[Openchrome-users] new dri options

[Benno Schulenberg]

Boris Du?ek wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 October 2006 14:32, you wrote:
> > So for now it seems best to leave the whole SSE stuff out of
> > the patch and just add the page flipping and the extra mipmap
> > level options.  It makes the patch smaller too: more easily
> > accepted. What do you think?
>
> My opinion is: definitely put back the "#if 0" for this part
> again. Because we simply can't handle it with our skills at the
> moment.

Okay, I've changed the line in via_tris.c to:

  #if 0 && defined( USE_SSE_ASM )

> The question is whether SSE can make the performance difference
> in the rest of the code, i.e. where vmesa->memcpy is invoked. If
> the difference is negligible, then best would be to simply forget
> about SSE at all and make things simpler.
>
> If there is a difference, then there is no problem for enabling
> driconf-configurability of the vmesa->memcpy routine.
>
> I personally would prefer the second option, but not sure about
> it. Since I don't have the development driver with my patch (how
> unusual, I don't use my own patch :), could you (or someone else
> with the patch) please test glxgears with SSE off and on? (and
> with the "#if 0" included in both cases)?

With glxgears it makes zero difference, no difference at all.  
In slune and bzflag the fps are quite variable, so it is hard to 
compare them.  But on a quiet and straight stretch in slune the 
difference is also nil.

So unless someone can show an example where SSE makes a difference, 
giving the user such a toggle isn't worth the risk of lockups, imho.

> Btw. this reminds me of a problem I had - is it somehow possible
> to develop the mesa 3D DRI drivers (e.g. unichrome driver) with
> only mesa system headers and libraries installed? I mean do I
> really have to install the whole source code for mesa, or is
> there a cleaner way, some "3D driver SDK", or something else that
> would make use of the already install MESA libraries and headers
> on my system? Just would make life easier. I use mesa 6.5.1.

On what system?  On Ubuntu there are dev packages, you would need 
mesa-dev, and probably a few others.  Other distros will have 
something similar.  I just have the whole source tree, as I use the 
6.4 branch from cvs.  Today I've tried head of the 6.5 branch; it 
finally compiles again, and glxgears and slune look fine, but 
bzflag looked weird: an orange shimmer in the walls, a blue one in 
the grass, and big stripes in the pavement.  And after a few 
minutes it locked up again.  So I'm staying with 6.4 head for the 
time being.

Benno