Hi, I recently switched to the opensource driver for my ATI 9200SE, since the ones from ATI didn't work with the DVI output (although the changelog said somthing of the issue being fixed). So now in a simple app that displays a 3d model with ~10k tris, the framerate halfes when I enable a simple light (48 fps vs 95fps without lighting. And it doesn't matter if I use display lists, vertex arrays or just do imidiet mode drawing. So, is the opensource driver performance realy that bad? Should I look through my code again or am I completely disilusioned about the performance my gfx card should have?

Unfortunately open source drivers generally do not have the 3D acceleration that ATIs proprietary drivers have. I'd recommend retrying with the latest ATI drivers, know at least one person who has gotten a DVI working on an ATI with the latest drivers.

Tried the ATI driver and it does not work with DVI on my card. There i a known bug with the 9200 SE that was supposed to be fixed in the latest version. And somehow it seems it was replaced with a new one. Instead of a blank screen when starting the X server you get a messed up display :-/

I don't actualy care that much about performance at the moment and I am certenly not giving up DVI (if you've seen what difference it makes you know why). So the ATI driver is no option at the time beeing. It seems to me quite strange, that a basic thing as lighting isn't realy supported by the OS driver (which has 3D acceleration for all ATI cards up to 9250, IIRC). Atleast it doesn't seem to be done in hardware.

The Linux ATI drivers should support your card. A quick google will help.

when I had an ATI card I found the OS drivers had much better 2D support, but when it came to 3D they were absolutely horrid compared to the propietary ones, but for some reason really don't like the SE line of cards..

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Original post by Ilici The Linux ATI drivers should support your card. A quick google will help.

It does support it and it works fine with VGA. It doesn't work with DVI and thats my problem.

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eedok ...but for some reason really don't like the SE line of cards..

me neither, but it has to do till I get a new one. The 9600 series seems to become afordable (< 100 Euro). Maybe I should just invest a few bucks and get rid of this crap. I would stick with my old Nvidia GF2 if it wasn't for the DVI...

The most recent (CVS) DRI drivers actually beat the closed source drivers in performance in some limited cases. Most likely the problem in your case is that the closed source drivers can use hardware TCL in your program, while the open source drivers can't - possibly due to missing documentation.

cu,
Prefect