On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Alex Deucher <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:28 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi, >> Sorry for the sort of vague nature of the questions here. I'm >> starting to look around for a new card. I would prefer fanless if >> possible and that limits my choices quite a bit. >> >> In terms of performance with the Open Source ATI drivers how are >> the 5500 and 5600 series of chips? Are they well supported? Mostly I'm >> 2D with the hope of a little bit of gaming maybe once a month for a >> few hours. I'd like reasonable 3D performance down the road even if >> it's not there now. >> >> I haven't found any 5700 or higher fanless cards yet but I haven't >> looked very hard. >> >> How is the driver support these days for the 5500 and higher based >> cards? Anything I should watch out for? Any plans to support or not >> support either the 5570 or 5670 series? Is the 5670 noticeably better >> for gaming? I presume they're all about the same for getting KDE up on >> the screen? >> > > Evergreen cards (HD5xxx) have modesetting support only at the moment > in the open source driver. Acceleration support has been started and > will come eventually. > > Alex >
Hi Alex, So by modesetting do you mean width by height and bits/pixel, but nothing else? I don't know how to assess whether a card is usable in that state. The Wiki does pretty clearly seem to stop at the HD4xxx series: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon I have no history of how long it takes to see acceleration start to be usefully functional. If I bought one of these cards today not caring about gaming then: 1) Is it useful and reasonably pleasant running a KDE desktop in a VERY high end processor machine? I expect it is. 2) How long might I wait to see 2D and then 3D start to be useful for games? 3 months? A year? I understand that never is a possibility but I'm not worried about that outcome. Thanks, Mark _______________________________________________ xorg-driver-ati mailing list [email protected] http://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg-driver-ati
