xorg's radeon driver (was: Re: [ltp] switch between clone mode and second screen)

Uwe Walter linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:23:03 +0100


On Mi, 2005-02-09 at 16:03 -0800, obi wrote:
> Great job on the radeon driver!

I would like to emphasize this.

Kudos to its developers!


After suffering just too long from ATI's fglrx driver and staring two
months on an external panel connected via VGA (because of the broken
DVI), I went through the (not too big) hassle, finally installed XOrg on
my debian system and gave the open source radeon driver a new try.


* DVI works (how wonderful a sharp picture can be :-)),

* ACPI sleep and resume works

* The MonitorLayout options work (MergeFB, etc. However, I'm not
finished with my setup, so I'm listening very interested to the current
clone thread, as I would have pretty similar wished as Ulrich).

* [VMWare still works (critical for me)]


And it even seems, powersaving is not worse than with fglrx. Indeed the
whole Thinkpad seems to be one or two degrees cooler (GPU between
48-51=B0, where fglrx was between 50=B0-53=B0)! But these were only
preliminary tests, so take them with a big grain of salt!
(@Alex: You're responsible for DynamicClocks? Great job! :-))
Probably, this could be because


- 3D acceleration is gone, of course (Fire GL2, Radeon 9600)


Anything comes for a price and this is currently mine.

If only ATI would give out more docs to the radeon coders, then they
might even be able to fix this. ;-)

Regarding the "competition": The next release of ATI's fglrx is
scheduled for the current month and I hope the have fixed some of the
bigger issues and will surely give them a try. But anyhow:


I think, the open source radeon driver is a great work! :-)


Greetings, UW(e)