The Open-Source ATI Driver Is Becoming A Lot Faster
Jan 13, 2011, 19:34 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Michael Larabel)
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"Now that the kernel mode-setting page-flipping for the ATI
Radeon DRM kernel module has been merged into the Linux 2.6.38
kernel and the respective bits have been set in the xf86-video-ati
DDX, we're in the process of running new open-source ATI graphics
benchmarks under Linux. Our initial results (included in this
article) show these latest improvements to cause some major
performance boosts for the open-source ATI driver as it nears the
level of performance of the proprietary Catalyst driver.
"Just earlier this month we put out a big ATI Linux driver
comparison including the Catalyst Linux driver, the open-source
classic Mesa ATI driver, and the open-source Gallium3D ATI driver.
These results on the newer generations of ATI Radeon HD graphics
processors showed that the Gallium3D drivers are becoming faster
than their open-source predecessors (the classic Mesa option), but
that there is still room for much improvement to bring it up to
performance parity with the proprietary Catalyst driver from AMD.
As no R500-generation products were tested in that comparison,
since AMD dropped support for the R300 through R500 ASICs after
their Catalyst 9.3 driver release in early 2009, which is no longer
compatible with modern Linux kernel and X.Org Server releases, we
started out this Linux 2.6.38 kernel testing with these older
graphics processors."
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