dust
2008-09-09, 19:15:17
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r500_mesa_catalyst&num=1
The Radeon X1800XL with the Mesa git code had performed surprisingly well with the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo and so much so that it had outperformed Catalyst 8.8 in three of the tests. It was only by a few frames, but we were certainly surprised and lead us to believe there is a regression with Unreal Tournament 2004 and the Linux Catalyst software.
At the end of the day, the current level of open-source 3D support for the R500 series is fine if you are just interested in using Compiz or just basic OpenGL acceleration or running a few older games. However, for any newer game you will find the frame-rate to be unbearable or not to play at all. You will notice there was no Doom 3, Quake 4, or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars benchmarks and that's because Mesa will not even work with these id Software titles. Additionally, the Unigine technology demos and Lightsmark within the Phoronix Test Suite aren't ready for Mesa graphics.
With time we suspect the performance will gradually improve, but it would require a lot of optimization work for the open-source 3D stack to be anywhere close to AMD's Catalyst / fglrx driver that has been tuned extensively and is worked on full-time by many engineers. One of the biggest open-source boosts will come when switching to the Gallium3D architecture. The open-source stack would also need to implement Catalyst AI and other advanced features for the performance to be on an even playing field.
war eine gute entscheidung von ati/amd open source treiber zu unterstützen.
The Radeon X1800XL with the Mesa git code had performed surprisingly well with the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo and so much so that it had outperformed Catalyst 8.8 in three of the tests. It was only by a few frames, but we were certainly surprised and lead us to believe there is a regression with Unreal Tournament 2004 and the Linux Catalyst software.
At the end of the day, the current level of open-source 3D support for the R500 series is fine if you are just interested in using Compiz or just basic OpenGL acceleration or running a few older games. However, for any newer game you will find the frame-rate to be unbearable or not to play at all. You will notice there was no Doom 3, Quake 4, or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars benchmarks and that's because Mesa will not even work with these id Software titles. Additionally, the Unigine technology demos and Lightsmark within the Phoronix Test Suite aren't ready for Mesa graphics.
With time we suspect the performance will gradually improve, but it would require a lot of optimization work for the open-source 3D stack to be anywhere close to AMD's Catalyst / fglrx driver that has been tuned extensively and is worked on full-time by many engineers. One of the biggest open-source boosts will come when switching to the Gallium3D architecture. The open-source stack would also need to implement Catalyst AI and other advanced features for the performance to be on an even playing field.
war eine gute entscheidung von ati/amd open source treiber zu unterstützen.