X.Org 7.2: ATI Open v. Closed Drivers

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?

The Linux distribution used was Fedora 7 Test 1. Fedora 7 Test 1 ships with X.Org 7.2.0 and the ATI 6.6.3 driver. The latest fglrx driver (8.33.6) does not support Fedora 7. However, the Fedora packaging scripts have been updated and now support Fedora 7 Test 1. These updated scripts are available on the Phoronix Forums and MichaelLarabel.com. The 8.34 fglrx display drivers this month should include Fedora 7 support, but will likely contain Linux 2.6.20 compatibility issues.

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Comment by vangelis on February 07, 2007

I think the developers of closed source drivers at should give some more attention to issues that are left unsolved for months now, something that wouldn’t happen in the open source community, like the issue with x86_64 systems with Xorg 6.9 and later with X1×00 radeon products.
I would vote for the open source drivers just for this reason.

Comment by ati on June 02, 2007

Two months pass from 8.35.5,now with 8.37.6 only they do is catalyst control center to 1.0 ver.Some minor improvements.And still no AIGLX and XORG 7.2 support.Good move AMD/ATI, you will loose some linux user and buyers,it’s your choice.I can run beryl on my old noFX-5200 64MB RAM,without problem.So what is use of my X1950pro in gnu/linux with no 3D acceleration support?.I know, my next card will be nVIDIA,don’t care for folding@home and that stuff,and for Vista drivers.