News ATI drivers

[Paulo Cesar Pereira de Andrade]

David Bronaugh wrote:
>>> ...
>>> (--) 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
>   
  The problem is that even today, even with supported hardware, for most 
of the time it requires more work than should be expected from an end 
user. And you can't completely blame distribution packagers either 
(besides of frequently broken packages, or incorrectly auto configuring 
software/hardware), as hardware vendors don't verify it, PCs can have 
almost infinite different configurations, and/or the packagers/testers 
did not have most of the hardware they were packaging software to. And 
that assuming the drivers/modules are bug free.

Paulo