your advcie on the best linux-supported GPU for laptop

[minofifa]

kindof a mixed hardware/OS question

I have a dell inspiron 9300 with a readeon mobility x300 GPU. It works well in windows but the drivers are the devil in ubuntu (to instal and to configure). I'm not happy with ATI support in linux in general adn i want to upgrade to something better.

I'm wondering if any of you are using laptops with linux, and if so, what GPU's have you found that work well? I want to take advantage of the new graphics featuures in linux like compiz and xgl and whatnot. Thank you for the advice.

 

[drag]

Ah. Yes. Linux does have open source drivers that support the R400 ATI series... except fro stuff like your's. That shared memory model is something they haven't figured out through reverse engineering yet.

But for good mobile 3d support for Linux you have two choices...
A. The Intel IGP drivers have very good support under Linux.

You want to get a laptop that has a 945g or 915g chipset, preferably the 945 since the IGP is GMA 950 and offers better performance.
These should be supported by default in all relatively recently Linux releases. Both 3d and 2d because they have good open source drivers.

These are probably now the best supported devices for Linux video.

With a bit of tweaking you can get a 100% performance increase over your normal Linux default install which makes them fast enough to play older games like Quake3 or Return to Castle Wolfenstien.
And with a bit of tweaking they can be made to playback HD-sized video content fairly well also.

It should be fast enough to run those fancy desktop effects provided by AIGLX and Compiz.

The upsides are:
1. provide superior battery life.
2. generally cheaper
3. supported by open source drivers
The downsides are:
1. poor 3d performance compared to discrete cards.


B. The other choice is Nvidia.

Nvidia provides good propriatory drivers for Linux feature good performance (as good as Windows) and acceptable stability.

Upsides:
1. Good 3d performance.
Downsides:
1. generally a bit more expensive.
2. propriatory drivers need to be installed by you (generally) and such.
3. propriatory drivers are naturually less desirable then open source drivers, but you take what you can get with video cards.
4. Nvidia chipsets are typically more difficult to find then ATI for laptops.


For purchasing a Linux laptop I think these guys seem very good:
http://system76.com/

Realise that when you buy a Dell or HP or IBM or Apple laptop none of those people realy manufacture them anymore. They'll stick a CPU in them, put the memory, and install teh operating system but otherwise they are all mass produced by the same 2 or 3 companies. So essentially when you get a laptop from a boutique OEM like system76 they are the same as you would get from big names.

But the difference is that these guys specialize in Ubuntu Linux. All the hardware is supported out of the box. Sleep works, video drivers work, audio works, the multimedia functions work, everything works. For hardware that doesn't have drivers immediately aviable from the vanilla or Ubuntu kernel they add the drivers into a package that you can install (which is installed by default).

If you need windows they won't install it for you, you have to do that yourself, but it's not going to void your warrentee or anything like that. They have default 1 year and up to 3 year warrentee and offer online and phone assistance for new users. So basicly it's the same sort of deal you get from Apple, except they are doing it with Linux instead.

Something worth looking at I figure. I haven't tried one myself, but I am probably going to buy my next laptop from these guys.

If you don't feel comfortable with buying from them then you can probably find similar hardware from a big name company and it will give you something to look for.

http://tllts.org/dl.php In episode 163 on this podcast they interview one of the guys from System76.

They also have a good wiki thing for getting things working that they can't do for you (like getting extra codecs running due to legal bs)
http://knowledge76.com/index.php/Category:HowTo

 

[minofifa]

as always, thanks for the wealth of informationi drag, very helpful

I don't really want to buy a whole new laptop per se, i was hoping to swap the graphics card in mine with a different brand (probably nvidia). Is this more or less doable, or are there other things to consider like chipsets and whatnot? I believe my computer does have an intel chipset (not sure which one).

It just seems like there is a lack of information on video cards and linux. If you ask somebody what video card to get for windows, you will get a millino different responses with the latest and greatest, but for linux, notody seems to be confident enough to suggest their setup as teh way to go. Is everybody out there having trouble with graphics in linux?

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: minofifa
as always, thanks for the wealth of informationi drag, very helpful

I don't really want to buy a whole new laptop per se, i was hoping to swap the graphics card in mine with a different brand (probably nvidia). Is this more or less doable, or are there other things to consider like chipsets and whatnot? I believe my computer does have an intel chipset (not sure which one).

Don't know anything about swapping out graphics cards in laptops. I've always assumed that they used propriatory form factors to make sure the card fit into the case, but I wouldn't be suprised either if it's possible.

It just seems like there is a lack of information on video cards and linux. If you ask somebody what video card to get for windows, you will get a millino different responses with the latest and greatest, but for linux, notody seems to be confident enough to suggest their setup as teh way to go. Is everybody out there having trouble with graphics in linux?

It depends on your needs and wants. Nvidia offers the best performance and compatability with games and such, but people don't want to encourage people to buy hardware with propriatory drivers. It's the same for almost all their cards, except for the old stuff. The same recommendations for specific Nvidia cards work for Linux as for Windows except the SLI stuff is less usefull.

It's better to get a intel IGP if you have modest 3d requirements.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: minofifa
kindof a mixed hardware/OS question

I have a dell inspiron 9300 with a readeon mobility x300 GPU. It works well in windows but the drivers are the devil in ubuntu (to instal and to configure). I'm not happy with ATI support in linux in general adn i want to upgrade to something better.

I'm wondering if any of you are using laptops with linux, and if so, what GPU's have you found that work well? I want to take advantage of the new graphics featuures in linux like compiz and xgl and whatnot. Thank you for the advice.

Seriously? Last I've heard the x300 gets 3d acceleration out of the box wtih the radeon driver. Probably needs the latest xorg though. Apparently Suse 10.1 works well with your notebook. Not sure why you're having problems with Ubuntu. Well Edgy is coming in a week or so and Suse should work so you have some options.

Actually if you install Suse 10.1 with Gnome and complete the instructions the author listed in the link I gave (appraently all you need to add two options in the xorg.conf file to get open-source 3d acceleration) there is a Desktop Effects area in Control Panel where can you can click a button to enable compiz.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: minofifa
kindof a mixed hardware/OS question

I have a dell inspiron 9300 with a readeon mobility x300 GPU. It works well in windows but the drivers are the devil in ubuntu (to instal and to configure). I'm not happy with ATI support in linux in general adn i want to upgrade to something better.

I'm wondering if any of you are using laptops with linux, and if so, what GPU's have you found that work well? I want to take advantage of the new graphics featuures in linux like compiz and xgl and whatnot. Thank you for the advice.

Seriously? Last I've heard the x300 gets 3d acceleration out of the box wtih the radeon driver. Probably needs the latest xorg though. Apparently Suse 10.1 works well with your notebook. Not sure why you're having problems with Ubuntu. Well Edgy is coming in a week or so and Suse should work so you have some options.

Oh I thought it was the X300 that didnt' work.
found this:
http://megahurts.dk/rune/r300_status.html

Oh I guess it's the X200 that doesn't work. X300 should work fine then with OSS drivers. Sorry I got mixed up.
Try getting rid of the fglrx stuff and go with 'radeon' in the X.org configuration.
If that doesn't work then wait till the upgrade to edgy and it should work.

 

[minofifa]

thanks for the replies.
I gues what it boils down to is: i don't know what i'm talking about (as usual). I don't understand why there are fglrx, ati, radeon, etc drivers for the same graphcis cards. When i use the glx gears command, i think i was getting 300-500 fps, which seemed low. When i type fglrxinfo inthe terminal, it says drivers by the mesa project. I thoght these were super old and generic drivers.

I guess i'll just hold out till edgy comes out. i herad that there is better support for compiz/beryl and xgl, so i'll see if it works there.

 

[drag]

Mesa is the open source OpenGL stack used by Linux and most other open source operating systems. The library by itself would give you software rendering capabilities, but the DRI drivers which provide open source hardware acceleration are based off of the Mesa OpenGL stack.

You see OpenGL is a programming API. On no card you get will it be capable for accelerating ALL of OpenGL, instead it it just accelerates the most common parts or the parts that need the acceleration the most. This is the difference between going out and buying a 'workstation' style card vs a consumer card. The workstation card will accelerate more of the API, while the consumer card concentrates on stuff generally used by games. Or something like that.

So basicly DRI drivers is the Mesa software stack with parts of it OpenGL accelerated.

For testing to see if you have hardware rendering enabled simply go:
glxinfo|grep -i yes

If it pops up "direct rendering: Yes" then you have opengl acceleration. Otherwise it would be 'No'.

My drivers come up with this:

glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_OML_swap_method,
GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_hyperpipe,
GLX_SGIX_swap_barrier, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer
client glx vendor string: SGI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_allocate_memory,
GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_swap_control,
GLX_MESA_swap_frame_usage, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_OML_sync_control,
GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGI_video_sync,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer,
GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
GLX version: 1.2
GLX extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer,
GLX_MESA_swap_control, GLX_MESA_swap_frame_usage, GLX_OML_swap_method,
GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 20060815 TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 6.5.1
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_fragment_program, GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample,
GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp,
GL_ARB_texture_compression, GL_ARB_texture_cube_map,
GL_ARB_texture_env_add, GL_ARB_texture_env_combine,
GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3,
GL_MESAX_texture_float, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_ARB_texture_rectangle, GL_ARB_transpose_matrix,
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object, GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_window_pos,
GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra, GL_EXT_blend_color,
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate,
GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint,
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_convolution, GL_EXT_copy_texture,
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements, GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters,
GL_EXT_histogram, GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_polygon_offset,
GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color,
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_subtexture,
GL_EXT_texture, GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc,
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_add,
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3,
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias,
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_object,
GL_EXT_texture_rectangle, GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_APPLE_packed_pixels,
GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate, GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3,
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once, GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip,
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate,
GL_MESA_pack_invert, GL_MESA_ycbcr_texture, GL_MESA_window_pos,
GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_light_max_exponent, GL_NV_texture_rectangle,
GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_NV_vertex_program, GL_OES_read_format,
GL_SGI_color_matrix, GL_SGI_color_table, GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap,
GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp,
GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_S3_s3tc
glu version: 1.3
glu extensions:
GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator, GLU_EXT_object_space_tess

visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x24 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x25 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x26 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x27 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x28 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x29 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2a 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2b 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x2c 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x2d 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2e 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2f 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x30 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x31 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x32 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x4b 32 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Ncon

That glxgears is too low. You should be getting upwards of a couple thousand I am guessing.
There is a flxglgears or something like that that ATI provides and that will provide different results.. I _think_


As for the drivers:
Flxglx are the propriatory drivers.
Radeon are the open source 2d drivers (the dri versions are r300_dri.so and aren't entered in your xorg.conf anywere)


As for ATI:
from man ati

ati is an Xorg wrapper driver for ATI video cards. It autodetects
whether your hardware has a Radeon, Rage 128, or Mach64 or earlier
class of chipset, and loads the radeon(4), r128(4), or atimisc(4)
driver as appropriate.p

so for relatively modern ATI hardware you use radeon. The 'ati' wrapper doesn't select the correct driver for me, unfortunately, so I have to enter 'radeon' in the xorg.conf stuff.

If your not getting open source DRI drivers going there could be a misconfiguration, but it could be that the X.org provided by your version Ubuntu doesn't have drivers for it. What version of X.org does your Ubuntu install have?

Check out /var/log/Xorg.0.log for details it'll tell you what version your using and hopefully a error as to why your DRI drivers aren't working.

 

[minofifa]

wow thanks a lot drag, that really clears up a lot.

I'm gonna look into tall of this when ihave a bit more time. I might even install edgy when it comes out next week to see if i get better support in there first. I'll post back then.

 

[Pabster]

Never had any X300 troubles on my 9300's ... I ran SuSE mainly.

However...to be honest, just like is the case with Windows, nVidia's drivers are superior to ATi's.