3D Archive

Memory Management for Graphics Processors

Submitted by inkslinger 2007-11-15 3D 4 Comments

"The management of video hardware has long been an area of weakness in the Linux system (and free operating systems in general). The X Window System tends to get a lot of the blame for problems in this area, but the truth of the matter is that the problems are more widespread and the kernel has never made it easy for X to do this job properly. Graphics processors have gotten steadily more powerful, to the point that, by some measures, they are the fastest processor on most systems, but kernel support for the programming of GPUs has lagged behind. A lot of work is being done to remedy this situation, though, and an important component of that work has just been put forward for inclusion into the mainline kernel."

Students Design Open Source Video Card

Submitted by anonymous 2007-11-10 3D 26 Comments

With the Open Graphics Project advancing slowly a few students picked up the idea to do it all smaller, faster, and more importantly, cheaper. From the site: "We'd love to have an OGD1 card and are amazed by it's specifications, but for us and a lot of people, this card is simply too much. So that's where this card comes in, to give you all the fun of developing on programmable hardware, designing video cards and architectures, for a price that won't hurt your wallet."

nVIDIA Introduces the ‘Enthusiast System Architecture’

Submitted by null_pointer_us 2007-11-05 3D 9 Comments

"Today, with the coming introduction of the NVIDIA 780i chipset, NVIDIA is looking to make serious changes to what is possible with enthusiast systems by launching a new technology platform. The name of the new standard is ESA - Enthusiast System Architecture. Its goal is to provide information and control to enthusiasts not just for NVIDIA motherboards and video cards, but to provide that information and control for many other components in an ESA-enabled system. The actual protocol is OS independent. This is very important for the future of ESA, as it will eventually allow ESA to operate with any platform."

AMD 8.42 Linux Driver Brings Fixes, Aiglx

Submitted by pixelnate 2007-10-23 3D 50 Comments

~~Ati~~ AMD has released a new version of its graphics drivers that fix some long overdue bugs. "Today it's now time where the fglrx driver reaches yet another milestone. Not only does today's release address many of the outstanding bugs for the earlier GPU generations while also introducing a few new features, but it also delivers AIGLX support! Yes, you read that right. You can finally run your ATI graphics card with the fglrx driver and run Compiz, Beryl, or Compiz Fusion without using XGL!"

Nouveau Driver Q&A

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2007-09-03 3D 26 Comments

"On the Phoronix Forums we have been running a Q&A with the developers of the Nouveau project. For those out of the loop or new to Linux, the Nouveau project aims to provide an open-source 2D/3D graphics driver for NVIDIA hardware. After collecting a number of questions from our readers, KoalaBR and Marcheu have answered these questions. The questions range from whether there will be open-source SLI support to asking if NVIDIA has ever contacted the Nouveau developers."

OpenGL 3 Announced

Submitted by irbis 2007-08-12 3D 96 Comments

The OpenGL Architecture Review Board officially announced OpenGL 3 on August 8th 2007 at the Siggraph Birds of a Feather (BOF) in San Diego, CA. OpenGL 3 is the official name for what has previously been called OpenGL Longs Peak. OpenGL 3 is a true industry effort with broad support from all vendors in the ARB. The OpenGL 3 specification is on track to be finalized at the next face-to-face meeting of the OpenGL ARB, at the end of August. This means the specification can be publicly available as soon as the end of September, after the mandatory 30 day Khronos approval period has passed. Also presented were the changes to the OpenGL Shading Language that will accompany OpenGL 3. For more details check here, here and here.

Dell Wants Better ATI Linux Drivers

Submitted by David Lin 2007-07-26 3D 44 Comments

"Dell knows it won't happen overnight, but along side wanting to ship audio/video codecs, Intel Wireless 80.211n support for Linux, Broadcom Wireless for Linux, and being able to ship notebooks and desktops with Compiz Fusion enabled, Dell would like to see improved ATI Linux drivers."

DirectX 10 is Doable on Windows XP?

Submitted by netpython 2007-07-12 3D 169 Comments

"DirectX 10 would not work with XP, and that was fine and dandy. It was an honest technical reason why you could not backport DX10 to XP without a major rip and replace operation. Microsoft wasn't going to bend on this one at all." More here.

Nouveau: Where It Stands Today

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2007-06-30 3D 15 Comments

"The last time we had written an article on Nouveau, the community project working on developing an open-source 3D display driver for NVIDIA hardware, was this past January after being enlightened by glxgears finally being able to run on NVIDIA's NV4x GPUs. Since then many developments have occurred with this open-source NVIDIA driver as we have covered in several news postings. In this article today we will share with you where the Nouveau project stands today from a user perspective as well as testing out the driver on a few more NVIDIA systems."

Mesa 7.0 released

Submitted by liquidat 2007-06-27 3D 16 Comments

On June 22nd Mesa 7.0 was released, featuring OpenGL 2.0 and 2.1 support among other features.

NVIDIA Graphics: Linux vs. Solaris

Submitted by Michael 2007-06-24 3D 22 Comments

"At Phoronix we are constantly exploring the different display drivers under Linux, and while we have reviewed Sun's Check Tool and test motherboards with Solaris in addition to covering a few other areas, we have yet to perform a graphics driver comparison between Linux and Solaris. That is until today. With interest in Solaris on the rise thanks to Project Indiana, we have decided to finally offer our first quantitative graphics comparison between Linux and Solaris with the NVIDIA proprietary drivers."

The Open-Source ATI R500 Driver

Submitted by Michael 2007-06-19 3D 12 Comments

"Last week the first open-source ATI R500 driver had entered the world. This new driver (named the xf86-video-avivo) is very early into development, but a small set of developers have been working on reverse engineering this GPU class for the past couple of months. This driver does not yet contain any 3D functionality or support for features that most end-users expect. At this point, the driver just contains very basic initialization and set video mode support for a portion of the Radeon X1000 family. Even with this very basic R500 driver, we couldn't help but to explore the Avivo driver for the past few days."

GPUs & Beryl: What Is Needed?

Submitted by Michael 2007-05-27 3D 68 Comments

"We thought it was already clear what graphics processors and drivers work and don't work with Linux desktop eye candy such as Beryl and Compiz, but it seems based upon the number of e-mails we have been receiving along with messages in community bulletin boards that the line isn't so clear after all."

What Happened to XGI Graphics?

Submitted by Michael 2007-05-15 3D 8 Comments

"XGI Technology is still in business, but what has happened to them? We once saw hope in them for providing discrete graphics processors to take on the NVIDIA and ATI duopoly, but they have since discontinued their Volari 8 series. While they're no longer producing these desktop chips, they remain an active player in the server and embedded graphics industry - accompanied by their OSS driver."

AMD Radeon HD 2900XT Preview

Submitted by Michael 2007-05-14 3D 9 Comments

"It's late, but it's finally here. This morning AMD will be formally announcing their long-awaited Radeon HD 2000 series, or perhaps better known as the ATI R600 GPU. The AMD Radeon HD 2000 series features DirectX 10.0 (well, for those that use Microsoft products), Avivo HD, a programmable tessellation unit, CrossFire support, and much more. This morning we have our technology preview of ATI/AMD's next generation GPUs along with what's in store for Linux and the R600 series support." Update: AnandTech has a 31-page review of the R600.

Windows 32bit, 64bit Drivers for 3Dfx Range Appear

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-07 3D 36 Comments

3Dfx died in the fourth quarter of 2000 and Windows XP came to life a year after. But seven years after, drivers for 3dfx cards still appear. First of all, it is nearly incredible that enthusiast community managed to support an operating system which was still in the works. Secondly - it is incredible that drivers that support both 32- and 64-bit Windows have just came out.

X.Org 7.2: ATI Open vs. Closed Drivers

Submitted by Michael 2007-02-06 3D 37 Comments

"Last October we had compared the performance of the open-source R300 display driver against the closed-source fglrx driver for ATI Radeon graphics cards. In that comparison a Mobility Radeon X300 was used with X.Org 7.1, but we have decided to take another look at this driver comparison under X.Org 7.2. In this last comparison, the fglrx binary blob had greatly outperformed the open-source driver. While the fglrx driver remains faster, has the performance delta between these two drivers decreased?"

XGI Technology Drivers Revisited

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2007-01-02 3D 14 Comments

"It has been one year to the day since XGI Technology had last released a Volari Linux display driver and about 14 months since we had first delivered word of XGI considering open-source 3D display drivers. Where do things now stand for XGI Technology? We will tell you all of the details today where things are for this Taiwan graphics company."

Nouveau: First Look at Open-Source 3D NVIDIA Drivers

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2006-12-25 3D 65 Comments

"Nouveau is a community project that is working on producing open-source 3D display drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards. Nouveau is not affiliated with Nvidia Corp and is an X.Org project. While this project is still far from being completed, for this holiday special we are sharing some of our first thoughts on this project from our experience thus far. We would like to make it very clear, however, that the Nouveau driver is no where near completed and still has a great deal of work ahead for the 3D component. This article today will also hopefully shed some light on the advancements of this project so far."

DirectX 10: The Future of PC Gaming

Thom Holwerda 2006-11-30 3D 120 Comments

"DirectX 10 is probably the most important revolution in games development, at least since the introduction of the programmable shader in DirectX 8.0. Because of the way that Microsoft has designed the new driver model, DirectX 10 will only be available for Windows Vista users and there will not be a version released for Windows XP. Along with DirectX 10, Windows Vista will come with DirectX 9.0Ex - this is because pre-DirectX 10 hardware will not work under the new API due to the complete overhaul."

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