[GW-C] Re:Tom's HW Guide: Linux for gaming

[Russell]

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At 10:20 AM 8/14/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 11:44:58PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>> I'm glad to hear that.  ATI lost me as a customer after a few too many
>> disappointments.  I was biased towards the home-town team.  Some
>> things that I think I know:
>> 
>> - the fastest 3d card with open source drivers, of any brand, is the
>>   ATI Radeon 9250.  Get them before they die of old age.
>> 
>> - In January, I needed a video card that supported Dual Link DVI.  At
>>   that time, reasonably-priced ATI x1000 family cards (like the x1300)
>>   would not work in Linux with an open source driver.  Not even as a
>>   2d card.  (Well, the VESA driver could do it, but only at
>>   resolutions wired into the cards BIOS extension, and those did not
>>   include the resolutions I needed.)  At the time, 6 months after the
>>   product was released, ATI had not disclosed enough about the new
>>   fiddly bits for 2d output to enable the open-source Radeon driver to
>>   support these cards.
>> 
>> - at that time, the ATI web site claimed that the proprietary X
>>   drivers supported any card newer than the 9600 (I think that was the
>>   number).  Pre-sales support repeated this misinformation.  I bought
>>   nice fanless x1300 card and discovered the mistake.  Was the site
>>   corrected when I reported this?  No.
>
>This has unfortunately been very common for ATI over many years.  Try
>getting a driver for a laptop with an ati chipset in it from ati.  If
>your laptop maker doesn't care and doesn't update the drivers, too bad.
>ati doesn't make drivers for laptops for windows.  For linux they do
>somewhat.  I did find the omega drivers that someone else manually puts
>together using bits and pieces of ati's drivers for windows and makes
>them work with laptops.  This really should not be someone's hobby.
>Nvidia has no problem providing drivers for laptops.
>
>> - the open source drivers for nVidia cards are limited to 2d.
>
>They do however usually work with new cards fairly quickly.
>
>> He is asking for approval because an NDA is involved.  He does claim
>> that nothing scary is revealed in the code.
>> 
>> Maybe somebody inside ATI could champion this (you know who you are).
>> Many of us would be willing to help.
>
>Well I did see this:
>http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/08/02/32OPcurve_1.html
>One can always hope there is some truth to that.
>
>> A decade ago I tried to talk to some ATI engineers that I had met, but
>> there no interest.
>> 
>> Intel is the best player, as far as revealing graphics chip details.
>> They have released open-source drivers and are maintaining them.  The
>> most recent message from them was written by Keith Packard (one of the
>> key X folks).  If he is working for them, that is an even better sign.
>
>There appears to be some binary only HAL involved in the new "open
>source" intel drivers.  I haven't quite figured out what that does yet
>or if it is required for the drivers to work.
>
>--
>Len Sorensen
>--
>The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
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