Ok, Wow.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Bob_Robertson Dec 04, 2007 11:35 AM EDT |
"The results aren't missing. The performance boost is so great that what used to take minutes now takes less than a second." I have Nvidia GPUs in two of the laptops I'm administering, and I wonder if these rendering improvements are going to be of any benefit to me what so ever. I have a game or two that use hardware acceleration, but how do I know? One hopes that such a radical improvement would be utilized by the basic functionality of the Xwindow system. Having a 4-barrel carb is nice, but if you never open them what good is having them? |
| NoDough Dec 04, 2007 12:43 PM EDT |
Quoting:Having a 4-barrel carb is nice, but if you never open them what good is having them?You might be showing some age there, Bob. It's been quite a while since Detroit (or, for that matter, Asia) produced carburated engines. Back in the day, they were referred to as "normally aspirated". A term that would surely bring confusion to the current population's youth. |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 04, 2007 1:12 PM EDT |
NoDough, I had a 1975 Saab 99 with completely mechanical fuel injection. Tuning it was done with a 3mm hex wrench. 1/4 turn above stall, done. By Cromm that engine ran well. I might not have gotten that last 2 or 3 miles per gallon, but I could fix anything with just hand tools. (much like editing config files with vi) Sometimes, "progress" isn't. |
| ColonelPanik Dec 04, 2007 1:48 PM EDT |
Por fin! Now we are talking about something I do understand! Lets talk hoopties! Had enough of that 'puter crap. RPM, MPG, RCMP CV Joints, EFI and all that, eh? And just to keep it pure for the tech crowd here, the new cars are way better than the old ones. Today's computers are way better than the old ones. Todays sound systems are way better and the music of today is way way better. And tomorrow? Don't know about you but I can't wait. |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 04, 2007 1:58 PM EDT |
> and the music of today is way way better. Bob puts his Mozart/Bach/Vivaldi/Copeland "Pounding Mix" mixed CD into the player on his way to karate class, just to spite C.P. |
| ColonelPanik Dec 04, 2007 2:01 PM EDT |
Hey now, you are only spiting yourself. |
| jdixon Dec 04, 2007 3:11 PM EDT |
> ...and the music of today is way way better. Nah. The music is the same. Music never changes. And it still obeys Sturgeon's law. |
| dinotrac Dec 04, 2007 7:22 PM EDT |
NoDough - Hate to burst your bubble. Normally aspirated refers to whether the engine is turbocharged or supercharged, not whether it's carbureted or fuel injected. |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 05, 2007 3:40 AM EDT |
> And it still obeys Sturgeon's law. They only want you for your eggs, because you're a really ugly fish? |
| jdixon Dec 05, 2007 6:51 AM EDT |
> They only want you for your eggs, because you're a really ugly fish? No, though that's a good one. :) I had a friend who used to say he had "the hands of a surgeon". My reply was that I had "the hands of a sturgeon". For those who don't know, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law |
| NoDough Dec 05, 2007 1:37 PM EDT |
Quoting:Hate to burst your bubble.Party pooper. |
| dinotrac Dec 05, 2007 3:35 PM EDT |
>Party pooper. But an abnormally aspirated party pooper. |
| ColonelPanik Dec 05, 2007 4:40 PM EDT |
dinotrac, That sucks! |
| azerthoth Dec 05, 2007 7:12 PM EDT |
abnormally aspirated ??? does that mean "hot air added" ? *grin* |
| dinotrac Dec 06, 2007 3:33 AM EDT |
>does that mean "hot air added" That is, in fact, the very essence of turbocharging. |
| ColonelPanik Dec 06, 2007 5:28 AM EDT |
Hey, how about the nVidia XRender thing? |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 06, 2007 6:44 AM EDT |
Yeah. What's it going to do? Speed up compiz by a couple of thousand percent? Anyone here who can explain what XRender does specifically? |
| dinotrac Dec 06, 2007 6:44 AM EDT |
>Hey, how about the nVidia XRender thing? More to the point, has anybody been able to install the beta on a 2.6.23.9 X86_64 kernel? My install keeps crapping out with an unknown symbol. |
| hkwint Dec 06, 2007 7:14 AM EDT |
Please excuse me for going back on topic, but Bob raises an interesting point (without even mentioning mises this time, congratulations Bob!):Quoting:I have Nvidia GPUs in two of the laptops I'm administering, and I wonder if these rendering improvements are going to be of any benefit to me what so ever. I have a game or two that use hardware acceleration, but how do I know? That's what I was wondering, it's nice to know XRender is 127 times faster, but what's this XRender thing in first place? The render_bench website doesn't reveal what the benchmark is about, but WP has a short article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XRender which features a Xorg link: http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/Glossary?ac... (Look at Render, it's sorted on alphabet). So, in my own words, this is why this improvement is significant: Lots of new stuff, like Sun's "Looking Glass" (AFAIK) or Compiz Fusion (Beryl in the past) use translucency, for new translucent windows and titlebars etc. It's this 'Alpha-blending' (calculating what color 'reaches the eye' in the case we put several translucent layers on top of each other) that's greatly improved now. As far as I am aware, this kind of translucent layers on top of each other aren't a big issue in games, except for windows (referring to the ones in the gates here) with chairs behind it, fishes in the water or rainbows. So it also effects our new translucent eye-candy, like what KDE4 may bring soon. On the other hand, it seems (to me) like 'Render' is also what makes anti-aliasing work, and that _is_something that's important in games. As far as I am aware, the use of anti-aliased fonts isn't that dependent on graphics drivers or graphics cards; I never saw the screen 'build up' fonts on my screen. So probably the anti-aliasing mainly goes for stuff like Quake/Doom/UT etc. All and all, and in the light of the recent Ati Linux driver-improvements also mentioned by Phoronix a while ago- which were also huge - I think this marks a turning point; and we might as well call S2 '07 and S1 '08 the year in which Linux graphics acceleration caught up with Windows. 2008 the year of Linux gaming? Dino, what distro do you use? |
| dinotrac Dec 06, 2007 7:31 AM EDT |
> Dino, what distro do you use? I use opensuse on my personal workstation. For now, I use kubuntu on my wife's workstation, and ubuntu on my myth box. The myth box is presently running 32 bit by virtue of being an athlon in its past life and I didn't wipe the old install when I built the new box with 45 watt cpu and quiet case. |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 06, 2007 11:41 AM EDT |
Quoting:As far as I am aware, the use of anti-aliased fonts isn't that dependent on graphics drivers or graphics cards; I never saw the screen 'build up' fonts on my screen. That may well be because your fonts aren't rendered through the GPU but rendered directly. It may make a huge difference in using e.g. Cairo which does use the GPU where available. From what I read, there's a big push to switch over from GDK and various other renderers to Cairo for all desktop rendering. It works now but Cairo is much slower. This improvement in the drivers may even the results quite a bit. |
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