It does work though, which is more than good enough for say XBMC. I wouldn't recommend gaming with it though. ATi cards with the Radeon drivers are about as fast the Intel video chips.
It does work though, which is more than good enough for say XBMC. I wouldn't recommend gaming with it though. ATi cards with the Radeon drivers are about as fast the Intel video chips.
It's a damn good start.
On the other hand, it couldn't come close to handling this at its native resolution (640x480):
If you want games on Linux, don't bother with ATi. At least the Radeon drivers support XV output though, unlike the fglrx drivers.
According to the head ATi Linux dev, proper XV support isn't getting added anytime soon to the binary drivers. Proper video support in fglrx is not a priority to them, as the fglrx drivers are considered to be "workstation" drivers.
Nvidia is still your best bet in any case. VDPAU is awesome.
Isn't ATi the company that removed 2D rendering lines from all of their graphic cards, because it wasn't their focus anymore?
Their hardware is fast enough that they don't see much of a point in including dedicated 2D hardware, instead letting their drivers optimize 2D commands for the 3D hardware...which is plenty fast on their Windows drivers but slow on Linux. That, coupled with the fact that there isn't a whole lot of needed for 2D hardware (a lot of things we perceive as being two-dimensional is actually being rendered in 2D from a fixed point of view) is why they decided to kill it.
They actually are starting to use more of the code from their Windows driver for fglrx, and while it isn't enabled by default they introduced Direct2DAccel in Catalyst 10.2. If the name sounds familiar it's because Direct2D is a DirectX API.
Also, fuck Nvidia. I'll consider buying their hardware when:
They cut back power consumption
Generate less heat
Perform as well as ATi's offerings
Are priced more competitively with ATi's offerings
They stop being dicks about PhysX when you're using an ATi GPU for rendering
Barrakketh on
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
And yeah, I supposedly had an 'old' ATI Mobility Radeon card and the performance that I got, even with 2D, was at times horrid, to put it nicely. It scarred me, and I have promised myself never to buy an ATI card again.
XV video is the primary video output API on X11. It's about 50% faster than OpenGL when playing videos.
Its main use today is to rescale video playback in the video controller hardware, in order to enlarge a given video or to watch it in full screen mode. Without XVideo, X would have to do this scaling on the main CPU. That requires a considerable amount of processing power, sometimes to the point of slowing down/degrading the video stream; the video controller is specifically designed for this kind of computation, so can do it much more cheaply. Similarly, the X video extension has the video controller perform color space conversions. It can also have the controller change contrast, brightness and hue of a displayed video stream.
Valve Corporation has today rolled out their Steam Mac OS X client to the general public and confirmed something we have been reporting for two years: the Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine are coming to Linux. This news is coming days after we discovered proof in Steam's Mac OS X Client of Linux support and subsequently found more Linux references and even the unreleased Steam Linux client. The day has finally come and Linux gamers around the world have a reason to rejoice, as this is the biggest news for the Linux gaming community that sees very few tier-one titles.
Those enthusiasts within the Phoronix community even managed to get the unreleased Steam Linux client running up to a partially drawn UI and other modifications, but now that work can stop as Valve is preparing to officially release the Steam Linux client from where they will start to offer Linux native games available for sale. For all those doubting our reports that Source/Steam would be coming to Linux, you can find confirmation in the UK's Telegraph and other news sites. An announcement from Valve itself is imminent.
Found already within the Steam store are Linux-native games like Unreal Tournament 2004, World of Goo, and titles from id Software such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Doom 3. Now that the Source Engine is officially supported on Linux, some Source-based games will be coming over too. Will we finally see Unreal Tournament 3 surface on Linux too? Only time will tell, but it is something we speculated back in 2008. Postal III is also being released this year atop the Source Engine and it will be offering up a native client. We have confirmed that Valve's latest and popular titles like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2 are among the first of the Steam Linux titles, similar to the Mac OS X support. The released Linux client should be available by the end of summer.
I guess I'm not really that surprised. It was relatively easy after doing an OS X port, but still.. People say that all the time, but they're actually doing it. Aaaawesome.
Posts
It's a damn good start.
On the other hand, it couldn't come close to handling this at its native resolution (640x480):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYKLMCPyC2w
I wouldn't say it's usable for much more than compositing.
If you want games on Linux, don't bother with ATi. At least the Radeon drivers support XV output though, unlike the fglrx drivers.
According to the head ATi Linux dev, proper XV support isn't getting added anytime soon to the binary drivers. Proper video support in fglrx is not a priority to them, as the fglrx drivers are considered to be "workstation" drivers.
Nvidia is still your best bet in any case. VDPAU is awesome.
They actually are starting to use more of the code from their Windows driver for fglrx, and while it isn't enabled by default they introduced Direct2DAccel in Catalyst 10.2. If the name sounds familiar it's because Direct2D is a DirectX API.
Also, fuck Nvidia. I'll consider buying their hardware when:
It doesn't matter how awesome the hardware is if you can't use it.
And yeah, I supposedly had an 'old' ATI Mobility Radeon card and the performance that I got, even with 2D, was at times horrid, to put it nicely. It scarred me, and I have promised myself never to buy an ATI card again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_video_extension
Also, 4 of the 6 games being offered have gone Open-Source: Lugaru, Gish, Aquaria and Penumbra: Overture.
These guys are amazing. Does this mean we'll see these games on Linux repositories? Because that would be awesome!
STEAM IS COMING TO LINUX!
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1
edit: The client dl link is working again: http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux
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