OT: Accelerated 3D GFX cards with Free drivers (was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: The best distro for music creation)

Lee Revell rlrevell at joe-job.com
Thu Dec 15 14:15:27 EST 2005


On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 13:51 -0500, Dave Robillard wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-14-12 at 17:23 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 22:47 +0100, Christian Ohm wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, 14 December 2005 at 18:54, Rob Fell wrote:
> > > > Lee Revell wrote:
> > > > >... It would be understandable if
> > > > >there was no 3D hardware available with open drivers but that's not the
> > > > >case.
> > > > 
> > > > Given that I'm considering building a new machine, can you point to 
> > > > references please?  I wasn't aware any 3D GFX manufacturer had released 
> > > > any significant specs/code...
> > > 
> > > As far as I know the fastest 3D card with open drivers is the Radeon
> > > 8500/9100 (developed from specs ATI released at the time) - and I've
> > > heard even those are noticeably faster with the closed source drivers.
> > 
> > Actually AFAIK the Radeon 9250 is the latest that has 3d accel with open
> > source drivers. 
> 
> Not to mention that people still work on the Radeon driver, whereas the
> Matrox stuff has been all but dead for years.
> 
> Also, Matrox's new (PCI-E) releases of the Millenium series has gone
> proprietary as well.  What a world...

According to people on LKML apparently ATI is planning to clamp down on
the docs since getting the Xbox 360 contract.  In the past they have
released docs on the 2D engine but kept the 3D engine driver closed.
The next generation of chips will not have a separate 2D engine at all
but implement 2D accel with the 3D engine which they allegedly plan to
keep completely closed.

Lee




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