2/3D rendering cards

matt sendtomatt at gmail.com
Sat Jul 28 00:58:35 UTC 2012


On 07/27/12 07:24, joaoBR wrote:
> Em Fri, 27 Jul 2012 06:49:23 -0600 (MDT)
> Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> escreveu:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, joaoBR wrote:
>>
>>>>> well all ati cards are PCIe and are supported, question is what
>>>>> capabilities they have with FreeBSD and new xorg-serevr
>>>> UMS is used for cards up to the 4000 series, but the driver wants
>>>> KMS for newer cards.  I mention PCIe because it may make a
>>>> difference, I also have PCI and AGP versions of various ATI cards.
>>>>
>>> do I understand this right? are you saying what you say "the driver
>>> wants" or that newer cards do understand KMS?
>>>
>>> for my understandings so far is no point to use xorg-server
>>> WITH_KMS (for ati) since ati cards are still not working with it
>> For 4000- or lower series cards, the radeon driver still can use UMS,
>> or KMS if available.  For 5000- and higher series cards, KMS is
>> required for either 3D acceleration (a few cards) or to work at all.
>> Later versions of the driver may remove UMS support for all cards,
>> which will make them useless until FreeBSD has ATI KMS support.
>>
> thanks for clarification
> in other words, the DRIVER requires KMS but since it is not available
> for any ATI card so far, it still is useless for ATI users. It only
> still works because the driver still accept UMS.
>
> what eventually means that ATI users should not upgrade to newer xorg
> until this situation change
>
>
>
>>> I think DontZap makes no sense anymore because it does not zap
>>> anymore with either setting ... does it work for you?
>> Yes, but only because 'setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp' is
>> in my .xinitrc.  Default is to have the option enabled but no key set
>> to activate it.
>>
> I will check this out
>
>
>>> so last question, kind of useless but do you use kde4? Is openGL
>>> (DesktopEffects) enabled and running fine?
>> No, I don't use KDE, it's just too much for me.  xfce4 with
>> compositing enabled so windows to go transparent when dragging.
> well, not so bad at all, xRender does transparency in KDE4 :)
>
>
> thanks!
>
For what it's worth a Radeon 4650 has been both cheap, accelerated and 
quiet for my basic desktop use (compiz, ioquake, native rtcw :), etc). 
This gives me hdmi, dvi and vga, where I can use VGA as one screen and 
either HDMI or DVI as the other. Mine's a powercolor Go! brand, but it 
doesn't matter...should be around $30-40 USD. Do not enable KMS, and all 
is well. It does take a while to switch back to syscons, especially if 
you are using a high resolution mode.
I can't wait to use newer cards when ttm is possible, but performance is 
not lacking with OSS drivers on the 4xxx radeons.

Matt


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