Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
From: Delaware, USA
>>there ARE reasons to support cards below
>>the HD 7750.
>Like the 7730?
Ah yes...you ARE good at picking up minor mistakes
. For my part, I didn't even know there was an HD 7730 until yesterday, I've never seen one.
>> how much will we get out of GCN? I doubt it will be much.
>Me either. That's why I never quoted performance as reasoning for my opinion that giving priority to GCN-based >cards would be better.
Honestly, except for new system buyers, I don't see the logic in using GCN cards, there a lot of 5000 and 6000 series cards at bargain prices right now that will absolutely fly under an NG OS.
>> our drivers uses a surprisingly small number of graphic primitives (think about it, what
>> executes on our highest end cards also works on a Radeon 9200 - or even lower cards).
>I'm not sure this makes sense. Programs don't talk to the graphics card drivers directly. There's at least one >level of abstraction in between, so I think the graphic primitives can be different between drivers for >different GPU generations.
True, most graphics operations run through TinyGL, but our version of OpenGL is so dated that almost all our cards have the commands that have been implemented in this package.
>> a well written MorphOS driver for these cards will easily allow our G4 systems to
>> step all over Tabor
>...except in 3D operations.
Yeah, even if we get AGP R600 and R700 support, 5000-7000 (and later GCN) cards will have a distinct advantage, but I'm beginning to wonder how well Tabor will work with its graphics cards. The P1022 has only SIX SerDes lanes which must drive the NIC, SATA, AND PCI-E interfaces.
Something tells me operations to and from system memory are really going to be really slow.
So, given that we'll have 1.42 GHz G4 PowerMacs going up against a weaker 1.2 GHz P1022 (with its funky spe fpu), there's still a chance that Tabor won't fair well. Its a given that programs that aren't heavily graphically oriented will be much faster on the PowerMac. And graphics programs...we'll just have to see.
>>We just need to stop thinking in terms of OS4
>*If* the MorphOS team wants OS4 users on Sam460 and X5000 to try out MorphOS, then they just need to *start* >"thinking in terms of OS4"
>Hans de Ruiter published the results of his latest
OS4 graphics card survey some months back, which shows a clear trend towards GCN->based cards. Of all users of Radeon HD and newer cards (which should be Sam460, X1000 and X5000 users combined), >about 75% use HD7xxx/Rx. Unfortunately, we don't have the data to be able to subtract out the X1000 users from >this, and we also don't know how many of those HD7xxx cards are HD76xx and lower cards and thus not GCN-based.[
Again, good point, I don't know what X1000 owners have upgraded to (but its unlikely they've kept their Radeon HD 4650s).
X5000 owners primarily have Radeon HD 7750 cards or R7 250 cards (both GCN).
I'm not sure either could best a Radeon HD 6870, but it is what it is.
That actually goes hand in hand with my argument in support of Tabor.
We need to provide support for the hardware they have, if we want them to try MorphOS.
Finally, as I've mentioned several times, GCN cards will eventually be supported. Mark has (I believe) about three of these.
And I'm not in any hurry, as I want to use an HD 5750 or HD 6750 and dual boot MorphOS with Linux.