As an accidental ATI owner...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2010 10:43 AM EDT |
...I'm pleased to see the improvements. I may see if I can compile it for the Lenny 2.6.26 kernel. Ah, but first I have to buy an hdmi cable. Ugh, more hardware. Wait, I mean Yay! New hardware! |
| tuxchick Mar 23, 2010 11:14 AM EDT |
Shopping is fun! |
| gus3 Mar 23, 2010 12:17 PM EDT |
I call it "mercantile therapy." |
| caitlyn Mar 23, 2010 12:49 PM EDT |
Helps the economy, too... |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2010 1:55 PM EDT |
Caitlyn, welcome back. I disagree about the 'aggregate demand' myth. Love to get into it, why not post to blog.Mises.org and we can get good and dirty, economically speaking? I found a 6' hdmi cable for $0.03 (plus 2.98 shipping) on Amazon. The cheapest cable at WalMart, 3', was $19! |
| gus3 Mar 23, 2010 2:27 PM EDT |
Quoting:we can get good and dirtyOkay, that's it. You two take it elsewhere. The discussions of pr0n on LXer are going to stop, right now! |
| tmx Mar 23, 2010 2:54 PM EDT |
I buy cables at outletpc.com. They have wide variety of cables for cheap. |
| jezuch Mar 23, 2010 4:14 PM EDT |
Quoting:hdmi cable The one that was specifically designed to promulgate DRM? |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2010 4:19 PM EDT |
> The one that was specifically designed to promulgate DRM? No, the one that came on my motherboard and matching one my screen. I'm using a standard VGA cable now in 1080p, and I can see some interference that I hope will go away using the hdmi cable. If not, I sure haven't wasted much money finding out! And I would like to use the motherboard's graphics, rather than an add-on card, just to not feel like I wasted my money. |
| tmx Mar 23, 2010 4:42 PM EDT |
A good VGA cable shouldn't be getting interference. HDMI isn't great either, they loose quality over long length. Neither have good shielding like coaxial. But if you buy one, get one with the ferrite cores. Personally, the result from VGA and HDMI coming from a good source are the same to me. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2010 5:16 PM EDT |
Yeah, but it's that "making it work like it aught to" thing again. I'll see if the very minor effects go away, or if it's caused by the screen warming up in the morning. Anyway, I can report success, onboard ATI HD3300 graphics works very well with the new driver. Full-screen glxgears of just under 160fps, around 2900fps in the initial little window. Yes, yes, it's not a benchmark, but it does prove that everything is at least working, and I now have one less add-on card taking up space and sucking power. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 23, 2010 5:31 PM EDT |
I would like to add that the 160fps was using Openbox and nothing else running. Just did the same thing with KDE3.5 environment, konqueror and kmail running, all the basic apps and tray stuff, and it came out with 139fps. Too bad that I didn't check prior to installing the ATI drivers to see what the nVidia card was giving me. Not that it would stop me, but heck information is information. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 24, 2010 9:09 AM EDT |
Update: I have found one very interesting twist. The KDE game Galactic Conquest draws a box grid for the planets. That grid is not being drawn well, changes "randomly" with every button push, an overlapping window will leave behind it correctly drawn lines, but if I move the overlap quickly the lines being drawn can look dotted. And the kicker is that it shows up in a screen capture! I thought I'd have to take a photograph to show it. http://priss.com/GalacticConquest_ScreenCapture.jpg Anyone see anything like this before? |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 24, 2010 10:29 AM EDT |
Could be a programmer error Bob. Try turning off antialiasing in your driver setup and try Galactic Conquest again. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 24, 2010 10:58 AM EDT |
Antialiasing was off, according to the ATI control panel. I turned it on, fiddled with it a bit, and saw no difference. It was on in the font section of Kcontrol, changed that back and forth with no apparent effect either. I did, however, notice a couple of little line-draw problems with the Kmenu, so it's not just Konquest, it's something more systematic. Oh well, I kept the nVidia card, just in case. :^) |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 24, 2010 9:24 PM EDT |
The only other thing that springs to mind is a texture clamping issue. It would explain your screenshot but not your description of how it randomly changes... |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 27, 2010 6:36 PM EDT |
Interesting twist, although I didn't try the Konquest game with the hdmi cable, I will later when I decide to do that again. The hdmi cable worked, I didn't see any of the bleeding from bright areas over dark, but again that could be a monitor warm-up issue. I only had it in place for a few minutes, however, because using that cable caused only about 90% of screen height and width. There was a half inch on each side, and a quarter top and bottom, unused. The ATI control program didn't show any problems, and the monitor itself was set for "full", so I put the VGA back and it went right back to full screen. Harumph, what next? But it's a very nice $0.03 cable. Electroplated ends and everything. |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 28, 2010 5:05 AM EDT |
Weird. I have no clue what it could be. Does the bleeding issue occur with other games as well? |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 28, 2010 11:31 AM EDT |
The bleeding, like a shadow going off to the right from a bright image onto my usual dark background, looks to me like signal bleeding in the VGA cable _or_ warm-up issues with the screen. I haven't quite decided for sure which it is, but since I can only really see it when things are first turned on the warm-up seems most likely. One thing I've noticed, a change from the nvidia to ati card/driver, is that the console (alt-f1) scroll is MUCH slower. Where "dmesg" would snap to the end in half a second or so, now it's taking more than 10 seconds just scrolling through the boot portion. I can easily read the different portions as they go by. It still snaps right to the bottom in Konsole and xterm. I am using console mode 791, if I were debugging it I'd try changing that back to default first. But it's not worth it, most of the time I use the console I want it to be at a speed slow enough to be interactive anyway. Reason number 1 for open-sourcing video drivers: developers who give a damn about me. |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 03, 2010 9:48 AM EDT |
One more thing for anyone who might care, I contacted the motherboard manufacturer to ask if anyone else had reported the change in screen size from VGA to HDMI. ASRock responded, twice, "We don't support Linux at all." Guess I don't support ASRock. |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 14, 2010 1:18 PM EDT |
To keep this updated for anyone who might possibly be interested... It turns out that the "border" around what is being displayed is called "scaling". ATI is deliberately scaling to about 90% when the HDMI port is being used by default. They are assuming "overscan" in a television display. In the ATI control panel, the "scaling" attribute can be changed to 0%, which will bring the image up to full screen. The _console_ remains 90% of screen width/height, however, since consoles are at a "hardwired" level and the ATI control panel doesn't effect them. Bummer. Beyond that, with the dotted lines and SLOW console scrolling, ATI has retreated behind their "We don't support Linux" policy and pointed me to their user forums. |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 14, 2010 6:59 PM EDT |
Quoting:ATI has retreated behind their "We don't support Linux" policy and pointed me to their user forums. I am confused, since ATI does support Linux. Don't you mean ASRock? |
| jezuch Apr 15, 2010 2:17 AM EDT |
Quoting:I am confused, since ATI does support Linux. I guess their "suport" is like: "hey, you got the documentation, what else do you want from us??" |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 15, 2010 8:50 AM EDT |
> I am confused, since ATI does support Linux. Well, it seems they really don't. They release their Catalyst (Cisco copyright problem here, or just not enough word in the English language?) driver/software under a proprietary license, and then pretend they do it "in cooperation with the Linux community" which means that AMD/ATI get to look good by releasing it and sell hardware, but don't have to support it. They leave "support" to the "community", which looks like a blog and forum on the AMD/ATI web site, where (it seems to me) their developers watch to see what other people come up with or maybe that something is so obviously broken people are noticing and they really aught to fix it. But that's the cynic in me. What I think is really happening is that the engineers/programmers are savvy enough to realize the "community" can benefit their product. Management remains clueless and closed, adamant in their religious fervor that profits depend upon just how tightly the product can be tied up with patents, copyrights and trade secrets. Management further cannot get their heads out of their butts long enough to realize that Linux people are 1) already _buying_their_product_ 2) trying to actively involve themselves in making it better. By opening their code (this assumes that they don't have real secrets they're trying to hide, such as having copied other people's code into their software without permission) through the GPL, they would 1) have much lower developer costs since they don't have to write everything themselves while trying to keep up with kernel changes 2) by putting their driver into the Linux kernel they hop a ride on the ever accelerating open development process 3) get tens of thousands of eyeballs on the code looking for optimizations no one thought of before 4) attract even more attention and eyeballs as gamer fan-boys realize they can go hunting for that elusive extra frame-per-second in GnarlyWorld 5) no longer alienate long-time customers by abandoning older hardware because supporting it costs the company money while that hardware isn't making the company money any more 6) not lose "ownership" because someone has to be the subsystem/user-app maintainer and by having that person employed by the hardware manufacturer directly their look-and-feel can be maintained and their corporate Harvard MBAs have their egos salved 7) have increasing good-will with the millions and growing Linux users and developers who have recently been told by ATI's biggest competitor that they would NO LONGER be contributing to the open version of the driver for their hardware anymore, and to "just use vesa" 8) free advertising as every Linux blog and news site loudly and often proclaims the glory of just how well ATI graphics work 9) give people another REASON to deliberately seek out and buy your product! So I'm left to wonder, why would AMD NOT DO THIS? Gee, this looks like "An Open Letter To ATI/AMD". Too bad I don't run a tech blog. |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 15, 2010 9:22 AM EDT |
Quoting:So I'm left to wonder, why would AMD NOT DO THIS? They can't. The graphics arena is densely packed with patents, licenses, cross-licenses, etcetera. It is utterly impossible for AMD to secure permission from everyone to open source Catalyst. The only way to get open source drivers (for any brand of card, not just for ATI) is to write them from scratch. Preferably by an outside party (i.e. not bound by any existing licenses or NDAs). And even then you need to be watchful of patents. |
| gus3 Apr 15, 2010 12:27 PM EDT |
I like the Nouveau approach: "Here, run this program in X with the nVidia proprietary driver, and send us the results." It then captures the I/O to the video card for various operations. |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 15, 2010 1:13 PM EDT |
> And even then you need to be watchful of pa{t}ents. ...and people still wonder how I logically arrived at anarchist... So I wonder what the limit of their involvement could be? Hmmm. There are times when not being a programmer is annoying. > "Here, run this program in X with the nVidia proprietary driver, and send us the results." What about such an effort with the active cooperation of the manufacturer? Might that do what Sander says must be done to make a fully functional GPL'd driver possible? |
| hkwint Apr 15, 2010 5:27 PM EDT |
Hey, wait a minute. This discussion turns into something interesting. Probably unintended, but anyway. Lots of folks, like yours sincerely, have nVidia card. They might have been buying nVidia cards for years. Also, chances are they will be disappointed about the lack of support for 'free software' from nVidia. These people may be considering buying ATI in the future. However, when you're a 'several years' nVidia customer, you normally don't follow ATI news that well. And you don't know the details. You just read the headlines, think ATI supports Linux. But you don't give it a second thought. Because after all you're happy with your nVidia. And while it still works you don't replace it. Apart from if you're rich, your nVidia card broke or you need better performance. From Bob's words I understand the popular view of ATI as a 'Linux supporter' and nVidia as a 'non-Linux supporter' might not be true. Then, how to proceed if the nVidia owner wants to buy a new graphics card? When I want to run an open graphics driver and support free software (or if not possible, at least 'open documentation' and 'open software', all 'as open as possible') from what company should I buy? Or should I buy some Intel IGP? The latter would be a problem to me as I boycot Intel. Why would be a clear TOS violation I'm afraid. Apart from my reason - which only few other people will care about - they're also a convicted monopolist and I like 'supporting' competition. Looking at 'the coming wave of graphics', which is Imagination Technologies PowerVR: They don't provide 'that much' Linux support either. And if they do, they're remarkably silent about it. Not much resources / articles about it can be found on the web. So, I thought I knew from which company I should buy my next GPU. But right now I think all of them have flawed policies. Again, one less certainty in my life... |
| jdixon Apr 15, 2010 6:45 PM EDT |
> But right now I think all of them have flawed policies. All of them do have flawed policies. But then they're companies, Hans; not girlfriends. Buy whichever one gives you the best performance for the money on your system. |
| Sander_Marechal Apr 16, 2010 4:04 AM EDT |
Quoting:What about such an effort with the active cooperation of the manufacturer? You mean, like AMD handing over the GPU specs, documentation and example source code to the RadeonHD developers? @Hans: Personally I buy ATI these days. * ATI is much quicker adding new features to their proprietary driver than nVidia. nVidia still does not support XRandR 1.2 (which is what you need to get modern, multiple displays to work, inlcuding hotplug and beamers and what-not). * The open source RadeonHD is progressing faster than Nouveau. So, with and ATI card you have a better chance if you want open source 3D support in the near future. * ATI supports the open source driver by publishing specs, documentation and example code. nVidia is nice for newbies though, since the closed source driver installer is easy (just install the nvidia-glx package). It's a little bit harder to get Catalyst going reliably. |
| hkwint Apr 16, 2010 10:51 AM EDT |
Thanks Sander, that's what I needed to hear. Will consider that next time buying a graphics card. Always bought nVidia, I think I'm quite a loyal customer, but I may be an 'accidental Ati owner' in the future too. I hope I don't forget writing nVidia about it! |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 16, 2010 5:51 PM EDT |
> * The open source RadeonHD is progressing faster than Nouveau. So, with and ATI card you have a better chance if you want open source 3D support in the near future.
> * ATI supports the open source driver by publishing specs, documentation and example code. Ok. Bully for them. When I first got this mobo, the general thing toward ATI was "eh...", then Phoronix published their review of the closed 10.2. I can say, now running 10.3, it works fine. No complaints. So at the moment, I would put them on equal footing from a user point of view. Let's see what the future brings. |
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