What is Digg?59 Comments
- thespanielator, on 07/03/2008, -1/+16I was thinking that too. I went straight to look and came away disappointed.
Its great to reminisce about two weeks ago though, those were the days. - snowysnowcones, on 07/03/2008, -1/+16Hooray for Linux! Hooray for OpenGL!
- d3k4y, on 07/03/2008, -2/+11This is stupid. The drivers are on version 8.6 and were released June 18th
- phatboye, on 07/03/2008, -0/+9Now if we could only developers (esp. game devs) to port to OpenGL/Linux/Macs/BSD (w/o wine) all would be well.
- sponeil, on 07/03/2008, -1/+8What they didn't tell you is that ATI's old OpenGL drivers were so bad (on any OS) that this was not a major achievement. I suppose being able to say "We suck less!" is still a good thing, but you have to keep it in perspective.
EDIT - For a very long time nVidia's OpenGL drivers ran the same speed as their DirectX drivers. ATI has never come close. I'm an OpenGL graphics developer who owns several ATI and nVidia cards, so I would know. - wTheOnew, on 07/03/2008, -0/+7So 3400 < 3600 < 3850 < 3870 is harder then 8000GT vs. 8800GTS vs. 8800GTO vs. 8800GS vs. 8800GTX vs. 8800GTX+ vs. 8800 Ultra? Mix in that there are two versions of the 8800GTS. ATi's naming scheme has been simple since the x series and even more so since the HD3000 series.
- Grokmoo, on 07/03/2008, -1/+7Besides the fact that this is several weeks old, a 33% increase in performance of a driver is not something to be proud of. That means that there was something seriously unoptimized in the old drivers, and they should probably have never seen the light of day in the first place.
- inactive, on 07/03/2008, -0/+6Nice amd/ati you guys still rock in my book.
- boobsbr, on 07/03/2008, -0/+5***** nvidia and their umap.
- sx66gns, on 07/03/2008, -4/+9Thank you , I hope AMD/ATI can pull themselves up , I've supported them since day one and will continue to do so , no q6600's over here.
- zephyr42, on 07/03/2008, -0/+5because... they're comparing driver performance not overall card performance.
- wolferz, on 07/03/2008, -0/+5and... because the driver updates are aimed at firegl
- SonnyW, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4Nvidia uses a very simple naming scheme?
Then can someone, anyone explain it to me? It seems a completely random combination of letters with arbitrary numbers to me.
I really doubt whatever insanity powers Nvidia's names will be even remotely as simple as ATI's current higher = better. - diggit83, on 07/03/2008, -2/+633% increase means they goofed the first time around imo....thats a huge gap.
- wolferz, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4It is a GIVEN that they goofed. The Linux ATI drivers have historically been utter crap.
- trisweb, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4@CalcProgrammer1 - I've had issues with AGP cards too and non-Intel mobo's under linux. I believe you can use either ATi's AGPGart driver (within fglrx) or you can use the specific one for your motherboard (mine was just the agpgart module). Option 2 worked for me and stopped the random freezeups with the fglrx driver.
Though, now I use a PCI-X card and have zero problems :) AGP is a reverse-engineered proprietary slot on all motherboards except intel, so it's never been that great... - rlbond86, on 07/03/2008, -5/+9This is a quote from http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-grit ...
"So, everyone keeps ranting on about how wonderful it is that Intel and ATI have open drivers and specs and how nvidia needs to get with the program and how they won't buy nvidia parts anymore.
"Now, hang on a second - if you are lucky enough to have an intel/ati system and an nvidia system sitting side by side, you can play along, but otherwise, read on.
"Run glxinfo on each machine and compare the output - I think you'll find the results... instructive, but let's ask ourselves a series of questions.
* Which driver(s) support pbuffers
* Which driver(s) support framebuffer objects
* Which driver(s) support GLSL (shaders)
* Which driver(s) support redirected Direct Rendering
* Which driver(s) offer full OpenGL 2.1 with hardware acceleration
* Which driver(s) offer full GLX 1.4 with hardware acceleration
"If you've spent any time trying to do any OpenGL work, you'll know the answers to these questions - and it's the same answer to all of them. The nvidia driver is the only one out there that actually has full OpenGL support. The Mesa guys will happily tell you how it supports the full 2.1 spec as well - and then mumble something about a software renderer - yes that's right, as long as you don't need any hardware acceleration, Mesa is the tool for you - or maybe we should reevaluate who the tool is...
"The sad truth is that none of the open source drivers actually offer the hooks necessary to enable full OpenGL support, even when the hardware itself is capable. Publishing documentation and having paid fulltime developers in house has not fixed this problem for either ATI or Intel. (Full disclosure, the closed-source ATI drivers have support for some of these features but no freetard is interested in them anymore). Why? Because there's no infrastructure - the Linux DRI/DRM layer is broken and efforts to fix it continue at a glacial pace.
"How did nvidia avoid this? They bypassed it completely - the nvidia driver may look like a regular Xorg video driver but it's actually very invasive and replaces the bottom third of the X server (Most bits of X are driven through overridable function tables - glorious eh?). They had no choice: You can have the world's most awesome hardware and developers but if you have to be compatible with DRI/DRM - you're screwed and none of that will help you.
"It's a crude approximation but the most crucial difference between the nvidia architecture and DRI/DRM is that nvidia actually have a memory manager - and a unified one at that. Without a memory manager it's impossible to allocate offscreen buffers (hence, no pbuffers or fbos) and without a unified memory manager it's impossible to reconcile 2D and 3D operations (hence no redirected Direct Rendering). The Accelerated Indirect GLX feature that the freetards were busy raving about is an endless source of confusion - and ultimately a hack to workaround their lack of a memory manager.
"Indirect rendering is when a GL application delegates 3d operations to the X server instead of talking directly to the 3D driver. This makes operations slower, but not necessarily unusably slow - as long as the X server itself is capable of talking to the 3D driver and making hardware accelerated calls. Now, in DRI/DRM land, the X server originally *could not* talk to the 3D driver because only one direct client could run at a time - so the server itself was excluded because most people wanted their 3D apps to do the talking. However, they realised that if they forced all 3D apps to use indirect rendering, they could avoid the need for a memory manager because the X server itself acts as a single point of control over all 2D and 3D rendering - so they went and fixed things so that the Server could be a 3D client and accelerate indirect rendering, and thus AIGLX the born as a feature to be shouted about from the rooftops. Never mind that 3D apps would then have to use indirect rendering and be slowed down. Never mind that nvidia's driver offered Accelerated Indirect Rendering from day one back in 2000. Never mind that nvidia don't need to use it because they can do redirected direct rendering properly.
"So, this is clearly a problem and they're not fools, so they've been trying to fix it - for how many years? Even today, despite all the apparent appearances of progress, if you go out and install the latest release of your favourite distro, you will get a memory manager-less driver and no support for any of these features. Only if you go and dig into exotic experimental branches of drivers and mesa, and apply patches to your kernel tree, will you get something that vaguely approximates a memory-manager equipped driver and only for a subset of the 'supported' intel/ati hardware. That's just great.
"So, why do you think nvidia doesn't give two ***** about the all the petitions and ranting and pleading and threats to go use someone elses hardware? Guess what - they write linux drivers because paying customers want them - and these places do serious rendering and need these full OpenGL features - otherwise nvidia wouldn't have added them in the first place! They aren't going to give you the time of day when you come to them with your ***** little open source driver that doesn't support features invented over 10 years ago (pbuffers at SGI - 1997)
"And *****, why do my nvidia boxes suspend/resume successfully while my Intel graphics one has to run an old patched driver because the latest one hangs on resume. ***** awesome. Good work guys."
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-grit ...
(Node: DRM stands for Direct Rendering Manager, not Digital Rights Management.) - Taiyoryu, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4Still waiting on hardware video acceleration...
- 32bitwonder, on 07/03/2008, -0/+3How's about some Linux capture drivers???
- kris33, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2RTFA?
"AMD has released faster new ATI Catalyst drivers for Linux customers of its ATI FireGL professional graphics cards. " - Jedakiah, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2It's actually quite simple. Higher number = better performance.
It was a bit confusing when they had to reboot their numbers to the X series. But that's been years ago and shouldn't confuse you now. - ZachSka87, on 07/03/2008, -2/+4@Xamboozi
Not sure what "ATI/Nvidia" war you're talking about...but it's anything BUT neck and neck...
Do a google search for "Nvidia" or "ATI" +"market share"
Then, after you get educated, come back and argue with me some more....please. - nonsequitor, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Its great that they're continuing to work on their proprietary driver, but I think the Linux community would rather AMD spend that effort releasing more hardware documentation so that Open Source Drivers for AMD cards can be taken to the next level.
AMD has already begun releasing all their hardware specs, but there's much more to be released. - homerhomer, on 07/03/2008, -1/+3That's nice and all but I would rather have a driver that doesn't have a ton of bugs.
http://ati.cchtml.com/buglist.cgi?query_format=spe ... - solarwind24, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Ummm, yes. Yes it can.
- jay019, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2BUT WHO THE ***** PLAYS CRYSIS?
WHY ARE WE SHOUTIING??? - U83RMENSCH, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2i just wish developers would make more games that work in both linux and windows ( ie- ut04 and quake wars any one? )
- JonForTheWin, on 07/04/2008, -0/+2Then just open source the damn Nvidia driver.
- Peterix, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Now if this driver didn't have MAJOR problems with just about everything... I had to revert back to the 8.4 driver because this one causes MASSIVE screen corruption with wine. Every time I tried playing Diablo 2, the screen would look like it was going to blow up or something. ::shudders::
Actually, the open-source drivers are much better right now... they just completely lock up the X server in some situations...
Oh well. I need to check if this isn't some hardware failure... but I fear it isn't : - Icetype, on 07/03/2008, -1/+3Why are ppl digging Zach down? He's totally right. I've never had to patch a game to support my intel chips or my ATI card, but you amd/ati fanboys have to do that all the time. I'm talking windows here.
On linux I have a 2600XT I can't get dual monitors working (properly) on, and an nvidia Quadro that I can, so well, gonna use the nvidia. I don't game on linux except for x-moto so I couldn't care less which card I use. - wolferz, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2you just described every ATI Linux driver the company has released. Congrats. It's well known amongst linux users that the ati drivers suck ass. It is not necessarily something to be proud of but at least us ati/linux users now have an opportunity to actually get some of the usefulness out of our cards. I'm not gonna complain about it when they are finally trying to fix the damn things.
- wolferz, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1I've had that card working under linux before. If it isn't working for you then it is probably a configuration problem.
- CalcProgrammer1, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Yeah, I did sudo aticonfig --initial, it configured my xorg.conf file correctly, it's just that whenever it tries to load the driver, the whole computer just freezes up. This isn't the first time, either, the old 7.10 driver did the same thing. The last ATi driver that actually ran on my card was the pre-AIGLX version, which only ran Compiz with Xgl. I think it has something to do with me using AGP, or maybe that my card is Diamond branded (I reported the issue on AMD's site, and Diamond wasn't listed as a manufacturer of ATi cards, but it works with ATi's drivers in Windows...so...?). The only way to fix it is to boot Ubuntu into Recovery mode and do xfix, which sets it back to the slow RadeonHD drivers (at least they work).
- TheZorch, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2This is great news, the OpenGL desktop on Linux especially if you use the GNOME fork Compiz Fusion (Compiz and Beryl combined, for those who didn't know) is incredible. It totally beats the fracking hell out of Vista'a Aero Glass. Aero doesn't have a full desktop zoom feature or the ability to inverse colors for the visually impaired. It still uses that useless magnifier. You can also put multiple desktop on a spinning cube, and any videos playing update on the faces of the cube without glitches. This isn't really needed for productivity but you gotta admit it is really fracking cool looking.
- rynvndrp, on 07/03/2008, -2/+3Marketshare is not the same as performance. If that was true, Intel would have the best graphics cards of them all. ATI has not had the marketing position that nvidia or intel has, this says nothing about their chips. Intel can push a horrible chip on the public with enough ads and enough strong arming. Prescott P4's and the latest intel GPU's for Vista are both great examples. Nvidia does the same by getting video game companies to compile specifically for their hardware. Makes an ATI chip that is better perform worse in benchmarks. ATI has had a lot of really good chips, Radean 9000, HD3000 and HD4000, especially for the price. And the mobo chipsets are unbelievable for what they ask. A AMD 770X mobo is $80 and is as good as a $200 mobo from nvidia or intel. Whats great here is that with open source, that strong arming doesn't work. If Ati can get their ducks in a row with opengl, they will get the marketshare, at least the growing linux and mac market.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1You all misunderstood.
When nVIdia comes out with a new line lets say "the 5000 series" for example. You know that 5200 is their budget card. 5600 is their middle tier card. 5800 is their top end. Sometimes they make an Ultra/GT/GTX.
When all you have is a higher number you don't know it the card is a new budget card, or a new top end. - srodolff, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2Great. Tech news I can't use.......
- rotten777, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2All the benchmarks are Fire GL? I wonder why.
- melkore, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2Did you run aticonfig --initial -f like the instructions tell you to do if X doesn't load?
It's not ATi's fault you can't follow the instructions - melkore, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1I see, I haven't run into those issues with my x850xt but that is a PCI-e card so I figured it was just a configuration issue.
I did have troubles getting the driver to take on a laptop with a Radeon Xpress 200m. It would not load the ATi driver and I was stuck with Mesa drivers. - U83RMENSCH, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1yeah, you did something wrong and made no effort to figure out how to fix it. I've gotten several ati cards to work in several distros of linux. granted i can never get wine to work, nexuiz always runs well.
- VizitorQ, on 07/03/2008, -2/+2Great job sir. This is the kind of a comment I would expect to find from NewEgg, but not from Digg, especially form a Linux related story. Buried for complete and utter noobness, and lame BSG reference...
- xamboozi, on 07/07/2008, -0/+0yea dood linux is not meant to be easy. its meant to be a pain in the arse! thats why its free. its a diy operating system. not a get your grandma going with email operating system(vista-haha).
- CalcProgrammer1, on 07/03/2008, -0/+0My friend had an Xpress 200m that worked just fine...idk how he got it working, but it was in his old Compaq laptop. I'm pretty sure it used a PCI-e bus though, so it wasn't an AGP issue like I'm most likely having.
- CalcProgrammer1, on 07/03/2008, -2/+2Still waiting on...basic 2d graphics...something that at least recognizes my card....something that DOESN'T lock up my PC before showing an image...oh wait...RadeonHD Opensource...but that doesn't have 3d acceleration.
- CalcProgrammer1, on 07/03/2008, -0/+0I've been at this for half a year! I've tried about everything, editing the xorg.conf by hand, installing from the repository, installing from ATi's site, reinstalling Ubuntu, using the aticonfig tool, no matter what it just keeps failing. I'm thinking it's an AGP issue, though I've tried the same card in two different AGP-using PC's and it gets the same response on each. I don't think the card is bad because it works fine in Windows. What methods to you use to get your cards to work?
- xamboozi, on 07/07/2008, -0/+0why would you care about intel if your running linux anyway? If your going to make a cheap new linux appliance or server or desktop or whatever, your going to base your system on amd to keep costs down. period. what sense does it make to spend a crap load on hardware just so you can run a free operating system when its less compatible than xp? The point of linux is that its simple, fast, and CHEAP! if you guys are that concerened about everything working without tweaking, go with xp on an intel platform.
- CalcProgrammer1, on 07/03/2008, -2/+1Ok, swapped my AGP X1600Pro to my other AGP computer (Sempron 2600+, AGP8x) and the x86_64 drivers at least recognize the card and appear to have decent 2d acceleration, but 3d support is nonexistant. Every time I try to start a 3d app, it gives me "extension 'GLX' missing on display ':0.0'.". So, these drivers are at least capable of working, but only on certain PC's, and without any 3d accel whatsoever.
- Betrayer, on 07/03/2008, -2/+1great now my open office will be blazing fast....
too bad there arent any decent games that can use the GFX - ShinyDemon, on 07/03/2008, -1/+0They benched it on an Intel CPU???
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