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AMD Releases 3D Programming Documentation
Michael Larabel writes "With the Free Open Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) starting today, where John Bridgman of AMD will be addressing the X.Org developers, AMD has this morning released their 3D programming documentation. This information covers not only the recent R500 series, but goes back in detail to the R300/400 series. This is another one of AMD's open source documentation offerings, which they had started doing at the X Developer Summit 2007 with releasing 900 pages of basic documentation. Phoronix has a detailed analysis of what is being offered with today's information as well as information on sample code being released soon. This information will allow open source 3D/OpenGL work to get underway with ATI's newer graphics cards."
I'm the owner of 5 boxes all with Nvidia graphic cards.
... until I found out that Nvidia doesn't time its
I've been using only Nvidia cards since 2000 because they had
the best 3D graphics card for my Linux box. I was willing to deal
with binary drivers because there was nothing else available to me
at my price range (loooow budget) for 3D graphics.
But.... over the years I would get burned every now and then
when
1) I would upgrade the kernel and then the X server would get borked
because the Nvidia kernel module didn't match the new kernel, or
2) Some funky memory leak in the binary Nvidia module would lock
up my box hard because of some damn NvAgp vs. Agpart setting or
some funky memory speed setting. Of course, this didn't happen with
every Nvidia driver so of course I wouldn't bother writing down
what it took to fix the problem.
Finally when I switched to Debian Linux in fall 2004 and had
beautiful apt-get/synaptic take care of all of my needs I thought
I was done
driver releases with kernel releases so if I wanted to upgrade
my kernel painlessly with apt-get/synaptic I would have to
wait for Nvidia to get off it's damn rocking chair playing their
damn banjo and release a driver to go with the newer kernel.
The final straw for me was when all of my 5 nvidia cards were
now listed in the "legacy driver" section. Can you guess what
"legacy driver" means about Nvidia fixing their closed source
driver? Yeah, that's exactly the point.
That's when I started looking around for open source 3d drivers.
I know about Nouveau for Nvidia, but frankly I'm too pissed off
about Nvidia to consider them. Ati had a long history of treating
Linux customers like second class scum. Intel on the other hand
earned the "golden throne" by providing full open source for their
graphic chipsets. So now that I'm looking for getting a dual core
64 bit cpu + 3D graphic chipset the only viable choice was intel,
which I was happy to do business with.
Now that Ati has decided to come forth with 3D documentation I'm
willing to give an intel/ATi or AMD/Ati combo serious consideration.
Way to go ATI!!!!