Yes, the 179.art is several factor quicker on the US3 than any other processor. Hmm. I think if you knock it off, it drops their SPEC fp score by like 20% and it looks very ordinary all of a sudden.
Especially considering Intel, IBM, IBM and Alpha can all do 1000+ Spec FP easily!
Oh no, another one who thinks the 970 is god's gift to processors.
The PPC970 wit its Power4 core, clocked at 1.6GHz completely trashes a 3GHz P4. Faster bus, faster integer, and completely outclasses the P4 for FPU and SIMD.
Ok, if the 970 is so fast, how come it doesn't beat the P4@3GHz SPEC figures then?
Running at 1.8 GHz on a 0.13-micron process, the PowerPC 970 is estimated to deliver 937 SPECint2000 and 1051 SPECfp2000. By comparison, the current 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 achieves 1085 SPECint2000 Base and 1092 SPECfp2000 Base.
Of course, since then, Intel have released an even quicker P4 with a faster bus which has even higher SPEC int/fp. If you read the above link, click in on the benchmark link in the top right and you can search SPEC scores. I think you'll find Intel owning the SPECint benchmarks with the P4.
And of course, the 3.2GHz P4 is due out on Monday.
And the G4 isn't the most efficient processor out there either for the desktop market. I think you'll find the Opteron has a much better SPEC figure at the same speed than the G4/970.
Of course, Apple don't publish G4 SPEC figures do they. I wonder why?
Do you even know what you are talking about? The P4 BETTER than the 970? What a laugh. Just because you can link a little doesn't mean you are accurate.
I'm sorry, this isn't about which is designed better. The P4's pure clock speed means it is better. Have you seen it's SPEC figures recently? Yeah, it is a crap design but it was design to clock fast and then it is a very useful processor.
I agree with the post under yours, you did a disservice to your post by lumping all the processors together like you did. Were you fired from IBM or something?
I refer you to the SPEC fp figures from the Opteron/P4 and the Alpha/Itanium2. And no, I've never worked for IBM either but I think the P4+ is a very nice processor.
And let's be honest. Opteron/P4 is a low end sever and Alpha, P4 & I2 are all high end server. They deserve to be grouped as I did.
And yes, why wouldn't they make it as good or better than there servers, it's in a totally different market.
Because they'll make more money on the P4+.
This is also why both AMD & Intel have a different line of desktop and workstation/server processors.
I'm not going to defend the Itanium. It was a good idea really trying to break with x86, they just didn't do it very well (took too long, too expensive, no backwards compatability worth talking off, too compiler dependent, etc).
As for SPEC scores? Yeah, I know they are not the be all and end all. But everyone is going to cook them, and there is no smoke without fire either. If a machine does get good SPEC scores then it probably is good, but it'll be dependent on what YOU want to use it for that will make the final decision.
AMD & Intel both ship processors which use SSE2, and there are millions of these things being sold all the time. There is a very good reason to use SSE2 - have you seen Lightwave benchmark with SSE2 enabled? It flies. Altivec is better than SSE2 IMHO, but there is still a large enough clock difference that it doesn't matter. Intel have also been spending lots on their compiler to support SSE2.
As for bandwidth and latency? I think you'll find Opteron can pretty much match anything the 970 can do. Also has the advantage that they exist for us to buy (I've got one at work).
There have been no official 970 benchmarks out yet. It is just hype currently. I personally think it will be a good processor, and it will bring Apple/PCs much closer together in compute power but x86 is still going to be faster.
It's SPEC figures are good. But they are below the P4 and Opteron which you can easily go out and buy right now of course.
It is also a lot lower the real big machine like the Alpha, Itanium 2 and IBM's own Power4. I think IBM would be very silly if they produced a desktop processor that was a lot faster than their top end server processor!
Yes, and it is Intel's fault entirely. The problem is the architecture of the Pentium 4, it is very bandwidth hungry and very cache hungry. A good reason why Intel bumped the L2 cache of the Pentium 4 from 256k to 512k very quickly after it's launch - it was getting killed by AthlonXPs still, just as the Pentium 3 before it.
With only 128k L2 cache and a slow FSB, it is too easy to cache starve it and it simply does lots of NOPs at 2GHz+ whilst waiting for memory. Where the Penitum 3 P6 architecture wasn't so cache sensitive it didn't matter so much. Nor did it for the Athlons which is why the Durons are still good systems.
These Celerons are bad though. I'd never get one! Then again, I use AMD anyway which is cheap and runs well. And before anyone else says it, the newer Pentium 4s do run hotter than the latest Athlons.
I think you'll find it is NVIDIA-AMD-LINUX and not ATi. I don't recall any ATi chipsets working on AMD, nor do I recall Nvidia's chipsets working on Intel's chipsets (we'll exclude that X-Box as that isn't a PC, it is a console that happens to be quite like a PC).
Having said that. In 32-bit land, Intel have been doing well for themselves recently and have taken over the speed crown in x86 land as it stands currently. This is a set back for Intel though as AMD's new baby might take the speed crown back, we'll find out in just over a week....
I'm a skilled Solaris sysadmin and I still think it sucks. I much prefer the install on the RH servers we've got here. Even on Solaris 9 it is basic at best.
I can't believe you think an OS which lets you break itself is actually good. What if Windows did allow removal of IE and broke itself? You'd complain! Whilst the superuser should have full control, the ability to break the system by adding/removing components isn't one they should have. People do make mistakes, and people will not understand every inch of Solaris.
And to prove you know nothing - Sun GNOME is still beta? *ahem*
As I understand it, NPTL is part of glibc 2.3.x and has nothing really to do with the kernel. The other part of increasing the speed of Linux threads is the O(1) scheduler in the 2.5.x kernel. In a real world, you'll need both but either one will help the situation.
With both, Linux should scale very well as long as the hardware is up to it.
I like RH putting NPTL threads, hopefully it'll force people to get good threading code in so when we get the new scheduler we can run MT apps like there is no tomorrow.
This is possibly, and it has been done as well. The blessed Amiga had an expansion card with an 68060 @ 50MHz on it as well as a choice of PPC chips, inc a 604 @ 200MHz.
The 060 would run the OS and could spawn threads onto the PPC chip. So the OS remain on it's native 68k platform whilst PPC could also run if written specifically for it.
Given the P4 and Itanium are both Intel, like the 68k and PPC are both Motorola, then I believe they could make it work if they really wanted to. Those Amiga cards were not cheap, not that anything was on an Amiga mind from a hardware point of view!
I can't comment on what AMD was 10 years ago, but last year AMD certainly where the best x86 CPU you could get. Even know they are still really good, although the very high end P4s do have an advantage.
But on price/performance, they are still very very good.
But how is your comment about AMD 10 years ago relevent now? The computer industry changes in 10 months, let alone 10 years. The fact that AMD still exist is enough of a sign that AMD are doing well.
Just because AMD were bad 10 years ago, doesn't mean they are now.
I think you are being unfair here. I've got a Radeon 9000 PRO and I've found both the Windows and Linux drivers to be of very good quality. Don't think I've ever had any instability problems with either set-up (apart from the normal Windows stability, or lack of, of course).
This used to be the case in the past, but they are much better now. Not Nvidia quality, not yet, but they are getting there.
I'd love it if they'd release an open source linux driver though, that'd be cool!
I've got to agree with this. I think RC5-64 proved the point it was very difficult to crack. Unless we get a new method of attack then it is going to take a/very/ long time. Or we all get G4s as they seem rather quick as this sort of thing!
Personally, I gave up at the end of RC5-64 and I'm using Folding at Home instead. Should be more useful than RC5, and Seti too....
Mine is a Sapphire card as well, but obviously being a 9000 PRO it is quite different. I've not had any problems at all though since I started using the ATi drivers which is very good. They are very quick in 2D and 3D which is very pleasent. Although I've not tried anything serious in 3D yet, like Quake 3.
I'm running XFree86 4.2.0, the standard RH8 install so it may be worthing trying a newer version of XFree86 (4.2.1 is current) if you continue to get these problems with the mouse pointer. I certainly don't have them.
The main problem is that we are going to have to go through this everytime ATi release a driver. Hopefully they'll remove this check in the future!
I've got a OEM 9000 PRO from ATi and it refused to work initially:
(--) fglrx(0): Chipset: "Radeon RV250 If" (Chipset = 0x4966) (--) fglrx(0): (PciSubVendor = 0x148c, PciSubDevice = 0x2039) (--) fglrx(0): board vendor info: third party grafics adapter - NOT original ATI (--) fglrx(0): Linear framebuffer (phys) at 0xd8000000 (--) fglrx(0): MMIO registers at 0xe9000000 (--) fglrx(0): ChipRevID = 0x00 (--) fglrx(0): VideoRAM: 131072 kByte (64-bit DDR SDRAM) (EE) fglrx(0): board/chipset is not supported by this driver (third party board)
I quickly came to the conclusion that the ATi drivers don't like non-ATi cards. I did a bit of searching and I found a solution - I did not find this myself!
Install and configure the drivers as per normal. Also, I suggest you download "hexedit" from freshmeat.net as you'll need it. You'll then need to hexedit this file:/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.o
To let it accept non-ATi boards, hexedit the file at offset 0x626e and alter "74 44" to "90 90" and save changes and away you go. Since making this change only, my 9000 PRO now works fine under RH 8.
This means no Vesa drivers! It means no more 60Hz screen refreshes! It means for GL acceleration. Run "glxinfo" for some information on the status of OpenGL and maybe "glx_gears" to actually test it. It should run very quickly.
Yeah, you could try Vulpine GLMark - it seems to be ok for this sort of thing.
Link!! Having said that, it seems down currently as I can't get to it (argh, pre-slashdot effect?;-) ). Give it a try anyway!
There were some stack issue reguarding 3.0.x with the kernel. Maybe 3.0.4 has them fixed or you are just getting lucky but there was a good reason why no major distro shipped kernels using 3.0.x. or 3.1.x and it was only until 3.2 that they started appearing. As the major difference between 3.1 and 3.2 was a fixed C++ ABI then I believe 3.1 would be ok for kernels as well.
I wouldn't recompile a kernel unless I had to really, no matter what gcc does - that is assuming you are not having any strange problems. New bugs can creep into the gcc code as well, so you'd need to be careful. It is only since gcc 3.2 that some distros (RH & MDK & others?) have even started using the 3.x series for kernel compiles. The kernel can be very sensitive to compiler issues.
As for MMX? Hmm, I'm not sure if I would. I'm not sure the kernel would benefit from any compiles like that anyway. Also, given MMX, SSE, etc have all seen compiler issues that have since been fixed in 3.2.1 it might be worth waiting a bit longer until we are sure the code for MMX is safe.
Having said that, day to day (I run 3.2) here is what my default CFLAGS are set to for my Athlon:
I'm not using the FireGL drivers, I'm using the ATI drivers. They must have come from the FireGL drivers. If you look up, it does list the RV250 as a supported card so it certainly should work. I wonder if they are detecting the wrong card or something like that.
I've got a CVS build of XFree86 working that supports my 9000, I might just use that. CVS DRI sounds like a possibility though.
I was rather happy about this, considering I was currently running a CVS build of XFree86 (4.2.99.2 I think) to get my Radeon 9000 working. So I switched back to Redhat 8's default XFree86 build (4.2.0) and gave it a go. And did it work? No! D'oh!
(II) FireGL8700/8800: Driver for chipset: ATI R200 QH (AGP),
ATI R200 QL (AGP), ATI R200 QT (AGP), ATI R200 BB (AGP),
Radeon RV250 If, Radeon RV250 Ig, Radeon RV250 Lf (M9),
Radeon RV250 Lg (M9), Radeon RV250 Ld (M9), Radeon R300-4P AD,
Radeon R300-4P AE, Radeon R300-4P AF, Radeon R300-4P AG,
Radeon R300 ND, Radeon R300 NE, Radeon R300 NF, Radeon R300 NG (II) Primary Device is: PCI 01:00:0 (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:0) found
Which is odd, considering it is there:
[richf@bagpuss ~]$ lspci -v | grep ATI 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 If [Radeon 9000] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA]) 01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 496e (rev 01)
I changed the PCI line in XF86Config to use 01:00:1 instead of 01:00:0 and it got further and seemed to detect my card nicely until right up to the end:
(WW) fglrx(0): Bad V_BIOS checksum (II) fglrx(0): Primary V_BIOS segment is: 0xc000 (--) fglrx(0): Chipset: "Radeon RV250 If" (Chipset = 0x4966) (--) fglrx(0): (PciSubVendor = 0x148c, PciSubDevice = 0x2039) (--) fglrx(0): board vendor info: third party grafics adapter - NOT original ATI (--) fglrx(0): Linear framebuffer (phys) at 0xd8000000 (--) fglrx(0): MMIO registers at 0xe9000000 (--) fglrx(0): ChipRevID = 0x00 (--) fglrx(0): VideoRAM: 131072 kByte (64-bit DDR SDRAM) (EE) fglrx(0): board/chipset is not supported by this driver (third party board) (EE) fglrx(0): PreInitConfig failed (EE) fglrx(0): R200PreInit failed (II) fglrx(0): === [R200PreInit] === end
Bastards! 3rd party board it is, but it is still your damned RV250 chip, so bloody don't try and use the R200 init. Duh.
There is one big difference between B5 & DS9.... B5 is/really/ good!! Seriously, it is the best sci-fi I've ever seen and I don't think DS9 is even in the same league. Ok, not as if I saw much of it beyond series 3 anyway I think although I caught the last episode. B5's series 2/3/4 are all just amazing, apart from the rushed ending of series 4 but that wasn't how it was going to be originally.
Slashdot Mirror
G5 is a marketing name. Do you mean Motorola's or IBM's part?
Besides, I prefer AMD!
Yup, that is the deal. I think the 179.art benchmark is the one at fault:
SPEC.
Yes, the 179.art is several factor quicker on the US3 than any other processor. Hmm. I think if you knock it off, it drops their SPEC fp score by like 20% and it looks very ordinary all of a sudden.
Especially considering Intel, IBM, IBM and Alpha can all do 1000+ Spec FP easily!
Ok, if the 970 is so fast, how come it doesn't beat the P4@3GHz SPEC figures then?
Ace's.
Of course, since then, Intel have released an even quicker P4 with a faster bus which has even higher SPEC int/fp. If you read the above link, click in on the benchmark link in the top right and you can search SPEC scores. I think you'll find Intel owning the SPECint benchmarks with the P4.
And of course, the 3.2GHz P4 is due out on Monday.
And the G4 isn't the most efficient processor out there either for the desktop market. I think you'll find the Opteron has a much better SPEC figure at the same speed than the G4/970.
Of course, Apple don't publish G4 SPEC figures do they. I wonder why?
I'm sorry, this isn't about which is designed better. The P4's pure clock speed means it is better. Have you seen it's SPEC figures recently? Yeah, it is a crap design but it was design to clock fast and then it is a very useful processor.
I refer you to the SPEC fp figures from the Opteron/P4 and the Alpha/Itanium2. And no, I've never worked for IBM either but I think the P4+ is a very nice processor.
And let's be honest. Opteron/P4 is a low end sever and Alpha, P4 & I2 are all high end server. They deserve to be grouped as I did.
Because they'll make more money on the P4+.
This is also why both AMD & Intel have a different line of desktop and workstation/server processors.
I'm not going to defend the Itanium. It was a good idea really trying to break with x86, they just didn't do it very well (took too long, too expensive, no backwards compatability worth talking off, too compiler dependent, etc).
As for SPEC scores? Yeah, I know they are not the be all and end all. But everyone is going to cook them, and there is no smoke without fire either. If a machine does get good SPEC scores then it probably is good, but it'll be dependent on what YOU want to use it for that will make the final decision.
AMD & Intel both ship processors which use SSE2, and there are millions of these things being sold all the time. There is a very good reason to use SSE2 - have you seen Lightwave benchmark with SSE2 enabled? It flies. Altivec is better than SSE2 IMHO, but there is still a large enough clock difference that it doesn't matter. Intel have also been spending lots on their compiler to support SSE2.
As for bandwidth and latency? I think you'll find Opteron can pretty much match anything the 970 can do. Also has the advantage that they exist for us to buy (I've got one at work).
There have been no official 970 benchmarks out yet. It is just hype currently. I personally think it will be a good processor, and it will bring Apple/PCs much closer together in compute power but x86 is still going to be faster.
Sorry, that is just rubbish. The 970 is not the best processor ever evented. Check out this link:
970 news at Ace's
It's SPEC figures are good. But they are below the P4 and Opteron which you can easily go out and buy right now of course.
It is also a lot lower the real big machine like the Alpha, Itanium 2 and IBM's own Power4. I think IBM would be very silly if they produced a desktop processor that was a lot faster than their top end server processor!
Yes, and it is Intel's fault entirely. The problem is the architecture of the Pentium 4, it is very bandwidth hungry and very cache hungry. A good reason why Intel bumped the L2 cache of the Pentium 4 from 256k to 512k very quickly after it's launch - it was getting killed by AthlonXPs still, just as the Pentium 3 before it.
With only 128k L2 cache and a slow FSB, it is too easy to cache starve it and it simply does lots of NOPs at 2GHz+ whilst waiting for memory. Where the Penitum 3 P6 architecture wasn't so cache sensitive it didn't matter so much. Nor did it for the Athlons which is why the Durons are still good systems.
These Celerons are bad though. I'd never get one! Then again, I use AMD anyway which is cheap and runs well. And before anyone else says it, the newer Pentium 4s do run hotter than the latest Athlons.
What? You mean like this?
Sounds exactly like you are describing!
I think you'll find it is NVIDIA-AMD-LINUX and not ATi. I don't recall any ATi chipsets working on AMD, nor do I recall Nvidia's chipsets working on Intel's chipsets (we'll exclude that X-Box as that isn't a PC, it is a console that happens to be quite like a PC).
Having said that. In 32-bit land, Intel have been doing well for themselves recently and have taken over the speed crown in x86 land as it stands currently. This is a set back for Intel though as AMD's new baby might take the speed crown back, we'll find out in just over a week....
I'm a skilled Solaris sysadmin and I still think it sucks. I much prefer the install on the RH servers we've got here. Even on Solaris 9 it is basic at best.
I can't believe you think an OS which lets you break itself is actually good. What if Windows did allow removal of IE and broke itself? You'd complain! Whilst the superuser should have full control, the ability to break the system by adding/removing components isn't one they should have. People do make mistakes, and people will not understand every inch of Solaris.
And to prove you know nothing - Sun GNOME is still beta? *ahem*
No it isn't. It has been released.
It is a bit confusing.
As I understand it, NPTL is part of glibc 2.3.x and has nothing really to do with the kernel. The other part of increasing the speed of Linux threads is the O(1) scheduler in the 2.5.x kernel. In a real world, you'll need both but either one will help the situation.
With both, Linux should scale very well as long as the hardware is up to it.
I like RH putting NPTL threads, hopefully it'll force people to get good threading code in so when we get the new scheduler we can run MT apps like there is no tomorrow.
Godzilla of course, obviously he is currently running rampent over Japan!
You have seen the Simpsons episode where they go to Japan right?!
This is possibly, and it has been done as well. The blessed Amiga had an expansion card with an 68060 @ 50MHz on it as well as a choice of PPC chips, inc a 604 @ 200MHz.
The 060 would run the OS and could spawn threads onto the PPC chip. So the OS remain on it's native 68k platform whilst PPC could also run if written specifically for it.
Given the P4 and Itanium are both Intel, like the 68k and PPC are both Motorola, then I believe they could make it work if they really wanted to. Those Amiga cards were not cheap, not that anything was on an Amiga mind from a hardware point of view!
I can't comment on what AMD was 10 years ago, but last year AMD certainly where the best x86 CPU you could get. Even know they are still really good, although the very high end P4s do have an advantage.
But on price/performance, they are still very very good.
But how is your comment about AMD 10 years ago relevent now? The computer industry changes in 10 months, let alone 10 years. The fact that AMD still exist is enough of a sign that AMD are doing well.
Just because AMD were bad 10 years ago, doesn't mean they are now.
I think you are being unfair here. I've got a Radeon 9000 PRO and I've found both the Windows and Linux drivers to be of very good quality. Don't think I've ever had any instability problems with either set-up (apart from the normal Windows stability, or lack of, of course).
This used to be the case in the past, but they are much better now. Not Nvidia quality, not yet, but they are getting there.
I'd love it if they'd release an open source linux driver though, that'd be cool!
I've got to agree with this. I think RC5-64 proved the point it was very difficult to crack. Unless we get a new method of attack then it is going to take a /very/ long time. Or we all get G4s as they seem rather quick as this sort of thing!
Personally, I gave up at the end of RC5-64 and I'm using Folding at Home instead. Should be more useful than RC5, and Seti too....
Mine is a Sapphire card as well, but obviously being a 9000 PRO it is quite different. I've not had any problems at all though since I started using the ATi drivers which is very good. They are very quick in 2D and 3D which is very pleasent. Although I've not tried anything serious in 3D yet, like Quake 3.
I'm running XFree86 4.2.0, the standard RH8 install so it may be worthing trying a newer version of XFree86 (4.2.1 is current) if you continue to get these problems with the mouse pointer. I certainly don't have them.
The main problem is that we are going to have to go through this everytime ATi release a driver. Hopefully they'll remove this check in the future!
I've got a OEM 9000 PRO from ATi and it refused to work initially:
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.o
(--) fglrx(0): Chipset: "Radeon RV250 If" (Chipset = 0x4966)
(--) fglrx(0): (PciSubVendor = 0x148c, PciSubDevice = 0x2039)
(--) fglrx(0): board vendor info: third party grafics adapter - NOT original ATI
(--) fglrx(0): Linear framebuffer (phys) at 0xd8000000
(--) fglrx(0): MMIO registers at 0xe9000000
(--) fglrx(0): ChipRevID = 0x00
(--) fglrx(0): VideoRAM: 131072 kByte (64-bit DDR SDRAM)
(EE) fglrx(0): board/chipset is not supported by this driver (third party board)
I quickly came to the conclusion that the ATi drivers don't like non-ATi cards. I did a bit of searching and I found a solution - I did not find this myself!
Install and configure the drivers as per normal. Also, I suggest you download "hexedit" from freshmeat.net as you'll need it. You'll then need to hexedit this file:
To let it accept non-ATi boards, hexedit the file at offset 0x626e and alter "74 44" to "90 90" and save changes and away you go. Since making this change only, my 9000 PRO now works fine under RH 8.
This means no Vesa drivers! It means no more 60Hz screen refreshes! It means for GL acceleration. Run "glxinfo" for some information on the status of OpenGL and maybe "glx_gears" to actually test it. It should run very quickly.
Enjoy!
Yeah, you could try Vulpine GLMark - it seems to be ok for this sort of thing. Link!! Having said that, it seems down currently as I can't get to it (argh, pre-slashdot effect? ;-) ). Give it a try anyway!
There were some stack issue reguarding 3.0.x with the kernel. Maybe 3.0.4 has them fixed or you are just getting lucky but there was a good reason why no major distro shipped kernels using 3.0.x. or 3.1.x and it was only until 3.2 that they started appearing. As the major difference between 3.1 and 3.2 was a fixed C++ ABI then I believe 3.1 would be ok for kernels as well.
I wouldn't recompile a kernel unless I had to really, no matter what gcc does - that is assuming you are not having any strange problems. New bugs can creep into the gcc code as well, so you'd need to be careful. It is only since gcc 3.2 that some distros (RH & MDK & others?) have even started using the 3.x series for kernel compiles. The kernel can be very sensitive to compiler issues.
As for MMX? Hmm, I'm not sure if I would. I'm not sure the kernel would benefit from any compiles like that anyway. Also, given MMX, SSE, etc have all seen compiler issues that have since been fixed in 3.2.1 it might be worth waiting a bit longer until we are sure the code for MMX is safe.
Having said that, day to day (I run 3.2) here is what my default CFLAGS are set to for my Athlon:
CFLAGS=-march=athlon-xp -mfpmath=sse -mmmx -msse -m3dnow
I'd never use that lot to compile the kernel though, just whatever optimisations it turns on when you select your target processor.
I'm not using the FireGL drivers, I'm using the ATI drivers. They must have come from the FireGL drivers. If you look up, it does list the RV250 as a supported card so it certainly should work. I wonder if they are detecting the wrong card or something like that.
I've got a CVS build of XFree86 working that supports my 9000, I might just use that. CVS DRI sounds like a possibility though.
I was rather happy about this, considering I was currently running a CVS build of XFree86 (4.2.99.2 I think) to get my Radeon 9000 working. So I switched back to Redhat 8's default XFree86 build (4.2.0) and gave it a go. And did it work? No! D'oh!
(II) FireGL8700/8800: Driver for chipset: ATI R200 QH (AGP),
ATI R200 QL (AGP), ATI R200 QT (AGP), ATI R200 BB (AGP),
Radeon RV250 If, Radeon RV250 Ig, Radeon RV250 Lf (M9),
Radeon RV250 Lg (M9), Radeon RV250 Ld (M9), Radeon R300-4P AD,
Radeon R300-4P AE, Radeon R300-4P AF, Radeon R300-4P AG,
Radeon R300 ND, Radeon R300 NE, Radeon R300 NF, Radeon R300 NG
(II) Primary Device is: PCI 01:00:0
(WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:0) found
Which is odd, considering it is there:
[richf@bagpuss ~]$ lspci -v | grep ATI
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 If [Radeon 9000] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 496e (rev 01)
I changed the PCI line in XF86Config to use 01:00:1 instead of 01:00:0 and it got further and seemed to detect my card nicely until right up to the end:
(WW) fglrx(0): Bad V_BIOS checksum
(II) fglrx(0): Primary V_BIOS segment is: 0xc000
(--) fglrx(0): Chipset: "Radeon RV250 If" (Chipset = 0x4966)
(--) fglrx(0): (PciSubVendor = 0x148c, PciSubDevice = 0x2039)
(--) fglrx(0): board vendor info: third party grafics adapter - NOT original ATI
(--) fglrx(0): Linear framebuffer (phys) at 0xd8000000
(--) fglrx(0): MMIO registers at 0xe9000000
(--) fglrx(0): ChipRevID = 0x00
(--) fglrx(0): VideoRAM: 131072 kByte (64-bit DDR SDRAM)
(EE) fglrx(0): board/chipset is not supported by this driver (third party board)
(EE) fglrx(0): PreInitConfig failed
(EE) fglrx(0): R200PreInit failed
(II) fglrx(0): === [R200PreInit] === end
Bastards! 3rd party board it is, but it is still your damned RV250 chip, so bloody don't try and use the R200 init. Duh.
Anyone got any help for me here?
There is one big difference between B5 & DS9.... B5 is /really/ good!! Seriously, it is the best sci-fi I've ever seen and I don't think DS9 is even in the same league. Ok, not as if I saw much of it beyond series 3 anyway I think although I caught the last episode. B5's series 2/3/4 are all just amazing, apart from the rushed ending of series 4 but that wasn't how it was going to be originally.
I've completed GTA3, and it does have a sniper rifle! Some missions you have to use it as well....