>I have been able to use both the OSS and proprietary drivers on my desktop with 
>>an nVidia card, but I don't know how much longer that will last.
>>
>>nVidia's proprietary driver is good namely because it is the same at the core as 
>>on Windows and Mac, and they wrap it to make it work with the *nix kernels. 
>>However, they also do a lot of other funky stuff and keep people from being able 
>>to fully use the  full extend of X. Just search this list (among others) for 
>>xRanderer and other components of X and you'll see the full story of nVidia's 
>>proprietary driver.
>>
>>Ben
>>
>>
>>>
>>>From: App Deb <appdebgr@gmail.com>
>>>To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
>>>Sent: Tue, July 27, 2010 5:29:10 AM
>>>Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: State of Radeon drivers
>>>
>>>
>>>If you are going to use any *nix, nvidia is the best option for years now. The 
>>>nvidia closed source drivers are of professional quality and have great 
>>>performance. Actually they are the *standard* for graphics in *nix, and many 
>>>(professional or not) applications actually support only nvidia.
>>>
>>>
>>>The ati oss driver is still under development, sometimes it works ok, sometimes 
>>>not, and it is mostly for basic desktop usage and in my opinion it is 
>>>progressing too slow. Anyway, I don't like having a driver that uses 10% of my 
>>>hardware's capabilties. So until it actually reaches 100% (like the rest of the 
>>>linux drivers) I can't recommend ATI on linux and nvidia is the way to go.
>>>
>>>
>>>On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 7:32 PM, Florian Philipp <lists@f_philipp.fastmail.net> 
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>Am 26.07.2010 01:01, schrieb James:
>>>>
>>>>> Florian Philipp <lists <at> f_philipp.fastmail.net> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> I have a quick question: I plan to buy a notebook with an ATI Mobility
>>>>>> Radeon HD 4250. How well would that one work? Can I reasonably expect
>>>>>> Suspend2Ram, 3d acceleration etc to work stable?
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, lots of good information previously posted. Here's a
>>>>> few more tidbits. When ATI video get's older, there's
>>>>> always good opensource solutions to keep using it. Nvidia,
>>>>> sometimes you toss in garbage can, or use vesa or
>>>>> get lucky? Dunno, as I personally avoid Nvidia; other
>>>>> insist on Nvidia..... kinda a religious thing with some.....
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Hehe, religious is the right word. I remember a situation at my
>>>>workplace: The admin of our departement IT ordered a Linux workstation
>>>>with (fully supported) ATI graphics. At the last second he was overruled
>>>>by the head of our institute's IT in favor of a completely unsupported
>>>>and more expensive NVidia card. Not only did the poor guy have to wait
>>>>two more weeks for the shipment to arrive, he was also stuck with the
>>>>VESA driver for half a year and unstable NVidia drivers ever since.
>>>>
>>>>Well, thanks everyone who answered! Problem solved.
>>>>
>>>>Florian Philipp
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>

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