On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Alex Deucher <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote: >> 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? >> > > modesetting means that you can use all the outputs on your card, > enable dualhead, etc. > >> 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 > > http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature > is probably more useful. > >> >> 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. > > even without acceleration the driver is very usable for basic desktop tasks. > >> >> 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. > > A few months I'd say for initial 3D driver. Richard has already > started on the 3D driver and EXA/Xv support shouldn't take too long. > Fortunately we can leverage a lot of the work previously done for > r6xx/r7xx. > > Alex >
Those answers and date estimates are completely acceptable. I'm there to help with running driver tests if you need it and can make it simple enough for a monkey on a rock. (me) I'm off to see what I can get a Fry's hoping don't have to mail order. Cheers, Mark _______________________________________________ xorg-driver-ati mailing list [email protected] http://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg-driver-ati
