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Graphics Software AMD Upgrades Linux Business Linux

AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go 352

Michael writes "Back in September AMD had announced a new ATI Linux driver as well as opening up their GPU specifications, and today they have taken an additional step to better support the Linux OS. With the just-announced Radeon HD 4850 RV770 they have provided same-day Linux support, and the Linux driver is now shipping alongside the Windows driver on their product CDs. In addition, they are encouraging their AIB partners to showcase Tux on the product packaging as a sign of Linux support. Last but certainly not least, AMD is committed from top-to-bottom product support on Linux and they will be introducing high-end features in their Linux driver such as MultiGPU CrossFire technology. Phoronix has a run-down on AMD's evolutionary leap in Linux support along with information on the open-source support for the RV770 GPU."
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AMD's New Card Supports Linux From the Get-Go

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  • But.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sdsucks ( 1161899 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:48PM (#23866167)
    I wasn't even aware they supported windows? At least that has been my experience with their horrible drivers.
    • Re:But.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by negRo_slim ( 636783 ) <mils_orgen@hotmail.com> on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:57PM (#23866311) Homepage

      I wasn't even aware they supported windows? At least that has been my experience with their horrible drivers.
      Odd I've found Catalyst releases to be the better of the two heavy weights. Not great since they've both aimed to become more than the simple dialog boxes needed. Especially on older hardware... You can hard boil an egg by the time Nvidia control panel launches on my girlfriends 750mhz duron w/ a nvidia 6600. Funny that, the driver options run slower then any currently installed program on it!
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Machtyn ( 759119 )
        On a 750MHz Duron, I would not use the latest nVidia drivers. And, IMO, the 6600 is being wasted on a slower system. I really hope you are not running any OS newer than Win2000, as WinXP is too "feature" laden to run decently on anything slower than a 1500MHz CPU. ... In my opinion.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Nikker ( 749551 ) *
          I have a copy of XP running on a PII 400 w/384MB Ram. For surfing it works just fine. After you crop most of the networking services to do with remote access, themes, etc you can have a fairly functional web box. Even plays youtube and most flash video, chokes on big animations though.
      • Re:But.... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @10:12PM (#23868021) Homepage Journal
        SRSLY. Use an older driver for that machine, or look at the Omega Drivers, which are optimized and have cut-down control interfaces. What Machtyn said, a 6600 is wasted on that FPOS Duron. Something that old could be at home with an old GF4MX or Radeon 7000.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Ultra64 ( 318705 )

        do you use paypal or something similar? I can spot you the nickel so you can by a better computer.

    • by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:03PM (#23866389)
      There's likely to be quite a lot of shared code between their Linux and Windows drivers.

      People debugging their Linux rivers will often also be helping to debug their Windows drivers too!

      Hw vendors should really use OSS more to help them get more eyeballs on the code.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by code4fun ( 739014 )
        Agree. But, hardware vendors fear of disclosing too much info as that might give their competitors an edge.
        • by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:12PM (#23867101) Homepage Journal
          That arguement is getting old though. GPU's have become so complex that exposing the bare bones instruction set and how to code to the silicon doesn't give away trade secrets much more than publishing the latest x86 instruction set exposes Intel or AMD trade secrets.
          • by Eskarel ( 565631 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @09:27PM (#23867673)
            I think the bigger issue is or was, at least with graphics drivers, the optimizations in the drivers themselves.

            Nvidia uses basically the same driver for every card they've made, and a lot of times new drivers will give more performance to older cards(within reason of course). It's these optimizations they don't want seen, not the hardware itself.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) *

            The reason Nvidia and ATI never wanted to disclose drivers and APIs is that the drivers are the difference between a GeForce and a Quadro, or a Radeon and a FireGL.

            • by drachenstern ( 160456 ) <drachenstern@gmail.com> on Thursday June 19, 2008 @10:00PM (#23867935) Journal
              That's funny, I always heard the vendors say that they didn't have the authority to give away the IP that they licensed to build their cards in the first place.

              How many video cards do MPEG decoding? Did you think that service was free? There is a lot of IP in most video cards, and all of that IP is either owned by nVidia or AMD/ATI, or by someone else. AMD/ATI or nVidia could surely give their own IP away (be silly to, but sure) but they can't legally break an NDA companywide.
              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                AMD/ATI or nVidia could surely give their own IP away (be silly to, but sure) but they can't legally break an NDA companywide.

                Sure, but they're both in a very good position to negotiate whatever contract terms they desire.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) *

                Since when was the MPEG decoding algorithm a secret?

                • by profplump ( 309017 ) <zach-slashjunk@kotlarek.com> on Thursday June 19, 2008 @11:42PM (#23868781)

                  Since it was convenient to use that as a reason not to open-source the drivers.

                • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                  by Anonymous Coward

                  It's not a secret at all. The problem is this. [mpegla.com] Distributing a software or hardware implementation requires paying a royalty for using the patents. It's (part of) the reason for off-shore sites like Debian-multimedia. [debian-multimedia.org]

                  What I don't know is why the patents would prevent them from releasing their driver code. If the decoder is implemented in hardware there shouldn't be much code for it in the driver. Honestly, I would expect most of the licensed IP would be on the hardware side of things. But then agai

  • linux games (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wikes82 ( 940042 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:49PM (#23866181) Homepage
    how many native linux games are there that can utilize it ? nevertheless, it's a start for linux gaming. Hopefully more and more games ported to linux
    • by Facetious ( 710885 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:52PM (#23866239) Journal
      Well, at least 42.
    • Re:linux games (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:00PM (#23866341)
      But there are a lot more then games in Linux that needs good 3-D drivers, compiz-fusion to name one. Granted it might be nearly useless when it comes to productivity, but it is one major thing to convince people to use Linux rather then Windows and if you can demonstrate it easier with a Ubuntu live-CD rather then an install, more people will use Linux.
      • Re:linux games (Score:5, Insightful)

        by InlawBiker ( 1124825 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:04PM (#23867029)
        I disagree that Compiz is nearly useless. It's very easy to switch desktops and find other windows while developing. It's almost as useful as a 2nd monitor.

        In fact, Linux support is my #1 deciding factor in deciding on a laptop or video card. Like a lot of others I dual-boot, XP for gaming, Ubuntu for all else. Since nvidia & ATI are nearly equal, dollar for dollar, for gaming then Compiz support becomes the default deciding factor.

        ATI supporting Linux opens up a whole world of, for instance, new laptop choices. The cheap embedded GPUs in the laptops will run Compiz without sweating.
        • by acidrain ( 35064 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @11:27PM (#23868671)

          ATI supporting Linux opens up a whole world of, for instance, new laptop choices.
          And this is where things are headed -- cheap laptops, specifically with reasonable graphics and in the developing world. By encouraging Linux on laptops AMD/ATI moves the market to what they think they can dominate. They are hoping to realize the benefits of the AMD/ATI merger this way.
    • by Max Littlemore ( 1001285 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:05PM (#23866415)

      For me, compiz fusion has become really useful. My widescreen notebook has limited vertical screen real estate, so the ability to get rid of the bottom bar and use window scaling to find running apps is great. The ability to fade windows and look underneath them is also great. Up until recently, I have bought nVidia, because while the drivers are non free blobs, they have tended to just work. Now that's changing and this additional step in promoting Linux support means that the next graphics I buy will ATI.

      I don't really play games except occasionally and the games that are available for Linux are more than enough. It's the advertised support for desktop effects and apps like blender that has me sold, but maybe the fact that they are pushing for Tux to be included on the box means that the mindshare has increased to the point where more games will follow.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by strabes ( 1075839 )

        the ability to get rid of the bottom bar and use window scaling to find running apps is great.
        You could have just moved the task list to the top panel. That's what I did for about two years.
    • Re:linux games (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NoobixCube ( 1133473 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:06PM (#23866431) Journal
      Quake 4, Doom 3, Quakewars:ET, just to name a few. In recent years (particularly from id), we've seen huge increases in developers supporting Linux natively, or at least with a WINE wrapper, the way EA does it. Now with more than half of the video card market supporting Linux, developers won't be so hesitant to make a native Linux client for their games. Plus there's those Linux users who need a decent video card to use Blender. Now they're not restricted to nVidia cards.
    • by Hatta ( 162192 )
      Anything that uses OpenGL. It should even work with wine. Not to mention compiz.
  • Demand? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by halsver ( 885120 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:50PM (#23866207)
    Somehow I don't see very many linux user's picking these up for their machines. Maybe in 2-3 years when the price-point comes down.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      well, gatta start somewhere
    • Re:Demand? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lolocaust ( 871165 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:56PM (#23866303) Journal
      Most of us dual-boot, especially for games. For everything else, there's Linux and it's good to know that driver support isn't half arsed for once (barring the fact that it's probably the binary only driver on the CD).
      • Why would it be binary? They have GPL drivers, and they have opened specs. Binary drivers would be stupid.
      • Where did you get this fact from -- "most of us dual-boot"? I've never heard that before. And who do you mean by "us"? Home desktop PC users who use Linux, I assume?
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      I will be getting one.
    • Demand? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TransEurope ( 889206 ) <eniac.uni-koblenz@de> on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:15PM (#23866557)
      My choice in the last 5 years were cards by Nvidia only. The reasons are obvisouly. Their drivers work (on Linux).
      I also prefer cards without active cooling and ATI ist known for many cards with passive cooling which consume low power.
      So, if the drivers they made are pretty good, especially the OpenGL implementation (i write simple OpenGL programs and i use Blender),
      they could be a very good choice for me. But after years of bad experiences with ATI on my Linux-powered notebooks,
      i'm sceptic and wait until the responses to their drivers are positive.
      I don't want slow, errorneous and CPU-intensive 3D-support through DRI again.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    They're bothering to ship Windows drivers? People actually still use Windows? I don't believe it!

    Seems like they actually did get the memo this time: '2008 is the year of the Linux desktop'.
  • Signs (Score:4, Funny)

    by FinchWorld ( 845331 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:56PM (#23866305) Homepage
    So they're opening up parts of the specification and trying to support Linux from day one?

    Isn't this one of the first signs of the apocalypse?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 )

      Isn't this one of the first signs of the apocalypse?


      The other signs include, among other things, chairs flying at a respectable altitude over Seattle.

      /P

  • by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @06:57PM (#23866315)

    Is nVidia even paying attention to this, or are they just going to let AMD have the majority of the Linux graphics market?

  • high-def features? (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:01PM (#23866363)
    will there REALLY be accel HD video support?

    hell, even on windows xp nvidia (piss be upon them) has not released accelerated video drivers for their year-old 8series cards!

    I was one of the suckers who bought an 8-series thinking the 'hardware accel' onboard would finally solve my HD playback tearing issues. nvidia is infamous for video stutter and tearing unless you use 'magical commercial' dvd playback programs. the regular free ones don't seem to have the magic and the magic is NOT in the xp driver, that's for sure. and there's no way in hell I'm going to convert to vista just to get their new driver support. so basically, I have a 'fast frame buffer' in the 8series card but there's a whole lot of hardware that is sitting idle due to their 'push' to vista and how they want to force the DRM of vista on people.

    ATI was worse; but maybe things have changed? I simply want to have glitch-free playback of HD sources on some kind of video card and NOT be locked into vista or commercial players.

    but for now, I've settled on the popcorn hour [popcornhour.com] box. it Just Plain Works(tm), is fanless and does NOT care about which OS you use to serve networked files to it.
    • by Fweeky ( 41046 )
      Huh, my 8800GTS plays back 1080p just fine using MPC, ffdshow and XP, provided you're using Overlay or Haali's renderer. Do you have a dinky single core CPU or something?
      • Huh, my 8800GTS plays back 1080p just fine using MPC, ffdshow and XP, provided you're using Overlay or Haali's renderer. Do you have a dinky
        single core CPU or something?


        8800 is a big card. I am using a fanless 8500 (I think its that model). basically the lowest 8series asus that is fanless and has the 'magic chip' for hw decode on it.

        I use mpc. I did turn off overlay and used VMR7 or 9.

        now, you mentioned all this 'other stuff' and THAT is my issue! why should you have to use haali render or anything lik
  • i heart this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QX-Mat ( 460729 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:03PM (#23866393)
    i don't run a linux system at home. I'm a gamer during the evenings, and an OpenGL programmer and law student during the day time. There has simply been no need for me to. Since term ended I decided to give my beloved KDE ago and try out KDE 4.0 using Kubuntu via the Wubi installer. Fantastic package... it all went swimmingly well

    Until... The proprietary nvidia driver decided its automatic screen mode (res and refresh rate) was best, and ignored any attempt to add a modeline to xorg.conf. I had to (gasp) look at the back of my monitor and add the v and h frequencies myself. Sadly the nvidia driver simply ignores my monitors EDID.

    I've been a long long proponent of "if it works" proprietary drivers in the kernel, such as nvidia's, providing they are robust and either equally or a more significantly more beneficial component to the system than others more important. But that was back when I accepted the fact there was an amount of tinkering to be done, or there was an amount of work to be done to glue things together. As the linux "system" becomes better at handling things automatically, the flaws in proprietary drivers are becoming less forgiveable because they are a bottleneck. When proprietary pieces of technology can't be glued together because they're at fault, I begin see the issues. In my case the nvidia driver finally became a more significant hindrance to my system, than a graphically accelerated benefit when correctly configured.

    It's finally the time to say the bottleneck in Linux on the desktop is edging towards drivers, so very slowly.

    Matt
    • What version of X are you using? Why on earth are you adding modeline(s) to xorg.conf? I don't think your problem relates to the nvidia driver... but to X itself or misinformation.
    • In my case the nvidia driver finally became a more significant hindrance to my system, than a graphically accelerated benefit when correctly configured.

      In my case, the issue is with the screensaver, either gnome-screensaver or xscreensaver. When I try to come back from it, either the computer hangs with the disk light flashing, or I get a mouse cursor over the (stopped) screensaver. Sometimes I can get to an alternate TTY to kill either Xorg or compiz, and log in again, but sometimes I have to reboot.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )

      It's finally the time to say the bottleneck in Linux on the desktop is edging towards drivers, so very slowly.

      I've been using Linux since 2000 and for me it's ALWAYS been drivers.
      Modem drivers when I was dual booting mandrake and win 98.
      ATI drivers when I was dual booting SuSE and Win XP.
      A combination of WiFi drivers and some lingering video driver problems now that I'm triple booting Ubuntu, XP, and Vista.

      Virtualization, Wine, and the fact that a lot of great software has been developed on and ported to Linux has eliminated most of the other small problems.

  • finally (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smadasam ( 831582 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:04PM (#23866403) Homepage
    This sounds like a complete about face from a few years ago. I stopped completely using ATI products a few years ago when the fire drivers did funny things with the frame buffer object, and the official line was that there was no plan to have it ever fixed in the Linux drivers. I will have to reconsider my position now.
  • by twljagflba ( 1110935 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:09PM (#23866469)
    Phoronix already got the Radeon HD 4850 working with the open-source "Radeon" driver too: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12503 [phoronix.com]
  • H.264 decoding? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chx1975 ( 625070 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:14PM (#23866555)
    It's time finally there is some HW accelerated H.264 on Linux. Intel is def. on it, I read something on FFmpeg mailing list maybe this or around http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2008-February/042269.html [mplayerhq.hu] post.
  • I can't really say much more than that.

    This is good news for the Linux crowd.
  • by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:21PM (#23866631)
    While I applaud AMD with this development, I am still waiting for a [fully] supported TV card on the Linux platform. That is 100% supported.

    Hauppauge cards are supported to some extent but getting their remote controls to work is a pain in the butt, even on MythTV based distros!

    In fact, getting the remote control to work is more of an exercise in frustration than anything else.

  • by Sark666 ( 756464 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:31PM (#23866739)
    From the article:

    "AMD's proprietary driver is now on par with NVIDIA's Linux driver"

    That's a bold statement my friend. Granted, they've made huge leaps over their pos drivers of not too long ago, but I think it's a little too soon to make a claim like that.

    Just look at the known issues with the latest driver:

    Moving the mouse or tapping a key may fail to close an OpenGL screen-saver and bring the user back to the x desktop.

    Hmm, can't rely on stopping an opengl screensaver... that's not too good.

    And looking at what's just fixed in this driver:

    Quake 3 Arena (demo): Segmentation faults no longer occur when attempting to play the game.

    Quake3: Corruption is no longer noticed when changing the display resolution when the game is running.

    Wow, they just got quake3 working. Hey, we all know quake3 pushes opengl to it's limits and this is to be expected.

    Don't mean to bash on them as it's great they are doing this. As far as buying an ati card, I've gone from when hell freezes over to cautious optimism.

    But as I said, things are looking a lot better and I'll definitely consider ati for my next purchase, I just wouldn't run out and do it tomorrow.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by sowth ( 748135 )

      It is not too soon. I'm guessing you haven't tried the Nvidia driver on linux, because compared to what I have experienced, the ATI bugs you listed don't sound very bad. I had to turn off all the features and I am afraid to try anything which may be out of the ordinary on my Nvidia machine because it risks constant crashes. My machine with intel graphics may not allow mplayer to play in the root window, but at least it doesn't completely crash the system hard.

      Running a linux system with the proprietary Nv

  • by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:41PM (#23866845)
    Tux Racer is going to kick so much ass on the new AMD/ATI 4870 card with these new drivers!
  • After AMD bought ATI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by C_Kode ( 102755 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @07:45PM (#23866881) Journal
    After AMD bought ATI and make claims that they were going to go full bore and fully support Linux I said. "When I see it, I will believe it."

    Well, today I make the shift from Nvidia to ATI. I stuck with Nvidia because I had didn't have much trouble getting OpenGL apps to work in Linux and I hear horror stories about ATI and Linux.
  • by Culture20 ( 968837 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:00PM (#23867003)
    Now I have to eat my hat.
  • by overtly_demure ( 1024363 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:07PM (#23867061) Homepage Journal
    By this time in 2010 or so there will be a flood of El Cheapo GNU/Linux boxes, laptops, mini-notebooks, handhelds, appliances, vibrators, toasters, shoe horns, you name it.

    AMD wants in on that stuff.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by symbolset ( 646467 )

      Don't forget the supercomputer geeks. I'm sure they'd like to write an order for 4000 of those Tflop graphics cards and 2000 maxed out server procs to the guy that wants to be number one on Top500.org next year.

      Supercomputer geeks don't run windows.

  • by strabes ( 1075839 )
    Good job ATI; you're finally allowing people to use your products with whatever operating system they want. ATI should NOT be applauded for this. Full linux support should be expected from all hardware vendors, no exceptions. This is too little, much too late.

    After spending two years battling fglrx for basic features like compositing and suspend-to-ram I've already moved on and committed to never purchasing another ATI product again. Have they even fixed suspend-to-ram in the pathetic fglrx blob yet? I wo
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:11PM (#23867093)
    You need to support it with your buying decisions.

    AMD is without equal in the x86 space right now in terms of openness. They release specs, and they write and release code. All the Family 10 support in coreboot (a.k.a. Linuxbios) was written by AMD employees. We saw this open approach earlier with the K8, then Hypertransport, then the Geode CPUs used in the One Laptop Per Child, now we see the same trend in graphics. AMD is on a roll right now with openness.

    I just, yesterday, downloaded the "BIOS programmers guide" for the AMD FAM10. This is the kind of information that few vendors release.

    If you care about having this kind of access to hardware specs, you need to vote -- with your purchasing $$$. AMD has taken a huge gamble on openness. Keep that in mind next time you need a machine.

    Ron Minnich (who forgot his password)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:19PM (#23867139)
    It's worth noting that the 4850 is apparently quite the speed demon when it comes to Windows games too, and a very good choice at $199 (for reference, the GTX 260 and GTX 280 are the brand new $400/$649 nvidia cards).

    Anandtech [anandtech.com]
    Tech Report [techreport.com]

  • This could be big (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:21PM (#23867175)

    they are encouraging their AIB partners to showcase Tux on the product packaging as a sign of Linux support
    If manufacturers start branding stuff as "works with Linux" it would do several thing:
    1. Make it easier for people who are running to find a retail upgrade (wanna see what I mean? Try finding a Linux supported scanner at a retail shop)
    2. Increase exposure for the "brand" - That bored sales rep will notice the new logo (nothing to do on those long spans when the store is dead but check out the merchandise boxes). Next time someone opens up with "Hey I'm looking for product x for Linux" the consumer will get a response other than "Can't help you".
    3. Encourage more manufacturers to support Linux out of the box (hey if it helps sales...)

    Lastly people will start asking about the cute penguin on the box! It's a huge win!
  • Good news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lord Juan ( 1280214 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:23PM (#23867185) Homepage
    Well, I am one of the Linux users who has been avoiding ATI as well, mostly due to the horror stories. I have live some myself (thx Atheros wireless), and now I do check how well is the support of the hardware in Linux before make a purchase.

    Until now, at least the NVidia drivers works fairly well, so NVidia has been my choice.

    But, if ATI is really opening up like this, and NVidia doesn't open up, most likely ATI will be my next graphic card when I get a new comp in the next months.
  • AMD Support (Score:5, Funny)

    by hackus ( 159037 ) on Thursday June 19, 2008 @08:45PM (#23867377) Homepage
    Its....sniff.......ahem....beautiful man.....sniff....just ...just beautiful.

    Oh God anyone got a hanky?

    -Hack
  • by BLKMGK ( 34057 ) <morejunk4me.hotmail@com> on Thursday June 19, 2008 @10:13PM (#23868031) Homepage Journal
    Do you get HD acceleration offloading computation from the CPU? If so is it supported by the likes of ffmpeg etc.?

    Lots of folks using the XBMC Linux port have had NOTHING but problems with ATI, meanwhile NVIDIA is damn near PnP using ENVY to load their drivers. Frankly I do not care wo's card I buy, I want it to properly support my HTPC setup and right now that is NVIDIA even though it's not got hardware acceleration working - I've got the CPU to decode it instead.
  • by tji ( 74570 ) on Friday June 20, 2008 @02:46AM (#23869751)

    The summary, claiming linux drivers on par with Windows seems to be overstating it a bit. From what I can see, there is still no sign of being able to use all the video acceleration capabilities of their cards.

    So, what else are they offering? I guess it must be full 3D acceleration capabilities. That's great for all those linux 3D games, but what I want is a card that will offload decoding of high definition MPEG2 and H.264 decoding.

    Their hardware supports it, but still no signs of Linux support.

    I guess if VAAPI ever matures, along with improved Linux driver support, the Intel integrated video will be better than anything ATI or even Nvidia can offer for Linux.

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