AMD to open up graphics specs [LWN.net]

AMD to open up graphics specs

Posted Sep 5, 2007 16:33 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: AMD to open up graphics specs by cathectic
Parent article: AMD to open up graphics specs

The situation with R3xx and R4xx hardware is that you can get a fairly decent basic driver from X.org, and a lot of the improvements needed are blocked by lack of developer time or hardware to test with rather than particularly by lack of documentation (although there is no official ATI/ AMD documentation for this hardware).

On a Radeon X600 mobile variant in a laptop I'm using to post this for instance I seem to have an Xv scaler and overlay (ie accelerated video playback) and enough 3D to play Quake 3 Arena adequately, though I don't have a mouse plugged in so I got my backside handed to me when I just tried it. The card should be capable of more, but not a huge amount more (mostly more features rather than better performance).

If you have an R3xx or R4xx and thought it didn't work with Free drivers, upgrade to the latest available and try it out for yourself.

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AMD to open up graphics specs

Posted Sep 5, 2007 17:02 UTC (Wed) by cathectic (subscriber, #40543) [Link]

To clarify - I am well aware of the current position regarding the reverse
engineered R300 & R400 drivers (I currently run them on my laptop with a
Mobility X700).

I would disagree with you on 3D performance though - I believe there is a
lot more that can still be done there on the free side, especially if AMD
are prepared to release the specs on these cards (also, full specs for
things like controlling PowerPlay - I know about "DynamicClocks", but
DynamicClocks != PowerPlay by a long shot).

My question was more to do with the fact that - is there any reason why
AMD cannot open up the R300 and R400 specs as well (this announcement only
says "R500 and newer" - is this an oversight, or is there some other
problem with releasing the older specs?), rather than continue to make
life more difficult that it already is for the reverse engineers and
developers?

AMD to open up graphics specs

Posted Sep 5, 2007 17:25 UTC (Wed) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link]

Probably because they're not selling r300/400 hardware anymore? Or at least not enough to justify the effort of providing the specs? Remember, it's likely that there is no existing formal specification, just lots of internal e-mail between the hardware and driver developers. One can't really blame them for spending the effort on future hardware rather than "old stuff".

AMD to open up graphics specs

Posted Sep 5, 2007 19:42 UTC (Wed) by AWJ (guest, #47173) [Link]

AMD's website still lists the X1050 and 9550 (both R300-based cards) as current products, and all of their integrated GPUs are either R300 or R400 based.