News ATI drivers

[David Bronaugh]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Thursday 13 September 2007, Gabor Gombas wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 11:52:57AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>     
>>> Alan, I'm sorry to be wasting your time with this piddly-assed thread. 
>>> The point I've made, and which no one will just ignore, was that I went
>>> out and spent something like $90 US, to buy a card that could do such as
>>> the more recent google earth, or if I was really in a mood to waste time,
>>> play tux racer.  That ati card, running on the radeon driver, isn't
>>> capable of doing google earth without major breakups in the imaging, and
>>> tux racer's response to keyboard input is so slow as to be un-playable
>>> when the video is taking so much cpu the keyboard is ignored for 1 to 3
>>> seconds at a time.  I was getting <250 fps from glxgears with it, at 95%+
>>> cpu, now with a Jaton GForce 6200-256 and nvidia drivers I get 1500 or so
>>> with just a few % of cpu usage.
>>>       
>> /var/log/Xorg.0.log for the machine in my office:
>>
>> ...
>> (--) Chipset ATI Radeon 9200SE 5964 (AGP) found
>> ...
>>
>> glxgears reports around 900 fps with ~20% CPU. I've used Google Earth a
>> couple of times and it worked without any problems. I don't do gaming so
>> I have no idea about tuxracer performance. The only problem is it has no
>> DVI output, but it still produces a very nice picture on a brand-new 20"
>> Dell flat panel.
>>
>> Gabor
>>     
>
> That's an order of magnitude better than I ever got from the card.  This one 
> was a Visiontek, with a huge ATI logo on it.
>   
Likely, direct rendering is not enabled (ie, the CPU is doing all the work).

I had this stuff working 6 years ago on a Rage128, a Voodoo1, and a 
Voodoo3; later on a Radeon 7000, a Radeon 9000, a Radeon 9200, an ATI 
Mach64, an Intel i830, an S3 Savage IX, and a Via Unichrome chip (ugh). 
In each of those cases, Tuxracer and Quake3 at least would run (Google 
Earth wasn't around 6 years ago). So I think you are suffering from a 
configuration issue, not shortcomings of the driver.

Perhaps you should enlist someone's help to solve the configuration 
issues, instead of accusing the devels of broken drivers.

David Bronaugh