New Mesa/Nouveau brings support for Fermi cards to AROS!

[fishy_fiz]

No disrespect to the great work done on MOS 3d drivers and its 3d subsystem, but theyre a far cry from AROSes nouveau/gallium3d in some ways. Check out the graphics using pixel shaders in Assault Cube for example. Theyre simply not possible on Morphos (or OS4.x).  

Maybe people should learn what theyre commenting on before they comment?

Great work Deadwood.

[Crumb]

No disrespect to the great work done on MOS 3d drivers and its 3d subsystem, but theyre a far cry from AROSes nouveau/gallium3d in some ways. Check out the graphics using pixel shaders in Assault Cube for example. Theyre simply not possible on Morphos (or OS4.x).  

Maybe people should learn what theyre commenting on before they comment?

Great work Deadwood.

Both MorphOS 2D&3D drivers are far more stable than AROS ones. And also include overlay.

IMHO it's better to support few hardware pieces very well than supporting a wide range of hardware with less features than the hardware we used to have (PicassoIV/Cybervision3D already had Overlay 15 years ago)

I prefer having excellent support for a few ATI cards than supporting incompletely many brands&models.

BTW, good job, I'm happy for AROS users.

[Karlos]

:/ All this work on the latest-and-greatest nVidia cards and nouveau still doesn't have quality drivers for chipsets that have been around forever...

You are missing the point. Most people wanting to run AROS on PC will tend to have newer, not older equipment.

@nicholas

As for MorphOS, nVidia support would be nice but as all the newer cards tend to be PCIe, these advances are probably moot as there aren't any Macs supported by MorphOS that can take these cards. Unless I'm mistaken?

[EgillSkallagrimsson]

You are missing the point. Most people wanting to run AROS on PC will tend to have newer, not older equipment.

@nicholas

As for MorphOS, nVidia support would be nice but as all the newer cards tend to be PCIe, these advances are probably moot as there aren't any Macs supported by MorphOS that can take these cards. Unless I'm mistaken?

I have an 7800gs in my g4 powermac that I'd really like to try Morphos on one day.

[commodorejohn]

You are missing the point. Most people wanting to run AROS on PC will tend to have newer, not older equipment.

Well good for them. Meanwhile, I'm stuck choosing between getting a big-ass 15" Powerbook that I know will work for non-OSX purposes because it has a Radeon chipset, and getting a more manageable 12" one that I think will work, but it has a GeForce 5200 and I'm hearing mixed things about nouveau's support for that GPU. Old hardware doesn't just vanish into the aether, and some of us would actually like to make use of it.

[Crumb]

I have an 7800gs in my g4 powermac that I'd really like to try Morphos on one day.

There are chances that you'll be able to use a Radeon9700 or 9800 by Christmas but I doubt nVidia hardware is supported in the future due to his closed nature.

[paolone]

Both MorphOS 2D&3D drivers are far more stable than AROS ones. And also include overlay.

IMHO it's better to support few hardware pieces very well than supporting a wide range of hardware with less features than the hardware we used to have (PicassoIV/Cybervision3D already had Overlay 15 years ago)

I prefer having excellent support for a few ATI cards than supporting incompletely many brands&models.

BTW, good job, I'm happy for AROS users.

I'd like to know exactly how you can say MOS drivers are "fare more stable" than AROS ones just by adding that the latter don't support overlay (yet). MOS drivers may be more optimized due to the fact their development started far before the ones currently used by AROS, and that they are focalized on a lesser number of GPUS but... well, the world has a little changed in the meanwhile.

In the GPU market a graphic adapter gets old after 6 months and obsolete in 3-4 years. R200 cards (Radeon 7500/9200 and derivated) are now more than 10 years old, and dramatically less performant and feature-wise than current ones. You can't even compare their respective complexity. Short times between hardware refreshes means also a short time window for driver development, and common PC users are now expected to upgrade their video cards from time to time (generally speaking, every 24-30 months or so). How can you pretend to live with 10-years old sw/hw technologies forever in a similar market?

Gallium drivers might not be as optimized and fast like native ones (on the same platform), or like MOS R700 drivers in general, but they support far better and far more interesting technologies. The Nouveau driver might not support overlay at this stage (however, it's not only Nouveau culp), but Gallium supports shading language and as someone pointed before, it can be used to wrap Warp3D/Wazp3D functions over MESA, and hardware-accelerate all the applications using it on far more modern graphic cards.

I feel this a little more interesing than overlay, not counting that overlay is coming in the future, at least according to Nikolaos' efforts.

[Piru]

Gallium supports shading language and as someone pointed before, it can be used to wrap Warp3D/Wazp3D functions over MESA, and hardware-accelerate all the applications using it on far more modern graphic cards.

Are you saying that Gallium has OpenCL now? As far as I can tell the GPGPU acceleration currently depends on the closed source proprietary drivers provided by the vendors (nVidia, AMD), even on Linux.

If you're just talking about shaders, well I don't find them so exciting, at least when considering the monster cards such as Fermi. If hardly makes a difference if you can render your game in 60fps versus 600fps.

[Crumb]

I'd like to know exactly how you can say MOS drivers are "fare more stable" than AROS ones just by adding that the latter don't support overlay (yet).

I have said that AROS drivers are more prone to crash that MorphOS ones. And in addition to that AROS drivers don't even support overlay. Read again what I wrote because I have never claimed that something is less stable due to lack of overlay.

MOS drivers may be more optimized due to the fact their development started far before the ones currently used by AROS, and that they are focalized on a lesser number of GPUS but... well, the world has a little changed in the meanwhile.

MorphOS drivers are not only more optimized but also more stable, that's my point. On the other hand if Gallium ever got very fast and stable it could be ported to MorphOS. But right now it doesn't make much sense (after all you can't plug in PCIe cards to a powerbook)

In the GPU market a graphic adapter gets old after 6 months and obsolete in 3-4 years. R200 cards (Radeon 7500/9200 and derivated) are now more than 10 years old, and dramatically less performant and feature-wise than current ones.

AROS drivers don't even support features from 15 years ago so please stop propaganda about "new features". Overlay IS an important feature.

You can't even compare their respective complexity. Short times between hardware refreshes means also a short time window for driver development, and common PC users are now expected to upgrade their video cards from time to time (generally speaking, every 24-30 months or so). How can you pretend to live with 10-years old sw/hw technologies forever in a similar market?

Amiga is a hobby and I'm not much concerned about "markets" or pc upgrade cycles. If drivers supporting latest features were so important for me I would be using Windows. Don't get me wrong, the more modern supported cards the better, but I prefer to have very good drivers instead of many modern cards half-supported.

MorphOS users interest is with R300 cards right now since that's what is included with Powerbooks and it's easy to plug these cards on Powermacs too. More modern cards may be interesting in the future but not right now.

I feel this a little more interesing than overlay, not counting that overlay is coming in the future, at least according to Nikolaos' efforts.

Better late than never :-)

[commodorejohn]

How can you pretend to live with 10-years old sw/hw technologies forever in a similar market?

Who's pretending? I've been living with outdated machines for a long time now. The newest thing I own is my Eee, which is coming up on three years old (four since the model's release, IIRC) and was underpowered even then. It suits my needs beautifully. I have a Power Mac G5, that has way more horsepower than I need, and it works just fine for me. Not all of us feel the compulsion to keep up with the absolute latest and greatest.

[Karlos]

Are you saying that Gallium has OpenCL now? As far as I can tell the GPGPU acceleration currently depends on the closed source proprietary drivers provided by the vendors (nVidia, AMD), even on Linux.

Well, OpenCL is an open standard, but implementations are obviously proprietary.

If you're just talking about shaders, well I don't find them so exciting, at least when considering the monster cards such as Fermi. If hardly makes a difference if you can render your game in 60fps versus 600fps.

One thing to remember is that OpenCL is merely a different programming interface to the same shader hardware (admittedly a much more convenient one and one that's becoming increasingly specialised) that regular shader programs use. Many compute tasks have actually been implemented using nothing more than basic GLSL.

It's gone now, but fractal.io (video here) was a fantastic demonstration of what can be achieved with nothing more than opengl shaders.

[XDelusion]

Ha ha ha...

I should really watch what I say and how I say it. I didn't mean to turn this into a MorphOS vs Aros debate.

[paolone]

I have said that AROS drivers are more prone to crash that MorphOS ones. And in addition to that AROS drivers don't even support overlay. Read again what I wrote because I have never claimed that something is less stable due to lack of overlay.

Ok, I had read wrong.

MorphOS drivers are not only more optimized but also more stable, that's my point. On the other hand if Gallium ever got very fast and stable it could be ported to MorphOS. But right now it doesn't make much sense (after all you can't plug in PCIe cards to a powerbook)

But there are Macs with Nvidia cards and you definitely don't need PCI Express to mount GeForce FX card, nor you need PCI Express for GeForce 6 and 7 carda, since there are (have been) AGP models available.

AROS drivers don't even support features from 15 years ago so please stop propaganda about "new features". Overlay IS an important feature.

It's important on low performance systems where 2D acceleration and video decode (which work with overlay) can help the central processor pleaying video clips. It's lesser important with strong CPUs which can easily decode a HD movie at full screen resolution without noticeable lost of frames. Honestly, sometimes I feel the need for overlay on my AROS netbook, but really rarely on my desktop systems. Anyway, overlay should come in the future, so I wouldn't cry too much about it.

Amiga is a hobby and I'm not much concerned about "markets" or pc upgrade cycles. If drivers supporting latest features were so important for me I would be using Windows. Don't get me wrong, the more modern supported cards the better, but I prefer to have very good drivers instead of many modern cards half-supported.

I can bet this will change the day MorphOS will be able to support Radeon HD and GeForce cards too.

MorphOS users interest is with R300 cards right now since that's what is included with Powerbooks and it's easy to plug these cards on Powermacs too. More modern cards may be interesting in the future but not right now.

Are you KIDDING or what?

Better late than never :-)[/QUOTE]

[paolone]

Are you saying that Gallium has OpenCL now? As far as I can tell the GPGPU acceleration currently depends on the closed source proprietary drivers provided by the vendors (nVidia, AMD), even on Linux.

If you're just talking about shaders, well I don't find them so exciting, at least when considering the monster cards such as Fermi. If hardly makes a difference if you can render your game in 60fps versus 600fps.

What does OpenCL have to do with Warp3D/Wazp3D I was talking about?

Anyway, to answer to your question: AROS won't have OpenCL until someone will write a implementation of OpenCL for Gallium 3D. The good news, however, is that's technically feasible.

[Piru]

What does OpenCL have to do with Warp3D/Wazp3D I was talking about?

Not much. I can't understand which Warp3D/Wazp3D applications you're talking about. Surely all AROS applications are using full blown OpenGL API rather than the half assed Warp3D one? I don't even remember any significant W3D applications barring some boring game ports and couple of scene demos. Accelerating those isn't that big of a selling point IMHO.

Anyway, to answer to your question: AROS won't have OpenCL until someone will write a implementation of OpenCL for Gallium 3D. The good news, however, is that's technically feasible.

Actually it has been worked on already, at least in part. I haven't heard anything about it for some time however.

[HenryCase]

Actually it has been worked on already, at least in part. I haven't heard anything about it for some time however.

Work on OpenCL on Gallium3D is still progressing, last commit was only 4 weeks ago:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~steckdenis/clover/

Phoronix.com is probably the best place to read about updates to Gallium3D, here's a OpenCL on Gallium3D news story from a couple of months back:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTgwOQ

HTH.