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

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.