Re: [Dri-devel] Parhelia vs. Radeon 8500

[Stefan L. <hoi...@gm...>]

German Gomez Garcia wrote:
> 	Hello, I have some money to spend (finally!!!) so I'm thinking
> of replacing my old G400MAX for a new card, as I prefer open source, I
> have to choose between ATI and Matrox, and the optios (for me) are
> the new Parhelia 512 or the AIW Radeon 8500 DV, I'll buy whatever card
> works better under Linux, as far as I know somebody is working in 3D for
> the 8500 even TCL!!, and the Gatos project has good quality video in/out
> for the AIW DV. The parhelia is quite misterious, but I could wait two
> or three months if the drivers would be good enough. 
> 

Just let me give you a short overview about the current status of the 
driver support:

Radeon8500:
2D is supported, including working XVideo provided by the Gatos-project, 
3D is supported by the closed-source FireGL-drivers by ATi.
The FireGL-drivers do not support XV, so you'll have to choose wether to 
use 3D- or video acceleration. It's not a problem running the free/Gatos 
server and the FireGL server at the same time, however, so it's not too 
bad, just a bit uncomfortable. The development of an open-source driver 
for the 8500 is funded by the weather channel, and we will hopefully see 
working drivers by the end of the year.

Parhelia:
Sorry, I don't know if Matrox is planning to support the card in XF86. 
Currently they don't even have a driver for win9x, so it will probably 
be a while. But I may be completely wrong here.

I'd also keep in mind the costs of both cards: You can get a 8500(LE) 
for less than half of what the Parhelia costs.

I hope this helps a bit

Stefan



> 	I would like to know if anybody from Matrox contacted developers
> here, well, in fact, I would like to know if I should wait for the
> parhelia linux drivers or go for the AIW. What do you think??
> 	
> 	Regards,
> 
> 	- german
>