amd

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Monday 18 June 2007, Larry Hartman wrote:

> 1) the open source ATI driver that typically comes with Linux
> 2) download  and install the proprietary ATI driver
>
> In either case there will be no direct rendering.

Huh?

I'm using the proprietary ATI driver on an Am64 running in 32-bit mode.  The 
motherboard has an ATI chipset with crappy built-in video:

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 
200] (prog-if 00 [VGA])

Direct rendering is working:

name of display: :0.0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
[...]
client glx vendor string: ATI

Glxgears is giving numbers indicating a non-busted state for 3D:

5626 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1125.083 FPS
5598 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1119.413 FPS
5500 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1099.981 FPS
3724 frames in 5.0 seconds = 744.098 FPS
468 frames in 5.0 seconds = 93.555 FPS
458 frames in 5.1 seconds = 90.670 FPS

So I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.  I got this working with distro 
packages, and switching "ati" to "fglrx" in xorg.conf.  Not rocket science.  
(If it required any kind of effort, I wouldn't bother.)

Now I'll grant you that the ATI drivers are always buggy.  I abandoned them 
last time because my computer crashed every time I logged out.  This time 
around, I haven't logged out yet, so I don't know about that one.  I do know 
I'm getting all kinds of weird rendering artifacts in web browsers and text 
editors, and I assume I can thank the ATI drivers for this.

No crashes in 22 days so far.  That's not a bad track record for the 
proprietary ATI drivers.  :)
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre