My own ATI card roundup

[Tom Horsley]

I didn't have time to fool with the test day for video, but I have
finally gotten around to checking out my personal collection
of ATI cards with latest fedora 13 updates, with these results:

RV410 [Radeon X700 Pro (PCIE)]
------------------------------

My main system uses an RV410 PCIE card. Lots of stuff works
fine on fedora 13 (in fact everything I actually use works
fine).  If I stress the card using the mesa-demos gltestperf
test, the whole system locks up and has to be power cycled.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=562607

This doesn't appear to have changed in f13, same thing happens
in f12.

Radeon R100 QD [Radeon 7200]
----------------------------

This is an insanely ancient card (an original ATI
All-In_Wonder).  Fedora 12 was the peak of performance for this
card. It actually worked a little. With Fedora 13, all I get is
a "No Signal" message from my monitor. (Which is all I got for
several releases prior to f12 as well :-).

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=522970

RV280 [Radeon 9200] (rev 01)
----------------------------

I think I remember trying this with the live CD in f12 with
very little success. It works better in fedora 13. It can
handle KMS, it can handle turning on compiz, but it starts
going funny in the head when I push things a bit:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=583319

[Adam Williamson]

On Sat, 2010-04-17 at 16:57 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
>  I didn't have time to fool with the test day for video, but I
> have
>  finally gotten around to checking out my personal collection
>  of ATI cards with latest fedora 13 updates, with these results: 
Thanks for the testing, and for filing bugs. Someone from Bugzappers -
possibly me :) - should follow up on the reports soon.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Bill Davidsen]

Tom Horsley wrote:

>  Radeon R100 QD [Radeon 7200]
>  ----------------------------
>  
>  This is an insanely ancient card (an original ATI
>  All-In_Wonder).  Fedora 12 was the peak of performance for this
>  card. It actually worked a little. With Fedora 13, all I get is
>  a "No Signal" message from my monitor. (Which is all I got for
>  several releases prior to f12 as well :-).
>  
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=522970
>   
Tom, does this card run in vesa mode?

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

[Tom Horsley]

On Mon, 03 May 2010 14:50:00 -0400
Bill Davidsen wrote:

>  Tom, does this card run in vesa mode? 
Yea, I just tried that the other day, and if I cobble
up an xorg.conf file and specify the vesa driver, I can
get video (but of course, vesa can't do the native
1920x1080 resolution, so I get stretched out 1024x768).

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2010-05-03 at 15:11 -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
>  On Mon, 03 May 2010 14:50:00 -0400
>  Bill Davidsen wrote:
>  
>  > Tom, does this card run in vesa mode?
>  
>  Yea, I just tried that the other day, and if I cobble
>  up an xorg.conf file and specify the vesa driver, I can
>  get video (but of course, vesa can't do the native
>  1920x1080 resolution, so I get stretched out 1024x768). 
There's no 'of course' about it, there's no intrinsic reason vesa
shouldn't be capable of the native resolution, and if you file a bug on
this, ajax will look at it. When I did that for the Vaio P, he fixed the
vesa driver to automatically run the P at its native 1600x768
resolution.

Of course, that won't make it faster. =)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Tom Horsley]

On Thu, 06 May 2010 01:46:11 +0100
Adam Williamson wrote:

>  There's no 'of course' about it, there's no intrinsic
> reason vesa
>  shouldn't be capable of the native resolution 
Then why doesn't it read the EDID info and just go ahead and do
native resolution? I thought the vesa driver was restricted
to the built-in list of vesa standard resolutions or maybe
mode setting via the BIOS (the BIOS on this video card
can't do 1920x1088 either, it fact if it tries to read the EDID
info it picks a mode the monitor can't display at all).

That's actually what I'd much rather have than a fast driver:
a driver that worked reliably in 2D at native resolution
all the time. Worry about speed and 3D much, much later :-).