[Nottingham] Connect 3D Radeon 7000 AGP and Five Button Mouse info

[Michael Simms]

On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 10:08 +0100, Rob Andrews wrote:
> On 27-Oct-2005 23:11.00 (BST), Michael Simms wrote:
>  > Example:
>  > nvidia open source drivers on a new 3d game: 1 frame per 2 or 3 seconds
>  > nvidia closed drivers on the same game: 120 FPS
> 
>  > Really, its not even comparable in any meaningful way.
> 
> Well, this example is not particularly great since there are no opensource
> DRI implementations for nvidia cards. At all. There was the utah-glx project
> but it never made it to the XFree86 4 (and hence Xorg) era. Thus any
> opensource nvidia drivers are going to be software-rendered 3D only.

The example is perfect you proved the point. The end user doesnt care
about DRI or GLX. And hold on, utah-glx was open (I know, one of the
core developers works for me {:-) ) - and what, its not been auto-ported
to the latest X - why is that. Maybe its bacause open source does not
ALWAYS work as well as we would all like it to.

The only TLA the average gamer cares about is FPS. (Frames per second
for non gamers)

> The ATI cards have relatively good opensource DRI implementations in
> comparison, and the next Xorg release will complete the 3D support for
> the entire range of cards.
> 
> That said, they will lack *some* features, notably S3TC.

Thats exactly the kind of patent issue that open source will have a VERY
hard time overcoming. Now if patents all went away then there would be
more of a chance of things improving, but really, lets go try and nail a
jelly to the ceiling, juggle soot or plait jam, they are all more likely
to happen than patents going away.
-- 
Michael Simms - CEO, Linux Game Publishing
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com