[6958] in Release_7.7_team
proprietary vs. open source ATI graphics driver
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alex T Prengel)
Mon Sep 13 16:15:27 2010
From: Alex T Prengel <alexp@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu
Cc: alexp@mit.edu
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Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:15:20 -0400
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I tested 7 3d applications (blender, Mathematica 3d graphics, Open
Inventor examples, Maya, mercury (Cambridge Structural Database),
Gaussview, AC3D) with the open source and proprietary fglrx drivers
available through the Ubuntu package system on two different machines
and got identical results on both.
All applications except blender and Maya displayed 3d graphics correctly
on both (though in some instances there were minor, mostly transient
image artifacts- somewhat more with the open source driver than fglrx).
As noted before, blender works properly (to the extent that menu pulls
work) with fglrx, and not with the open source driver.
Maya works with the open source driver but segfaults using fglrx.
This seems to be known, googling it turns up a fair number of hits- I
didn't see any fixes other than suggestions to use the open source
driver. For what it's worth, Maya ran OK for me on two home machines,
one Fedora 13 and the other Ubuntu Lucid, both using the proprietary
Nvidia driver on Nvidia graphics cards.
Test machines: a 780 with Radeon HD 3450 graphics, and a 755 with HD
2400 XT graphics, both running 64 bit.
We only have 2 Maya floating licenses and usage has been very low (2
users other than me in the past 6 months, though it's not been
publicized until recently when I put in WRW). I have no idea how many
blender users there are. I'm inclined to go with the fglrx driver though
I don't feel strongly about it.
Alex
