James Tyrer posted on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:29:30 -0700 as excerpted:
> Duncan wrote:
>> James Tyrer posted on Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:11:53 -0700 as excerpted:
>>
>>> You should be able to run OpenGL on the Radeon 9200. That is the
>>> newest card that does 3D acceleration with the Xorg/XF86 drivers.
>>> However, you do need to select EXA for fast response. Unfortunately,
>>> that will cause problems with some KDE-3 applications.
>> My desktop is two (24" LCD) 1920x1200 monitors, stacked for 1920x2400.
>>
>> The problem with OpenGL is that on the Radeon 9200, or any Radeon r2xx
>> chip for that matter, OpenGL is limited to 2048x2048.
> That is very strange. Do you know if it is the hardware or the driver
> that causes this?
AFAIK it's a hardware limitation, but it would be possible for the
drivers to work around it, almost certainly at the cost of some
efficiency and speed, if the xorg radeon driver maintainer decided he
needed to. If I remember correctly, the limitation wasn't there some
years ago, early xfree86-4 era. But I believe they weren't using the
hardware to its best potential back then, doing some of the 3D/OpenGL in
software. When they realized more functions could be hardware
accelerated, they switched to that, but acquired the 2048x2048
accelerated OpenGL limitation in the process.
And the r200 series is old enough now that not so many use it any more,
and of those that are, many either use only a single monitor less than
2048 in either direction (or two 1024s, maybe 1024x768 or on flatpanel,
1024x600). And of the ones using more than that, few care about OpenGL
or they'd be likely to have upgraded the video when they upgraded their
monitors.
So it's a bit of a corner case for someone running a card that old to be
running that high a resolution AND caring about OpenGL.
>> As for the 9200 being the newest card with 3D/OpenGL using the native/
>> freedomware xorg (and Linux kernel drm) drivers, that's no longer the
>> case. They've stabilized OpenGL support up thru the Radeon r5xx chip
>> series now --
>
> It would be nice if Xorg would update their man page. I made a
> disclaimer somewhere else to the effect that I suspected that it was
> outdated. Do you have a URL for current information.
What xf86-video-ati aka radeon driver are you running, and are you sure
you have a synced manpage? I'm running 6.12.4, Gentoo so compiled
locally from xorg sources, with an updated manpage (the bottom line says
X Version 11, xf86-video-ati 6.12.4, RADEON(4), so it's the same as the
package version).
Select/pasted from that manpage, last line of the description section:
3D acceleration (not supported on R/RV6xx and R/RV/RS7xx)
Of course under supported hardware it then lists all the supported
hardware, chip and corresponding card models, r100 up thru the rv770, so
between the two, it's obvious up thru the r5xx is now 3D accelerated.
>
>> that's thru the Radeon x1950 cards
>> Which is why I'm looking at upgrading to an x1950 ATM. The cards are
>> still quite expensive especially in their AGP form (exceptionally
>> expensive for their age, $150 street), but they handle at LEAST
>> 3072x3072 px (the figure I saw, but I'm not sure where the next cutoff
>> is) OpenGL and maybe higher. (I'd love to get something capable of 3200
>> vertical, so I could at some point upgrade to those nice 30" 2560x1600
>> monitors, but I expect that'd take an hd* r600+, likely and r700+ or
>> r800 +, and of course those don't have stable native xorg/kernel
>> freedomware drivers yet.)
>>
> I find that X1650PRO AGP cards are much more available. Perhaps this is
> because it appears that AMD is no longer producing the X1950 series
> while their site still lists the X1650 series.
>
> http://products.amd.com/en-us/GraphicCardDetail.aspx?id=89&f1=&f2=ATI+Radeon™&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=&f10=&f11=0&f12=&f13=&f14=&f15=&f16=&f17=&f18=0&;
>
> Therefore, I was considering buying an X1650PRO AGP card. I don't know
> exactly what the difference between an R580 and an RV560 chip is. From
> info I could find, it appears that the R580 has the same vertex unit as
> the RV560 but the R580 has two of the shader/texture units in the
> RV560. Probably a die with a shader/texture unit that doesn't work.
>
> Especially if the only difference is the chip, this seems like a mistake
> to discontinue the X1950 series.
The "v" versions are cut-down versions of the main chip. The r580 was
the top of the line for some time, apparently, so would have been in
their $400+ cards of the time. The rv560 is not only a lower numbered
chip (560 vs 580), but it's the "v" cut-down version of it, and is a much
lower performing card.
I'm guessing they aren't actually producing them any more, but still have
some of the lower value chips because of the more massive production runs
they had. Of course, some of the chips may be r580s that didn't pass
muster as well... It's also quite likely that yield was low enough on
the full quality r580s that when the newer models came out and the market
price on the r580s dropped, they were no longer economical to produce and
market, while the lower end rv560s were economical to produce for quite
some time longer and even if they're no longer making them they still
have them in stock from that.
As for the x1650pro, I did consider it and may still get one, but I
wanted dual dvi out, if possible, with both outputs handling dual-link.
I couldn't find dual dual-link in the x1650pro cards, at least not that
AND AGP (not PCI-E, which my board is too old to have), only at the
x1950pro level.
I believe the x1650pro DOES have dual-link DVI and VGA out (one each),
and possibly dual single-link DVIs, and I may well settle for that, but
at least in the AGP version, I never saw dual dual-link DVI. If you know
different, I'd appreciate a link. =:^) (The one you linked is single
DVI, single VGA out, I checked.)
Using the link you provided as a starting point, take a look at this:
http://ati.amd.com/products/RadeonX1950/specs.html
Under Avivo Video and Display Platform, Flexible display support, it
lists:
Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters
Note the "dual ... dual-link".
On the comparable 1650 page, here:
http://ati.amd.com/products/RadeonX1650/specs.html
All I see (under features) is Dual-link DVI (not dual dual-link), and
under the parallel Avivo... Flex display... DVI 1.0 compliant.
Browsing around a bit further, it appears the x1800, and presumably the
x1900, as well as the x1950, have the same "Dual integrated dual-link DVI
transmitters", while the x1650 and below appear to have only one, plus a
VGA out. The x1300 specifies "Dual integrated DVI transmitters (one dual-
link + one single-link)". But I don't see anything of that specificity
on the x1600 or x1650.
FWIW, browsing around, it appears the whole r5xx series, from the x1300
thru the x1950, have, under Advanced Image Quality Features, "High
resolution texture support (up to 4k x 4k)", which would appear to double
the 2048x2048 of the 9200 I'm running, and well cover possible dual
2560x1600 stacked, tho it would NOT cover them in side-by-side mode. So
apparently, the r2xx series is 2048x2048, the r5xx series is 4096x4096,
and one or both of the r3xx/r4xx series are 3072x3072.
And while I was there, I checked the r6xx/r7xx hd series, which currently
require unreleased xorg git drivers for best OpenGL/3D as they're still
in heavy development:
It appears the r6xx chips all do 8k square texture support, thus at that
level or above, dual 2560 width should have full OpenGL/3D accel,
regardless, and it's no longer an issue needing consideration. The bus
interface is native PCI-E 16X, tho I've seen claims of AGP bridge-chipped
versions as well, but never actually seen any myself, tho I've not been
looking at the r6xx chip level as much. IMO, it's likely the r580 x1950
is going to be the best possible Radeon for an AGP board, altho even
there it's a native PCI-E-16 with a bridge-chip (the x1650 is the
reverse, native AGP-8x, available with a PCI-E bridge chip).
The hd2400 (rv610) specifies dual-link DVI on primary, single-link DVI on
secondary, so it appears to compare to the x1650.
The hd2600 (rv630) appears to be the lowest end r6xx series model with
dual dual-link DVI.
The first full "r" version of the r6xx series is the r600 hd2900, again
dual dual-link DVI.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
