Showing headlines posted by phoronix

At Phoronix we have looked at a number of Gigabyte products from their motherboards to graphics cards and even wireless adapters. However, today is our first time looking at one of Gigabyte's barebone solutions. The Gigabyte STA Thin Client, specifically the GB-STA-C7V7, is a mini-ITX solution that ships with a VIA C7 1.0GHz processor, UniChrome PRO graphics, is completely fan-free, and it's all packed in a slim yet stylized chassis. However, does the Gigabyte STA Thin Client work with Linux? We'll let you know today.

There are many new and innovative features brewing within the X.Org development community right now -- among the many are Gallium3D, the TTM memory manager, and MPX (Multi-Pointer X) -- but one of the features that has risen towards the top of the list and delivers visible benefits to the end-user is kernel-based mode-setting. As implied by its name, kernel mode-setting involves moving the mode-setting code for video adapters from the user-space X server drivers into the Linux kernel. This may seem like an uninteresting topic for end-users, but having the mode-setting done in the kernel allows for a cleaner and richer boot process, improved suspend and resume support, and more reliable VT switching (along with other advantages). Kernel mode-setting isn't yet in the mainline Linux kernel nor is the API for it frozen, but Fedora 9 shipping next month will be the first major distribution carrying this initial support. In this article we're looking more closely at kernel mode-setting with the Intel X.Org driver as well as showing videos of kernel-based mode-setting in action.

Next to drivers for graphics cards and (Atheros and Broadcom) wireless chipsets, the Creative Labs X-Fi series is one of the most complained about pieces of hardware for its Linux support or there the lack of. The Creative X-Fi sound card series is a few years old, but it wasn't until a few months ago that open and closed-source drivers started coming about for this hardware. However, this sound card has still been left in a sorry state, but this week Creative Labs has finally pushed out another Sound Blaster X-Fi Linux beta driver. But does this driver correct their wrong doings from the past?

Less than two weeks ago Phoronix Test Suite 0.2.0 was released, which featured a number of profile updates, improved Linux hardware detection, and incorporating other feedback voiced by the initial users of this Linux benchmarking suite. Last Saturday version 0.2.1 was then released with initial support for PTS External Dependencies, a GLMark profile, GtkPerf profile, FRAC Benchmark profile, and other fixes. Continuing in an expedited development process, Phoronix Test Suite 0.3.0 has been released this morning with a number of major changes, including new test profiles and architectural improvements.

In the last quarter of 2007 AMD was on a spree with their proprietary Linux driver as they introduced their new OpenGL driver, which brought major performance improvements, and that was followed by AIGLX support. This year, however, their Catalyst Linux driver activity has been relatively quiet for end-users. Since switching over to this much-improved code-base, they have been able to deliver same-month product support for their new graphics processors such as the Radeon HD 3650, 3850/3870, and the 780G-based IGP, which once couldn't be said for this company that had taken them a half-year to deliver support for the Radeon X1000 (R500) and Radeon HD 2000 (R600) product families. Today the Catalyst 8.4 Linux driver has been released, and like the 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 drivers, this month's update comes with minimal changes.

When looking at the AMD Phenom 9500 under Linux, we had found this processor had posed a number of issues from kernel panics to other troubles when running Ubuntu 7.10 with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel. Once, however, upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 with the Linux 2.6.24 kernel these problems had vanished and we were pleased by this native quad-core desktop processor from AMD. Released a month prior to the first Phenom desktop CPUs were the quad-core Opteron 2300 "Barcelona" processors. We hadn't looked at any AMD Barcelona processors at that time, but today we finally have our hands on two of the new AMD Opteron 2356 server/workstation processors.

Last month we had looked at the Radeon HD 3200, which is part of the AMD 780G Chipset. In that Linux-based review we had found the performance to be admirable for being an integrated graphics processor (IGP) and it was quickly supported by the proprietary fglrx driver, aside from AMD not yet introducing the CrossFire/Hybrid Graphics Linux support. To deliver those Radeon HD 3200 benchmarks we had used the ECS A780GM-A Black and today we're publishing our full run-down on this AMD 780G motherboard that's paired with the AMD SB700 Southbridge. The A780GM-A boasts support for AMD Phenom processors, DDR2-1066 memory, PCI Express 2.0, and an HDMI port in addition to one VGA output.

It's been a long time in the making, but the xf86-video-radeonhd 1.2 driver has just been pushed out the door. RadeonHD 1.2 is the first new release for this open-source ATI R500/600 driver since December of last year. The RadeonHD 1.2 driver includes support for new AMD graphics processors, 2D XAA/EXA acceleration, and other changes.

Less than a week ago we pushed out the first public release of the Phoronix Test Suite. This GPLv3 Linux benchmarking software had received a great deal of interest, but v0.1 did have a few bugs and a number of uncompleted features. Yesterday though we pushed out version 0.2 of the Phoronix Test Suite with a number of improvements, new benchmarking profiles, and other changes. In addition to noting some of the improvements made in this release, there are also other Phoronix Test Suite highlights to share from this past week.

Back in early February we announced that we were in the process of formalizing and releasing our internal test tools as a platform for facilitating easy to use, accurate, and reproducible Linux benchmarks based upon the testing work that we have been doing at Phoronix for the past four years. The goals with this are really to make it easier for Linux end-users to run reliable (both qualitative and quantitative) benchmarks for their own personal use, push more open-source projects to making their software more testable, and pushing hardware and software vendors for greater Linux testing based upon a standardized set of tests. Today we are very pleased to announce the first public release of the Phoronix Test Suite software, which is licensed under the GNU GPLv3, and the creation of a public database for freely sharing your test results and other information in a collaborative manner.

Earlier this month we took a look at the NVIDIA Quadro FX1700, which is one of NVIDIA's mid-range workstation graphics cards that boasts 512MB of video memory, support for CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), OpenGL 2.1, and the power consumption for this PCI Express graphics card is less than 50 Watts. In the tests that followed, the FX1700 had performed quite well at the workstation-oriented SPECViewPerf benchmark and we had compared its Ubuntu Linux performance to Solaris Express and Microsoft Windows Vista. The NVIDIA Linux driver with the FX1700 had the best performance and it ended up being a nice graphics card for around $500 USD.

For a year now Intel has been flaunting its 45nm "Penryn" processor core with its SSE4 instruction set, High-K metal gate transistors, and 6MB of L2 cache. Most of the Penryn media attention has been focused upon the desktop Core 2 processors, but in January at the 2008 Consumer Electronic Show Intel had rolled out sixteen new products and a dozen of them were mobile oriented. Among these Intel innovations were the first mobile Penryn processors. These mobile Intel 45nm CPUs accompanied the Penryn desktop line-up that first began in November of 2007 with Core 2 Extreme QX9650 and then continued with several new Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo models. On the server front, the Penryn equivalent is Harpertown and those quad-core Xeon processors have been shipping for the same length of time.

While we're continuing to see new Linux-native games introduced (such as the recent Shadowgrounds announcement) and the continued work by Linux Game Publishing with different games, the Linux gaming market is still far from being saturated and it keeps many gamers from even trying out Linux because of the limited choices. As they near version 1.0, WINE has been making strides at allowing gamers to run their Windows game binaries on Linux and last year Transgaming had introduced Cedega 6.0 with expanded game support -- among other improvements. Today though another option has been introduced and that is using CrossOver Games to run your favorite Windows games on Linux.

Last year AMD introduced the flagship 790 Chipset series as part of their Spider Platform for use with the Phenom processors and Radeon HD 3800 graphics. Until earlier this month when AMD introduced the 780 Series, missing was any chipset with integrated graphics capabilities supporting these first AMD quad-core processors. Now we have AMD's 780G and 780V Chipsets, which are designed to be the mainstream solutions to the 790FX, but they pack the best integrated graphics processor (IGP) ever created by the combined ATI/AMD engineering talent. Since its launch at the CeBIT trade show, the AMD 780G has received rave reviews for its vehement performance due to its graphics core that's derived from the AMD RV610. The benchmarks available on launch day were only for Microsoft Windows operating systems, but this morning we have the Radeon HD 3200 Linux results from the AMD 780G. Is this IGP a crown jewel on Linux?

Last November we had looked at Mythbuntu 7.10 and found it to be an excellent MythTV distribution. With its LiveCD MythTV front-end capabilities and intuitive Mythbuntu Control Center, this distribution is far more than just a re-branded edition of Ubuntu with a couple MythTV packages. Being released in tandem with Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" next month will be Mythbuntu 8.04 and today we are taking an early look at this spring refresh using the recently released beta.

In late February NVIDIA had introduced the GeForce 9 series with the introduction of the mid-range GeForce 9600GT 512MB graphics card. Earlier this week they then introduced the GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card, which consists of two NVIDIA GPUs bridged together with SLI support. We have been quiet on how the GeForce 9 series performs under Linux, but this morning we are providing our initial GeForce 9600GT results using an ASUS EN9600GT TOP HDMI and comparing its Linux desktop performance to its GeForce 8 sibling and the ATI Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. On Windows the GeForce 9600GT has been able to outperform the Radeon HD 3850/3870, but on Linux an entirely different story is rendered.

Coming just a day after AMD had opened up their production microcode from their proprietary drivers for the R100 to R600 GPUs, a significant milestone has been reached in the road to open-source 3D graphics capabilities for the Radeon X1000 (R500) series. We now have hardware-accelerated glxgears!

For Linux distribution vendors, right now is proving to be an awkward time for them as they decide which ATI driver will ship as the default choice in their spring distribution refresh. The problem used to be whether to ship a binary-only driver in the distribution in order to provide "out of the box" support for all available graphics hardware, but on the ATI/AMD side the software distributors are now facing the challenge of which open-source driver they should call the de facto standard. In this article we are briefly looking at the matter of the xf86-video-ati vs. xf86-video-radeonhd drivers, the highly political issue of AtomBIOS, and what some of the popular Linux distributions are deciding to use this spring.

The first alpha release of KDE 4.1 isn't planned until the end of April, but this past weekend the OpenSuSE team had updated their KDE Four Live spin against the latest KDE 4.0.66 snapshot packages. The KDE 4.0.66 development packages contain new Kickoff and Plasma features along with much other work to the numerous packages that will ultimately make up this first major update to KDE 4.

Introduced in Ubuntu 7.10 was install-time encryption support where using the alternate installer one can fully encrypt their disk in an LVM using dm-crypt. Unfortunately, the Ubiquity installer in Ubuntu 8.04 continues to lack LVM and encryption support, but using Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 6 we have looked at the performance cost of this encrypted configuration on Ubuntu Linux. Rather than looking directly at the disk read/write overhead caused by the encryption process, we have provided some benchmarks to see how the real-world performance is impacted in both gaming and other desktop tasks.