[NTLUG:Discuss] Anyone got a new Radeo...

[Chris Cox]

Kyle_Davenport at compusa.com wrote:
...
> I am quite annoyed with how poor the drivers are.   I am trying to use an
> ati radeon 8500 in my home theater pc and I keep getting bitten by
> problems: xvideo, overlay, tv-out, dri.   The 3D speed is embarrassing.
> Has anyone seen these benchmarks?
> http://www.xig.com/Pages/Atop/SummitBenchmarks-CARDS.html 

Wow... the ATI supplied drivers do a really good job according to
the graphs (bugs notwithstanding).

My Mobile 7500 does pretty well.  No problems with DVD playback
or 3D accel games.  However, I do run in the magic 16bit plane
depth that we all know an love from the old days (just so they
can run the older Id stuff).  Under VMware (W2K) you just have
to remember to change the hosted OS's bit planes down to 16
to match the host.... otherwise you get some bad behavior and
graphics artifacts all over the place.

> Xi Graphics
> raises a very interesting point; of course, we all know linux is
> fundamentally faster than windows, but it sure doesn't seem like it
> sometimes.  Maybe it's just that XFree86 is slow!  They show their drivers
> much faster on linux than even ATI's own drivers on Win2K!  I emailed their
> sales for info and never got a response...  The benchmark is for version
> 2.9.  Don't know how that compares to 3.2.5

XFree86 DRI for Radeon is VERY immature... so it's not a surprise.
You'll get better DRI numbers on the older Radeon boards I would think
(sort of looks like it in the Xi archives).  The Xi guys, when they're
awake (sometimes they're asleep), do good work.  Not sure about
their ability to support you short or long term though.

If you have a hw config that's relatively static, I think Xi is a
very reasonable alternative to Xfree86.  But when I look at the
data and compare the price between Xi and running ATI's free drivers,
I'm thinking ATI.