ati on freebsd

adamk said:
Generally I would recommend sticking with -STABLE unless you have a specific reason to go with -CURRENT (and, in fact, I would normally recommend using -RELEASE, but you won't get 3D acceleration that way, at least not till 8.1-RELEASE and, to be honest, I don't know if the 3D DRM code will even be in 8.1).

Adam
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Hi,
I'm on
Code: 
FreeBSD 8.1-RC1 FreeBSD 8.1-RC1 #0: Mon Jun 14 13:40:28 UTC 2010 amd64
and with WITHOUT_NOUVEAU=yes in /etc/make.conf - before compiling xorg and mesa-demos - 3D acceleration works with the Radeon Xpress 1250 on my motherboard.

But only after some troubleshooting influenced by
[CMD=(t)csh:]setenv LIBGL_DEBUG verbose; glxinfo[/CMD]
and
[CMD=(ba)sh:]LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo[/CMD].

This helped to figure out, that my user hadn't the right permissions. After I added him to the group wheel following showed up:
Code: 
OpenGL vendor string: DRI R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 (RS600 7941) 20090101  NO-TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.5 Mesa 7.6.1

glxgears (~2500fps) and gloss (~650fps) works well with this limited hardware (in window mode).

There is also /usr/local/lib/dri/r600_dri.so in 8.1-RC1, but I'm not sure if DRI and DRM is up-to-date with 8-STABLE.
 
Right, but that doesn't mean anything for the OP. The 3D DRM code for the x1250 has been in FreeBSD while a while now. That's a much older generation GPU than the HD3450 that the OP is using.
 
Ok, I followed the advice given in this thread on my new -STABLE and everything is fine. Thanks everyone.
I've got other questions but I'm going to open separate threads for them.

cheers
 
I have an HD5700 series card. I know that 3D acceleration is currently unsuported in the standard radeon driver for this card, but ...

Following the instructions on this page seemed to at least have given me smoother 2D acceleration (maybe by accident) but, of course, no 3D.

The question is, is there another way? Is there a way of smoothly using more "bleeding edge" drivers that might give me 3D rendering, if not now then at least sooner? Or are there at least things I can do to make my system run smoother with this semi-supported hardware?
 
Woland said:
I have an HD5700 series card. I know that 3D acceleration is currently unsuported in the standard radeon driver for this card, but ...

Following the instructions on this page seemed to at least have given me smoother 2D acceleration (maybe by accident) but, of course, no 3D.

The question is, is there another way? Is there a way of smoothly using more "bleeding edge" drivers that might give me 3D rendering, if not now then at least sooner? Or are there at least things I can do to make my system run smoother with this semi-supported hardware?
Click to expand...

There's not much you can do. There is no 3D acceleration for it under FreeBSD. 3D acceleration is rather new under linux for that GPU with the open source drivers, and no one is actively working on continuing to support the DRI on FreeBSD. There is also no 2D acceleration, just 2D modesetting.

Adam
 
killasmurf86 said:
Meaning, there is no 2D acceleration in Video Cards anymore?
Or there is no driver support for such thing?
Click to expand...

For Radeon cards on FreeBSD, there is 2D and 3D acceleration for cards up to the 4000 series. 5000- and 6000-series lack DRI and/or driver support.
 
killasmurf86 said:
Meaning, there is no 2D acceleration in Video Cards anymore?
Or there is no driver support for such thing?
Click to expand...

Actually, a little of both. There is no 2D acceleration for HD5xxx cards on FreeBSD because there is no separate 2D chip (there hasn't been since the r500 cards, starting with the X1300, iirc). So all 2D rendering on those chips is all done with the 3D engine. Access to the 3D engine requires kernel support.
 
adamk said:
Actually, a little of both. There is no 2D acceleration for HD5xxx cards on FreeBSD because there is no separate 2D chip (there hasn't been since the r500 cards, starting with the X1300, iirc). So all 2D rendering on those chips is all done with the 3D engine. Access to the 3D engine requires kernel support.
Click to expand...

Yes, I was reading about this some pretty long time ago.
Thanks adamk, you're definitely an encyclopaedia of 3D support here :stud
 
There is no video acceleration in the open source radeon driver at the present moment. Xv is certainly supported, which helps with scaling, and XvMC is being worked on in gallium (which is not yet available on FreeBSD), which would provide assistance with motion compensation, but even that's not usable on Linux yet.

Adam
 
adamk said:
There's not much you can do. There is no 3D acceleration for it under FreeBSD. 3D acceleration is rather new under linux for that GPU with the open source drivers, and no one is actively working on continuing to support the DRI on FreeBSD. There is also no 2D acceleration, just 2D modesetting.

Adam
Click to expand...


I've been trying to figure out what does what when it comes to graphics. My impression is that 3D acceleration comes from the OpenGL library. For the system to be able to use it, it must communicate through the radeon driver, which is provided by X.org and is, in theory, "platform independent" meaning it needs some tweaks to work fully with BSD.

The radeon feature list for the Evergreen chip set seems nearly as complete as for older boards, and even OpenGL support is listed as "mostly"
http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
This is good news, right?

So the FreeBSD job would be to make sure radeon compiles and plays nicely with the kernel. Is this what "no one is actively working on continuing to support" ? Is there anything that someone with several hours to spend per week, a copy of the Kernighan/Ritchie book, and this graphics card can do to help? Or did I just reveal a level of ignorance that would make any attempt at contributing futile? Is there another place where it would be better for me to ask these questions and try to find these answers?
 
To further work develop and support the Direct Rendering Manager under FreeBSD, a developer would need to focus on KMS and memory management support, since that's the major bit that FreeBSD is currently lacking. rnoland, the last developer to work on DRM, once said to me that he just didn't know enough about the internals of the kernel memory management system to really work on those missing DRM features and that none of the current FreeBSD developers, proficient enough in memory management, really understood graphics cards enough. So, unfortunately, I think it's gonna take a lot more than what you were hoping for :)

On the plus side, I did recently read on one of the mailing lists that the FreeBSD Foundation was looking to fund development of these items, so hopefully FreeBSD won't get completely left behind.

Adam
 
On the plus side, I did recently read on one of the mailing lists that the FreeBSD Foundation was looking to fund development of these items, so hopefully FreeBSD won't get completely left behind.
Click to expand...

OpenBSD has got a working solution in 4.8, DragonflyBSD is working on something similar (Google SoC Project). The real problem is: even ATI-driver will be dead in no time, if there isn't a solution for FreeBSD.

http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/GEMdrmKMS/

It is especially vital for Linux drm GEM, TTM, KMS code to be ported immediately to the BSDs because developers are in the process of removing userland modesetting code from current graphics drivers. To paraphrase what we have been told by freedesktop.org developers, if we do not port this code, very shortly the BSDs will be left only using the simplest VESA driver at 1024 x 768 resolution with no hardware acceleration.
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