Hi,

One year ago, this same question was asked, but the results didn't seem encouraging.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...432/page2.html

Now, after 12 months of (hopefully) driver improvements, what's the 2D (for general browsing), 3D (for science apps like Google Earth and Stellaeium) and video performance?

Thanks much.

Even a year ago that GPU was supported by fglrx. As with all drivers, though, your mileage may vary. Now, in addition to fglrx, the open source drivers support 2D and 3D rendering (though 3D will be slower with the open source drivers than with fglrx, but GE would definitely be usable).

Adam

But how well, and how well now?

[QUOTE=As with all drivers, though, your mileage may vary.[/QUOTE]

But how variable is that mileage?

The nvidia blob driver makes my 7300SE speed through OpenGL on a 1920x1080 LCD with nary a hiccup. No crashes, no artifacts, no hangs.

(My mobo has a built-in RS780G with it's own 128MB, and was wondering if it's faster than my discrete 7300SE. Seems not.

Integrated GPUs tend to be quite crappy. That goes for GPUs from nearly all vendors. So, no, it's not likely faster than your geforce 7300SE.

Adam

Like I said in the other thread. It should work just fine using X11 drivers (radeon), but using ATI proprietary drivers (fglrx) will cause stability and reliability problems. If you are not using 3D rendering, the Radeon HD3200 will work. Yes, the radeon driver supports 3D rendering, but it only fully supported for Radeon 7000 series. Models higher than this will have partial 3D rendering support. The rest will be rendered through software or Mesa3D. The following states the features for each Radeon model, but it is not hard to read and understand.

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

If you are going to use Google Earth or Stellarium, go with nVidia. The open source drivers (radeon) supports 2D acceleration and video acceleration through X-Video, but 3D support is partial for your model and video decoding through XvMC/VA-API/VDPAU is not there yet.

adamk75, on-board graphics or integrated graphics relates to the same as the low end discrete or separate models. The only difference is the the on-board graphics is sharing memory bandwidth with the main processor. On-board graphics from ATI or AMD includes side port to take up some of the slack of memory bandwidth, so AMD's on-board graphics has an advantage over nVidia. nVidia has advantage in software in any operating system compared to ATI. What is crappy is people using low end video cards to play games using the highest details they can.

Actually, I would avoid nvidia at all costs. Their proprietary drivers has caused me nothing up problems in the past, and I refuse to give them business any more.

The open source radeon driver runs Google Earth just fine on every modern ATI GPU I've tried (9600, x850, x1900, HD4350, HD4850).

Adam

I would always say to avoid ATI software, but to avoid nVidia software is just being stupid. nVidia is by far better than what ATI can deliver. I have both ATI and nVidia cards, so I know in fact that nVidia has better software. Both ATI and nVidia has equal hardware quality. The only difference is the quality of software from each of these companies. To get good or reliable and stable software support for ATI hardware, you have to use 3rd party software. The open source community provides quality software for ATI graphic cards. The driver fglrx is not from open source community. The driver ati or radeon comes from the open source community.

I do not like people like you stating confusion when you do not have the brains to understand that probably there are other parts of your computer causing conflicts that you are unaware of. Also upgrading software causes more problems than it is helps when the present software works fine. If you prefer to using the latest software, than I see why you have problems. The latest software will cause problems than it helps if you do not need it.

Those card that you are using are probably using software rendering for certain OpenGL instructions that the drivers does not support in hardware yet. Though Google Earth probably uses texture mapping, so those cards works fine with the open source drivers or radeon since it supports that feature.

Don't treat me like an idiot. I've been dealing with video cards and 3D acceleration under linux since the 3dfx+glide and utah-glx days. The nvidia drivers have always been buggy for me, while I have very few complaints with either the open source radeon or fglrx drivers. I'm well aware of their limitations.

In addition to my ongoing issues with the nvidia drivers, I have no desire to use hardware for which there are no decent open source drivers and have little respect for a company that refuses to provide any specifications to open source developers.

And, quite frankly, I have no respect for people like you who don't have brains... Period.

Adam

I'm quite happy with my HD3850-agp with fglrx and there is no nvidia alternative for and if there was I would avoid it. I have had bad experience with nvidia in the past.

@ Nutria...

I've got the integrated 780G mobo and it works great. I'm not a gamer so don't need a high-end graphics card. In addition to the usual stuff, I use it to watch movies. The resolution's 1680x1050 and plays full-screen online movies without issue (flash, divx, etc). I've also had it connected to a 37" 720p TV and it streams very smoothly. Can't respond to the 1920x1080 resolution; haven't tried it.

Over the past year or so, AMD's proprietary driver has evolved from version 8.x, through the 9.x series and is currently on version 10.x. Debian's stable distro, Lenny, uses the 8.12 version because versions 9 and 10 have had issues. FWIW, Ubuntu's current repos use the 8.6 version. I use fglrx from Debian's repos because its easy to install and maintain.

I've installed the same version prop. driver (8.12) from AMD and there isn't much difference in performance. I've also installed a couple of versions of 9 and 10 from AMD but ran into problems. I don't need cutting-edge stuff... just a good, stable driver that works with my hardware.

I tried the Radeon driver since the recent improvements but it didn't play full-screen online movies too good; lagging and too many artifacts. The driver seemed to rely too heavily on the CPU; it used a higher % of the CPU and ran hotter than when using the proprietary driver. I keep a Squeeze installation (Debian's testing distro) on another partition and the Radeon driver works real well for full-screen movies... as good as the prop. fglrx does on Lenny.

The clip below is what I use to test how well the video works. One's flash and the other's a .wmv download. They're both 720p and on this machine, play smoothly and without flaw at full-screen.

The New WAR Cinematic Trailer:
Online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFz9oJEHKlE
Download: www.warhammeronline.com/videos/index.php

My stuff: 5400+, 780G mobo, 22" widescreen, Debian/Lenny 64-bit, Iceweasel, SMPlayer