[Dri-devel] New ATI FireGL drivers announced (2.5.1)

[Alexander S. <Ale...@at...>]

Okay, driver version 2.5.1 has gone life.
Now the FireGL, the "Built by ATI" _and_ 
(newly) the "Powered by ATI" boards will run. 

I hope that helps some of the reading people 
and further offloads(!) these valueable dri-lists 
from any unwanted traffic. Do not reply here!

For the sake of feedback use the ATI web-support form 
in the first row, http://apps.ati.com/linuxDfeedback/.
Anyways those drivers are labled "unsupported". 

-Alex.


-----Original Message-----
From: Alexander Stohr [mailto:Ale...@at...]
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 16:34
To: dri...@li...; dri...@li...
Subject: [Dri-users] New ATI FireGL drivers announced


Hello, 
i know that DRI is targeting open source development, 
but i know myselves that for a developer there can 
always be a need for a 2nd source driver reference. 
There are several other reasons why an alternate 
Linux driver might be of interest for the audience. 
So please excuse me for posting this information to your lists. 
So this passed the news wires today: 
ATI drives graphics performance for Linux users with new unified driver 
http://mirror.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2002/4574.html 
The drivers can now be downloaded for free at www.ati.com 
(see e.g. Linux & FireGL 8800). 
The drivers should run on Linux/x86 with glibc 2.2, 
some common kernel modules do come precompiled and 
a build environment for gcc2.96 and gcc3.2 is included, 
thus making that drivers compatible with 
e.g. RedHat(R) Linux(R)/x86 8.0 or 7.3  versions. 
Supported cards should be (list might not be complete): 
- ATI Radeon 8500 {/DV/LE}, 9000 {/PRO}, 9500 {/PRO}, 9700 {/PRO} -> "Built
by ATI" 
- ATI FireGL 8700, 8800, E1, X1, Z1/X1-128MB (just announced for retail),
Mobility 
I installed that drivers and tested them a tiny little bit. 
Simple applications like glxgears do perform very well and 
they are working quite nice for ut2003_demo (S3TC!), Maya and Houdini. 
My impression is that things like Quake, Chromium or Blender should work. 
I just had a few minutes of a one-man tournament session this noon. 
I tried XVideo support and it showed that the CPU usage of TOP 
was higher than that of the video player application. Features 
that you will on FireGL boards are Overlays and PBuffer rendering 
support. 
Please excuse me again, i furthert want to give a few of the end 
users an alternative to the dri drivers, which are often only 
really useable if you do have downloaded som 60 MB of CVS sources 
and built whole XF86 with a not totally trivial process. 
Let me express that i do _not_ object to any of the DRI-Devel works. 
DRI did great job and it resolves for situations where ATI 
cant provide solutions as of today and possibly long term. 
Just saying embedded Radeon chipsets, ATI chipsets on BSD, 
old ATI chipsets prior to the R200 and further any sort of 
experimental and custom extensions to the DRI open source 
drivers. 
Let's hope, no one does mind this mailing. 
-Alex. 
PS: not speaking for my employer, just documenting things that 
    are already publicly availabel.