5000 series card questions

[Alex Deucher]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:28 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   Sorry for the sort of vague nature of the questions here. I'm
> starting to look around for a new card. I would prefer fanless if
> possible and that limits my choices quite a bit.
>
>   In terms of performance with the Open Source ATI drivers how are
> the 5500 and 5600 series of chips? Are they well supported? Mostly I'm
> 2D with the hope of a little bit of gaming maybe once a month for a
> few hours. I'd like reasonable 3D performance down the road even if
> it's not there now.
>
>   I haven't found any 5700 or higher fanless cards yet but I haven't
> looked very hard.
>
>   How is the driver support these days for the 5500 and higher based
> cards? Anything I should watch out for? Any plans to support or not
> support either the 5570 or 5670 series? Is the 5670 noticeably better
> for gaming? I presume they're all about the same for getting KDE up on
> the screen?
>

Evergreen cards (HD5xxx) have modesetting support only at the moment
in the open source driver.  Acceleration support has been started and
will come eventually.

Alex