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Linux 3D AGP GPU Roundup: More Cutting Edge Penguin Performance

 by Kristopher Kubicki on October 4, 2004 12:05 AM EST
33 Comments | Add A Comment
33 Comments

Configuration (continued)

Looking back, had we completely destroyed our OS with a new kernel in this manner in the first place with the nForce3 motherboard, we probably would have ended in the same result. Our new SuSE sanctioned ATI configuration still uses the non-GPL fglrx driver (as opposed to the in-kernel radeon driver), but comes with a partially compiled kernel module and is compatible with SuSE's SaX2 configuration. X must be configured with the line below in order for the game to correctly load the DRI driver:

# init 3
(login)
# sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx -b /usr/X11R6/lib/sax/profile/firegl

Enabling 3D acceleration (DRI) still needs to be done manually by editing the /etc/X11/XF86Config file after running the SaX2 utility. Enabling FSAA must be done by editing the XF86Config file by hand as well (see our AA/AF section for details). After a little more than 8 hours of playing with configurations, we hit paydirt.

linux:~ # glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2

All in all, just getting the ATI drivers on something that isn't Red Hat feels like way too much work for basic OpenGL support. Keep in mind that we even run SuSE, a RPM derivative - not too different from Red Hat. Even after we got the ATI fglrx drivers working correctly, we had a couple of issues with screen corruption and poor resizing. Below, you can see a screen grab from our ATI frame buffer playing Unreal Tournament at 800x600. The image should not be surrounded by a black border, but rather, stretched to the limits of the screen.





Click to enlarge.


Another issue that we came across with ATI's was the lack of 64-bit Linux drivers. ATI has no 64-bit drivers for Linux, yet they have 64-bit Windows binaries. Thus, our benchmarks are limited to 32-bit binaries only.

Let's talk about Drivers The Test
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  • TheWounded - Monday, November 1, 2004 - link

    Its a nice test but i would have loved to see how the XGI volari cards would have done.
    I'm interested if the volari's could be a good choice for linux gamers. But unfortunatly there are no linux benchmarks involving the volaris.

  • henca - Thursday, October 7, 2004 - link

    This was a very nice comparision of mid- and high-end cards. It would be interesting to also see a comparision with low-end cards like Matrox G550, Intel Extreme graphics and the Radeon 9200 family.

    The good news about these cards is that they are all supported by the opensource DRI drivers. An up-to-date Linux distribution should support them out of the box without having to download and install any binary drivers.

  • MNKyDeth - Tuesday, October 5, 2004 - link

    I am a Linux gamer only so a benchmark comparison like this is great. I really enjoyed reading it. But, imo, there was a lack of games included in the benchmark roundup. I would like to see Savage, NWN, and either quake3 or Heretic 2 shown aswell.

    I also do not like the showing of wineX (Cedega) benchmarks as it defeats the purpose the gaming on linux. The only way I could recomend anyone to use wineX (Cedega) is if they don't own a copy of windows. If you do own a copy of windows do not use wineX for pete's sake, just dual boot, it is the better emulator after all.

  • jerrysiebe - Tuesday, October 5, 2004 - link

    For anisotropic filtering, I did a strings search in libGL and came up with something.

    >strings /usr/lib/libGL.so | grep ANISO
    __GL_LOG_MAX_ANISO

    Setting that, I can see a visible difference and get a FPS hit, so I believe it works. On my GF4 4200, I can set __GL_LOG_MAX_ANISO to 1, 2, and 4 and see the difference. Set to anything else I get no anisotropic filtering.

  • Thetargos - Monday, October 4, 2004 - link

    Excellent article, just a comment on the NVIDIA uninstaller... it plainly doesn't work as it should. The prlblem is that it substitutes (like the ATi driver) some libraries in the system, but unlike ATi's driver, NVIDIA's driver also makes a change in one library used for the Direct Redering Infrastructure, libdri.a specifically. So uninstalling the drivers with NVIDIA's uninstaller this won't be reverted (re-install of the XFree86 package or Xorg package is required, note only the core package is need).
    In favor of ATi's driver, the uninstallation is much easier and the system is restored to its previous stage, restoring the backup copy of libGL.so.1.2 that is the only system library it overwrites.

  • plamalice - Monday, October 4, 2004 - link

    The Nvidia AGPgart driver is causing problems with ATI cards (perhaps other non-nVidia card as well) on both Win and Linux when used on an nForce based mobo (of course). Nforce3 (150, pro150) have both caused me problems when using an ATI card until the gart driver was uninstalled.

    A poor attempt by nVidia to make ATI card appear unstable ? :P

    Anyways, if you have an nForce-based motherboard and an ATI gfx card, do not use nvidia's gart driver.

  • KristopherKubicki - Monday, October 4, 2004 - link

    directedition: i just symlink /mnt/cdrom to /media/dvdrecorder

    Kristopher

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  • mczak - Monday, October 4, 2004 - link

    "Keep in mind that we even run SuSE, a RPM derivative - not too different from Red Hat."
    That really doesn't make sense. RPM is just the package manager! If a dos version which uses rpm would exist, would you say that it is "not too different" too?

    "Below, you can see a screen grab from our ATI frame buffer playing Unreal Tournament at 800x600. The image should not be surrounded by a black border, but rather, stretched to the limits of the screen."
    This looks to me like you did not have configured 800x600 resolution in the Xfree config file (Sax2 will happily do that) - you cannot switch to fullscreen resolutions not configured usually with XFree/Xorg (though maybe the nvidia driver doesn't care).

    btw about aniso not working: I guess you could do that quite easily with framegetter? Just intercept the filter setting calls and replace them?
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