Ati support?

[LordofShadows]

I havent been keeping up with the latest developments with compiz/beryl, how is ati support now? I've used an nvidia card for a while and it worked great, (Until I broke it) but I'am now considering getting my last agp card before holding out for ddr3 and the new cpu sockets. (most likely x1950pro, maybe x1950xt if I can find a deal on it) Anyway, how well do things work for ati? --I dont really want to use xgl, but rather the method added in xorg 7.1+ (Believe it requires a gl compositing extension)

[crdlb]

Absolutely terribly. Because fglrx doesn't support AIGLX, you can't use it. Older ati cards are supported by the free driver which does support AIGLX, but nothing >X850 is supported.

[adamk]

Actually, thanks to ATI's bizarre naming scheme, the X1050 is supported. It's basically a PCIe rv370.

Adam

[BigFish]

Sorry I'm really a noob but what's the difference between XGL and AIGLX? I've got a new laptop with an ATI X1400 card and had to go the XGL route -- although it's a little more picky to configure [XGL] what are the main reasons for preferring one over the other?

[Photon]

What about the new driver of the 25.06?

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/ ... .38.6.html (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.38.6.html)

The X1900-Series is listed as supported here. Or is only 2D support meant? ^^

[LordofShadows]

xgl is a entire X display server and has the drawback of abstracting graphic card functionality away from the system. (ie you cant play newer games) AIGLX is an extension to X (incorporated into xorg 7.1 and above) that allows for compositing indirectly. (ie you can play newer games)

That's how I understand things, feel free to correct anything I said if it's wrong.
(btw I decided to go with a xfx 7950gt agp, should be here next week, it might have some driver issues with linux, I'm not sure, but I'll let you guys know.)

[s0l1dsnak3123]

trust me - it will :)

[SmSpillaz]

Sorry I'm really a noob but what's the difference between XGL and AIGLX? I've got a new laptop with an ATI X1400 card and had to go the XGL route -- although it's a little more picky to configure [XGL] what are the main reasons for preferring one over the other?

XGL works like this :

X Server -> FullScreenOpenGL Window -> Some hacks and stuff in between to make it work -> Another X server, inside that OpenGL Window.

This means that compositing managers can use the OpenGL window that XGL provides to manipulate the nested server. Sort of complicated, but it works in most cases because it just calls on normal card OpenGL rendering instead of complicating things in the DRI layer. The Drawbacks are two things really : 1) The redering two full X servers and an OpenGL window takes puts a lot of work on the graphics card, and changing window textures tend to put a lot of work on the CPU (ie scrolling, resizing etc) 2) If the card doesn't support it (And most cards dont / have limited support for it) the graphics card cannot render another OpenGL window inside an exisiting OpenGL window. (Needs pbuffer support). This can usually be fixed in the driver or the DRI layer, but if it is not there, the result is slow accelerated video and slow nested OpenGL.

AIGLX is different, it adds OpenGL support to the composite extension (Which is very complicated to explain) Only one X server is actually used, but all pixmaps and windows are rendered offscreen, the drawn onscreen with OpenGL. Yay :) The only drawback is that some things dont behave correctly, support for some openGL functions (Like pixel shaders on ATI) is missing and the cards driver needs to support DRI, to support AIGLX.

Hope that helped ;-)

-S

[djdoo]

@SmSpillaz:

Oh my God!!... ;)