5000 series card questions

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Alex,
>>>   So by modesetting do you mean width by height and bits/pixel, but
>>> nothing else?
>>>
>>
>> modesetting means that you can use all the outputs on your card,
>> enable dualhead, etc.
>>
>>>   I don't know how to assess whether a card is usable in that state.
>>> The Wiki does pretty clearly seem to stop at the HD4xxx series:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon
>>
>> http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
>> is probably more useful.
>>
>>>
>>>   I have no history of how long it takes to see acceleration start to
>>> be usefully functional. If I bought one of these cards today not
>>> caring about gaming then:
>>>
>>> 1) Is it useful and reasonably pleasant running a KDE desktop in a
>>> VERY high end processor machine? I expect it is.
>>
>> even without acceleration the driver is very usable for basic desktop tasks.
>>
>>>
>>> 2) How long might I wait to see 2D and then 3D start to be useful for
>>> games? 3 months? A year? I understand that never is a possibility but
>>> I'm not worried about that outcome.
>>
>> A few months I'd say for initial 3D driver.  Richard has already
>> started on the 3D driver and EXA/Xv support shouldn't take too long.
>> Fortunately we can leverage a lot of the work previously done for
>> r6xx/r7xx.
>>
>> Alex
>>
>
> Those answers and date estimates are completely acceptable. I'm there
> to help with running driver tests if you need it and can make it
> simple enough for a monkey on a rock. (me)
>
> I'm off to see what I can get a Fry's hoping  don't have to mail order.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
>

OK - I found a 5770-based card for a reasonable price so I've got it
in the machine and will work to start it up with X tomorrow.

thanks for your guidance.

cheers,
Mark